To be thinking of organising a big charity event with no experience whatsoever?

[MissWouldBeEventOrganiser]

I am a regular poster, Ive just name changed. Just after some advice really and posted here so it wont disappear.

A wonderful, gorgeous little boy I know has cystic fibrosis and is currently in hospital with it - and is really quite poorly. Its brought it home to me just what a horrendous condition it is and the CF trust are fundraising for gene therapy to try and find a cure. I have never organised anything for charity before and just wondering how much hard work and money would be involved in me organising something like a ball/social dance type thing in a nice venue, maybe with an auction/raffle included.

I dont mind outlaying some money but I dont have very much spare cash. I am not sure how to go about setting a budget - how generous do suppliers etc tend to be when they know its a charity event? Whats the best ways to promote? I dont know anyone who has done this sort of thing so really just looking for some advice from MN.

Have you organised a wedding? Sounds fairly similar apart from having to sell tickets for it.

Maybe have a look on the websites of local hotels and see how much they charge per head for evening receptions. Imagine adding £5-10 profit on per head. How many tickets would you be confident of selling?

I wouldn't expect much of a discount from suppliers but I might be wrong.

I think it's a risky thing to do unless you have a lot of friends/family/colleagues who are generous and available and will commit to a night out a few months in advance. Could you do something at home with fewer overheads? What about getting friends over for afternoon tea or something? Or maybe talk to the CF Trust and see whether you can fit in with their activities? It's lovely that you want to help, but I'd worry that you might be risking money you can't afford to lose.

The CF Trust are likely to have employed fundraisers that will help you and give you advice. They might be able to give you some help with publicity, or with information to give out to prospective donors and event attendees.

There is a lot of work involved in things like this, but it is doable if you are prepared to go for it. You will need help and support from other people, if you want it to be a big event you won't be able to do everything.

Suppliers can be generous, many offer a 10% discount for charities, but not all will. Don't expect everything to come for free because its a charity, charities are often very much leak businesses nowadays. If you are running a raffle you can often get prizes for free, but it takes a lot of time writing to various companies and than thanking them afterwards. Lots of sports celebrities can be quite generous if you send them things to sign, or even if you just write asking for signed pictures.

Your first port of call is definitely the CF trust. I e just has a quick look at their website and they have lots of information about holding events for them, and they probably have someone you can speak to that will help you get started.

Good Luck

Hi me and a couple of friends arranged a charity event for a little boy with leukemia we ended up holding it in a local pub and done some food which we cooked luckily my husband is a chef and we also held a raffle and auctioned off a few of the other items! The pub gave a free drink to everyone with a ticket which were sold for £10 we ended up with the raffle making about 3000 pounds which was fab! But another friend organised a walk for all the toddlers in the village and the little boys friends they walked about a mile to the beach and raised about the same money with very very little outlay could you do something like that? Nearby park or something?
Good luck

Am replying on my phone so not good at posting long posts. It is doable, we have raised over £11 k from a small number of charity events. We fund raise in our daughter's memory primarily for NICU. Having key people to help on the day in advance is important.

Raffles are fab, we usually raise about 500 from this alone. You need a licence if selling in advance but the charity may have one already for this. It comes under gambling regulations. Definitely get in touch with the fundraising people at your charity, they will be glad to hear from you.

We use Facebook and our own webpage plus papers and radio etc to let people know what we are doing. People start to know of our cause and it helps.

Other things that help are finding people who will print leaflets and posters for you and banners etc. I know I am lucky with this.

Pm me if you need any further info and good luck. Such a fab charity.

It might be an easier start to join in with one of the Trust's existing campaigns.

www.cftrust.org.uk/help/nationalcampaigns/

They will have already put funding into structuring these activities and they should have info packs, etc to send out to make it simple to get involved...

This might get you up & running and give you a bit more confidence/experience before having to organise something bigger from scratch.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do - its a lovely gesture...

Golden, our toddle waddle was our most successful event too. We raised just over £3000 too. Definitely worth it :)

This might help:
knowhownonprofit.org/funding/fundraising/fundraising-events-and-challenges/events (although its aimed at organisations, rather than individuals)

And this: www.macmillan.org.uk/Fundraising/FundraisingIdeas/EventPlanning.aspx

I agree with sponsored events being great fundraiser activities - little or no outlay but fantastic returns. Our school was able to get use of a climbing wall and did a sponsored climb - all the older children got to do the climb as many times as they could (climb your local highest peak, in metres iykwim) - the children loved it and raised over a thousand pounds for one afternoon. The younger children did an obstacle course, so they were included). Usually our summer/Christmas fairs make £300- £500 and they are incredibly hard work, but they are not just about making money.

Doing regular rather than one off events could be a great fundraising idea? I know someone who used to organise regular (monthly) ceilidhs, great family event, with raffle and selling stovies, and sale or return alcohol/drinks - can be a great way to raise money and have fun too. An auction of some sort could be good fun.

I think big events need a team of volunteers, so getting together with friends & family to share ideas and skills and see what you can come up with is better than trying to do it yourself. Also remember you will need public liability insurance for many things you do - not hard to get and not expensive.

Gala dinners etc are actually not very efficient as a form of fundraising, as in the cost to funds raised ratio tends to be very high- many are actually loss making once you take into sccount donations in kind. They are good at raising awareness though, so that's one upside of them. My concern with you trying this is that if you've never attempted anything similar then the risk is you don't budget costs properly and the charity ends up with very little or you end up basically footing costs yourself so the charity doesn't lose out. I heard of one incident recently where an inexperienced organiser didn't realise that trade quote exclusive of VAT so her costs were c. 20% higher than she thought they'd be. Finally, often the lower priced events clear more than higher priced- eg in the ecple above, people paid a rennet and got a free drink- profit C. £9 per head. If you do a meal in a hotel, then you might only clear around a tenner a head with far more outlay and higher cost to the donor and greater risk.

Thank you so much everyone... im quickly realising i might need to scale back my plans after looking into it and of course your fantastic advice. i am going to contact the CF trust later, i did look at their existing events and would love to be able to do a sponsored 10k but im quite unfit - it would definitely be something to work towards. sponsored events might be better for me to start off with. if anyone else has any suggestions im open to anything :)

Do you have any children? I would encourage you to get them involved. Not only is it a great life lesson for them, people seem to give more generously when children are involved.

My 7 year old son "swam" the English channel to raise funds for Syrian refugees. He swam 21 miles in our gym's pool over the course of a couple of months. He raised close to £4k. At the end of his swim, with the help of an amazing UK charity, www.handinhandforsyria.org.uk/, we traveled (on our dime, no charitable funds paid for our trip) to Turkey and Syria to meet with the refugee children and to give them winter clothes purchased with the funds he raised.

We learned quite a bit in the process.

Use every available aspect of social media. Facebook, twitter, message boards, the justgiving site (if you use them), etc. Doing this lead to radio, internet, and television exposure for my son's swim.

Be creative. My son sold those rubber bracelets to everyone he talked to! We also teamed up with a local creative design company who put us in contact with a local independent coffee shop. They created a drink, named it after the swim and part of the proceeds went to the charity. He spoke at an evening fundraising event, alongside politicians, doctors, and media people. We held a Final Five party to celebrate and he swam the last 5 laps in front of everyone. Pretty much anything we could think of to let people know what he was doing and why.

There are 3 types of people who will donate. 1) Friends and Family. 2) People in the affected community. 3) Strangers. It helped to have a different approach for the three different groups. The people in group one donated out of love or to be supportive of my son and would have done regardless of the cause. People in group three seemed to donate because my son's story surprised them and then touched them. But the people in group two were the most amazing. Most of them were personally affected by the war in Syria and were so very grateful for anything anybody was doing. They then put us in touch with more people that could help and more opportunities to raise funds.

I realize I just wrote a tonne -- but I could write even more!

My friend raised a few hundred pounds just by doing a sponsored walk. Not a lot of capital outlay at all. Really good it turned out. She is organising another one. She had no experience of this at all. Good luck

What you raise for personal feats massively depends on your donor base.

I did the London marathon in 2008 and raised about £10k- the same as I did by doing an ultra-marathon in 2006, which is kind of crazy given the difference in hardness/ commitment required. The difference was that when I did the London marathon, I was working in investment banking (lots of rich people sponsoring £100 each) and got lucky in being the only employee running that year so all the sponsorship from the mass email came my way (I think a lot of people, myself included, sponsor one person for the marathon each year, and then that's it). More people in total sponsored me for the ultra, but lower amounts.

If you do an event, definitely use Justgiving or similar. Getting verbal promises and having to go round and collect is a real pain in the arse. Although JG do take a fee, this is more than compensated by the tax which JG reclaim for the charity on donations from UK tax payers.

I did this, it was an amazing experience. charities may be able to loan you money for event which you pay back with extra.