Has anyone held a bingo night as a fundraiser?

[Eddas]

Do you have any tips to make it a success?

We're hoping to hold one in a few weeks, so far we have done virtually nothing towards it.

We are going to hold a raffle too, as it's a ladies night we were thinking of having pamper type gifts (chocolates, wine, smellies etc)

And also thought of having a picture type quiz as an aside to raise a few more quid, so ask for a pound per sheet and whoever gets the most right answers will get half the money (ie sell 20 sheets the winner gets £10)

What I really need help with is what euipment did you use? Will a bog standard kids bingo game do the job? I've seen the bingo tickets in the £1 shop so we can get them from there. How many games do we do? Should we run it like normal bingo(ie one line, then two, then full house)? What prizes should be given?

Also, any tips on what to write on the poster to get as many in as possible?!

Eek, so many questions! Any help would be much appreciated

bump

You need lots of people out there in the hall selling the tickets.
Be warned, you may be setting out a "fun night out" agenda, but some bingo players are VERY serious!
I like the picture quiz idea.
We have an ancient bingo machine donated to us (big cage with balls in and a wind up handle really). A kids set is fine, or ping pong balls in a tombola will do the job. Make sure you have a good caller and a number verifier.
We have a very small school and PTA so don't run these evenings too often. We pay £1 a line, £5 a house. Sell cards for 50p.
HTH

excellant thank you. Our pre-school is quite small so we'd like to encourage people to bring friends/family with them.

In the past quiz/bingo nights haven't proved to bring much in, but I think it's nice to do them anyway

Anymore tips from anyone else would be great

bump for the evening.

Would love some ideas on pricing, baring in mind we might only have 15-20 people turn up

our childrens centre runs a family prize bingo 4 times a year and could run more if they had the volunteers. it works incredibly well as a fundraiser especially in our community where a lot of people like going to gala or dabble with the lottery.

we play six games - they buy the packs of books from baker ross I believe. so you buy each book of six (not the whole page like you would at gala) for £1, so if you want to play all the numbers it would be £6.

we play one line and then full house so that the children can play too without worrying about the two lines.

we play 3 games then break for coffee and a raffle and then play the last 3 games. this will take about an hour and half in total.

bingo prizes are bought from tesco or are collected from donations from businesses. the raffle prizes will all be donated but will include things like a pack of loo rolls or biscuits too.

the organisers basically look out for bargains up until the bingo night, reduced stuff etc and then allocate to a line prize or full house prize. No money prizes otherwise you need a licence and children can't play.

in the summer one I won a line - a badminton set from tescos and a full house - which was shopping in a bag (about a £5 worth of food I think. others prizes included colouring sets, teddy bears and the last house prize was a deck chair (but by chance the organiser had picked that up reduced in tesco for about £3!)

open the event to the whole community. ours has a group of OAPs who regularly come out for the evening, especially because they love bingo but won't travel down to the local gala at night.

on the whole there will be about 20 people and will make between £50 and £100 profit.