Planning Is The Key
Organising a Charity
Quiz Night is not that hard, providing you sit down and plan it
properly. Preparation will be the key to the success of the actual
night.
Step 1 - Type Of
Quiz
You need to decide
on what type of quiz you will be holding. Is there going to be
a theme to it, e.g. Christmas, Halloween, James Bond etc. If your
Quiz Night for charity is themed then you have to decide if you
will be decorating the venue to compliment the theme.
Also decide on who
your target audience is - e.g. if it is for a PTA, then the majority
of people attending will be parents, if it is for a sports team,
then most of the people who attend will be sporty.
The target audience will influence the specialised rounds; for
instance players at a quiz for the Women's Institute will not
want a specialist round on Football. They would prefer something
like cooking.
Step 2 - Setting
The Date & Fundraising Target
Decide on a date for
your quiz and work out how much money you would like to make from
the event for your chosen charity. When choosing the date, remember
to check out if there are any other events going on then.
Take into account
other things like if you are holding the quiz in December, people
start to have Christmas work dinners etc. so you may not get as
many people participating.
Another example is in the summer, people will be going on holiday.
Just check that there are no big sporting events on like, England
playing a World Cup Qualifier - could seriously affect the turnout.
Step 3 - Setting
The Entry Fee
So far you will have
decided on a date, if the quiz will be themed and how much you
want to make from the quiz.
Now you need to work out how many people need to attend and how
much the entry fee will be per person. Before calculating this,
I suggest you read the How
much will it raise? section.
Here is an example.
Say you want to make
£250 from your quiz night - excluding any other fundraising
sidelines during the Quiz interval. Say you decide that teams
must have at least 5 members and the price per person is £2.50,
you will need at least 100 people (£250 / £2.50 =
100). If you do not incur any other expenses, then 100 is the
minimum number of people required to reach your target.
If you do incur any
additional costs, just take the total of the additional expenses
and divide it by the entrance fee per person, that then give you
the additional number of people you need to reach the target figure.
This is the equation:
Target Number of
people = (Target Amount to be raised + Expenses) divide by Entrance
fee per person
Step 4
Now you know
the number of people you need to attend in order to raise the
target amount, you have to make sure that your chosen venue can
hold that many people.
Once you are OK with the chosen venue, you need to decide if your
quiz master will need a PA system to ensure that all of the participating
Quiz teams will be able to hear him on the night.
If you need a PA system
see if the venue has one you can borrow, otherwise you will have
to hire one (remember to add any such hire cost to the expenses
in step 3 above).
Step 5 - Publicity
Think about how you
will publicise your quiz night for charity. Nobody will turn up
for it if they don't know about it. If your quiz is for a local
sports team or PTA then a simple letter sent to all members and
a few posters will probably be sufficient publicity.
If it is for a larger
charity like Cancer Research, a local hospice or hospital then
you will need to concentrate on producing more posters and trying
to get a mention in the local media.
Also do not be afraid
to ask local pubs and clubs who hold regular quiz nights if you
can place a poster up in their pub or club. Such posters will
appeal to regular quiz players.
Step 6 - The HARD
PART, Writing The Questions
Now you need to think
about the questions and the actual running of the quiz on the
night. These are quite detailed so they have their own dedicated
section.
Writing
the quiz
Quiz questions
On the night
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