Fundraising Quiz Night

I had my fundraising quiz last night and was blown away by the amount of support I was given by family and friends. It was important to try and keep my overheads down as I was trying to raise as much funds as possible so that fact that I was able to get the venue for free and that I had friends who made the puddings really helped.

I'd tried to publicise the event as much as I could but with it being the middle of August many people were away. Still, if I could get between 25 and 35 the event would be successful. I would have been surprised if I got more than 50.

I manged to use my local church as the venue and it worked really well. I drafted in my home group on the Thursday evening to help me set up. We were able to push the pews to one side to clear a central space and then move tables and chairs into the middle and create a nice cafe feel. There was only seats in the middle for about 45 people but I wasn't really expecting much more than that. Still, as a contingency I had some long tables brought in and was prepared to set up the pews as over flow seating if need.

I arrived early on the night to make sure everything was set up. I'd asked my brother and another friend to help me with the questions and the hosting of the event. This was defiantly a good idea as my friend Greg had run quizzes before and I was able to rely on his advice to tie things together and keep things running smoothly. My brother was also able to help with the technical stuff as well as another friend from my homegroup so I was able to get the projector and the sound to work without any trouble.

People began arriving at around 7.45 and the church began to fill. I soon realised that I had to move into the contingency when I asked people to find seats and arrange teams and was able to pull out the tables and pews I'd set aside. I never managed to make a final count of actually how many people came through the doors but it was well over 60 in the end!

Everyone seemed to have a really good night. Some of the rounds didn't work quite as well as I might have hoped but they were rounds where I'd wanted to try something a little different and if you don't try you don't know. Also, even though I had tried to make the quiz as diverse as possible I think people around my age had a bit of an advantage but I don't feel that others were excluded. Things to work on next time.

Generally everything went really well. A quiz and pudding night proved to be great idea as it kept overheads low and didn't require a terrible amount of preparation. The fact that the puddings were provided by friends and were all home cooked really helped also. When I first decided to do some fundraising I wasn't to provide an enjoyable event that people would be happy to pay £5 for and I don't think anyone left without getting a good deal. Certainly the puddings were good value for money, and I hope the quiz was as well. I

n total I took over £300 on the door but many people handed cheques with other donations in. All together I've raised about £1000 from friends and family which I think is brilliant! Ideally I'd like to raise another £1000 from other funders, but we'll have to see how that goes.

No Luck with the Gov

Well I wrote to my MP to see if there were any government run initiatives that could support young people doing voluntary work in the current climate. The good news is my MP wrote back, the bad news is she wasn't able to do anything :( It looks like the deal is just with Raleigh International which is pretty good for them as it'll mean more people will be signing up. I'm still not sure how much a Raleigh expedition will help someone get a job and to what extent it's just a gap year. I'd love to hear from anyone whose been on a Raleigh Expeditions to see if they felt it helped them develop vocational skills.

Ahead of the Curve?

One of the reason's I'm doing voluntary work overseas is because at the moment it is difficult to actually find a paid work relevant to my long term goals. At the time of writing the UK is supposedly in the deepest recession since the 1930's and, while I think this is probably not quite that bad, it is very difficult to find work for graduates at the moment.

Today I came across this article on the BBC today http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8179565.stm The article is about the government encoraging graduates to do overseas work as a way of gainng job experience. They're going to be giving grants for people to work on projects with Raligh International, the organisation the Prince William went with during his gap year.

I'm in two minds about this story. On one hand it's good that I must be on the right track if the governments recommending gap years would be a good way for graduates to get experience, but on the other hand I do have some reservations about the merits of this ideal. As good as it is to go overseas and build school I don't think it necessarily gives graduate any more then the generic abilities of working as a team, being more independent and improving their people skills.

My project is very different in that I'm aiming to use specific work skills which are much more transferable to a job. Things like report writing, working on a website and conducting publicity and fundraising is much more effective for job skills then these gap year programmes. I'm resolved that my work won't just be "helping out" but doing something practical in a work based environment.

I hope that whatever the government decides to do will be similar is setting up effective vocational placements and not just end up contrabuting towards young people 'scarbon footprints. Still, maybe I should write to my local MP on the matter, might be worth seeing if I can get any funds from the government myself.