Our Lights Out fundraiser was a total success – in the end! But what a learning curve it was…
In the lead up to the Lights Out event we felt intensely anxious. At two weeks before the event ticket sales were worryingly sluggish, we’d only sold about 20 actual tickets out of 120 – and we knew we had to pay a $1000 rental to Jump for the evening so we were panicking that we weren’t going to break even, let alone make funds. People were keen, but not keen to buy the tickets early.
It felt uncomfortable asking friends and workmates to support us. We carted tickets, flyers and posters (and blu tac!) around to every location we could think of and started shamefacedly bombarding our social networks. We had to remake our posters about 6 times, being advertising novices we kept leaving details off the posters or people would comment about how we should include different things to what we’d included.
We spent a lot of time at Jump Avondale and online to Jump’s exceedingly patient managing director discussing sales and talking about how the event would go. The staff were incredibly helpful, reassuring and very willing – an amazing bunch of people to work alongside!
Then came the final week. Eating at our dining table went out the window as the donated raffle prizes arrived. Every single prize that sat on our table we wanted to keep for ourselves – they were all so good. Laura from Gladstone Butchery arrived with massive bags of sausages – they’d even precooked them, making our lives that much easier. Truly generous people. Fin convinced us to make twice as many lolly bags as we had done which was surprisingly time consuming to put together. Bread, raffle books, drinks, napkins, and sauces were bought but still we weren’t sure of numbers.
Then in true NZ style ticket sales tumbled in at the last minute. At one point, on the last day before the event, the sales were looking so good that we thought people might miss out. Nobody missed out in the end though but we came so close. We sold so many tickets that we were only 4 tickets away from a sellout.
After many weeks of planning the evening appeared and the weather was brutally cold, but at least it wasn’t raining. Weary family arrived on our doorstep after long weeks of work to come help out. Jackets and beanies were packed and the trailer with the BBQ was hitched onto the car.
People arrived. They were all our people! People we hadn’t seen for ages and people we saw every day, people who were friends of our people. It was a little like a wedding where one lines up to hug the bride and groom! It was so nice to see everyone. Julie Davies helped put wristbands on everyone (surprisingly difficult to do quickly!) as we worked our way through the handling of different types of ticket purchases.
Ali, Chad Davies, Nana & Poppa, Dave & Marta, and Janet Williams sold sausages, raffle tickets, drinks and lollies. What a crew.
The Lights were out, the music was on and the trampolines were populated. Bounce time. The bouncers were hot and the rest of us standing around were freezing.
Rosebank Kitchen next door saw an extra influx of people for an hour or so which was a mighty fine way to warm up in our opinions!
We had to get over our microphone shyness and announce the raffle. The raffle took a while to draw but it was worth it as so many people won prizes and it was pretty cool how people got to choose what they wanted from the selection. Nana & Poppa graciously threw their winning ticket away so another person could have a chance. Fin even did a short flipping display over on the Olympic tramps which surprised us all.
And then suddenly it was all over! Time to pack up and shuffle off. We packed down and loaded the BBQ back onto the trailer, cleaned up around Jump and headed home. We only had one extra staying with us tonight – Max McQuoid.
We were tired but happy, cold but energised and very, very curious to see if we’d made any money to go towards Fin’s trip. It took a while to add all the bits together from online sales, Jump sales, cash sales, food and raffle sales and try to subtract things like the petty cash and settle up with Jump costs. In the end the evening’s net amount came in at $1659.00!
We spent the money immediately on Fin’s airfare (his airfare cost $2642 as, quite inconveniently, at 13 years old he is a full adult fare).
Thank you everyone who came – you have contributed to getting Fin to his competition!
NB: Terrible photos sorry! The lights were out funnily enough.
Flippinamazing 