I was quite surprised when I was approached by a community organization who'd heard of my theme parties and wanted to hire me to plan a fundraiser for them. I'd never done any kind of fundraiser! Could I pull something that big off?
I'd have a pretty substantial budget to work with, as well as many volunteers to do whatever I needed them to do and I'd have pretty much free reign. It was tempting...but what if I bombed and they ended up losing money on the fundraiser? And they expected ME to come up with the theme of the fundraiser, then meet with them to run my ideas past them. YIKES!
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It's weird how ideas come to me. I was walking to my car and thought to myself I already feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders...
I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the parking lot. THAT WAS IT! Who hasn't traveled somewhere during their life? Who doesn't like to travel? How many people have plans to travel at some point?
I couldn't think of anyone that didn't fit one of those categories and it would give me a big audience to target. AROUND THE WORLD! TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD! Have booths from different countries where attendees could sample food from that country, buy goods from that country...
All of us could pair up with another club member and man a booth whose country they were familiar with, who could talk to attendees about that country: what to see and do on a trip there, etc. We had enough different nationalities among us to do it. The group already had a food serving license...so we wouldn't have to mess around with that bureaucracy.
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The venue was to be an area community center that could easily handle 200 people at a time without violating fire codes, they already had all the tables and chair necessary, plus a full big kitchen at the back of the hall, just in case, with stoves and coolers.
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This isn't to scale, the venue was actually much larger than shown below but it will give you an idea of how we laid it out.
We ended up with the countries: Australia, France, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Korea, Israel, Norway, Mexico, United States, and Jamaica.
There was a long hallway of windows and doors that were the town offices. I proposed staging that hallway in airport fashion so attendees felt they were about to board a plane to travel.
We didn't need invitations as the fundraiser was announced several times at other community events.
However, I proposed we should borrow an idea from Disney and give the kids Passports with stickers for each country's booth they visited and the pair manning that booth could stamp their Passports as well.
This cost less than 40 cents per book to do given we bought the passport book kits (stickers included).
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I had a photographer friend who spent his time traveling and living around the world. He agreed to come do a travelog of all the countries he'd traveled to and lived in, and bring his photo presentation of all of those locations, then answer any questions guests may have about any of those locations and/or traveling to it.
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When those who planned to attend bought their admission, they were given a boarding pass as their admission ticket to the fundraiser. I'd made up a dummy on my computer and we'd taken them to a printer to have a quantity of them printed up.
My idea was to make the attendees feel as though they were in an airport, boarding a plane to travel the world in going down that entry hall that lead into the venue itself - before they ever got into the venue.
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Below is a very rough mockup of what we did to stage that hallway.
We made the hallway into an airport runway by buying 2 rolls of disposable runner mat with Tacki Back adhesive on the back to hold it in place. To make the white lines down the runway we used white duct tape.
For the sign, I bought a sheet of yellow posterboard and stenciled the signs after cutting the posterboard into 4 pieces. We put the sign in a metal stand belonging to the town offices. We also borrowed an LED lectern they had.​
I had the most wonderful group of volunteers to work with, especially the guys that helped me in putting the runway hallway together. I called them my "tech geeks". They figured out how to rig 2 overhead screens - one at the entry to the hallway, one at the far end at the venue entry.
On the screen where attendees entered they'd rigged up a looping POV video of an airplane cockpit as the plane took off so it felt like you were in a plane taking off.
At the venue entry was a second overhead screen with a looping POV video of a cockpit view of a plane landing.
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We had two gals who dressed as flight attendants, one stationed at the lectern at the start of the hallway who checked the boarding passes (We let guests hold onto them in order to be able to go in and out of the venue) and the flight attendant at the far end of the hallway that thanked attendees for flying our Around the World Airlines.
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Sometimes ideas work better than you intended them to, which leads to an unexpected problem - as it did in this case. The line would stop moving as people watched the videos and we wanted to keep the line moving. One of my "tech geeks" came up with a brilliant solution. He got a bunch of orange pool noodles and cut them to the length of a tarmac worker's baton.
He dressed up like a tarmac worker. He'd let the guests watch enough of the take off video to let them get the feeling of being on a plane, then began dancing up and down the hallway, directing the line to keep moving. He'd hand a pool noodle to the kids in line to dance with with him up and down the hallway, directing the line to keep moving.
I had no idea he'd done this until one of the volunteers came and got me, saying "You have to see this!"
Keep the guests entertained! I joined him for a few minutes and he and I did a "dance off" between the two of us. The people in line were thoroughly entertained rather than just standing in line to get into the venue. He was brilliant!
Back to the hallway staging...at the far end of the hallway I built a corrugated baggage carousel and loaded a bunch of suitcases on it.
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The guys also made up an arrival and departures board
they hung in the hallway.
venue staging
The Treasurer of the Community group was also my purchasing agent. I'd tell her what I wanted, she'd source and order it. This way the club itself had control over what they were paying for what.
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We had 20 banquet tables to somehow decorate. Rather than disposable tablecloths, I suggested we go with a table runner that
the club could not only reuse but that would allow the gals in charge of the tables to wipe them down when necessary without any problem.
She found the perfect flags of the world table runners.
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I made 20 very simple centerpieces out of faux floral wreaths and inflatable globes of earth. Nothing that could break or shatter if the centerpiece got knocked over.
In the initial planning stages we'd all agreed that the teams manning the booths would make their own display booths but that I'd be on hand to help them if they ran into any problems.
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The community center had to be kept open for other events so we moved our construction area to an outside building to make the booths.
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My teammate, Gwyn and I had France so had to build our own booth as well. It ended up looking something like this...
The backdrop is of Paris obviously. We felt we had to offset our booth to the side so people could see the Eiffel Tower and know we were the France booth. The tree was one I'd made of paper mâché. The bicycle is mine as is the bistro set. Gwyn brought the flowers. We set up two of my banquet tables at which to sell our goods. Except for the lace valances on the windows the rest is cardboard.
The cobblestone was event flooring that we rented for the day. The only thing we bought were the table skirts - $24 for a 2 pack at Walmart.
Building the booth was the easy part. Gwyn and I baked our butts off making enough French pastries to sell without (hopefully) running out. LOL
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I don't mind admitting I was a nervous wreck the weekend of the fundraiser! I just wanted everything to go off without any hitches and for people to show up and donate. In no way did I (or any of the others for that matter) expect to be as mobbed as we were. I don't know if word of mouth spread or what...but we pretty much had a steady line of people coming down our airport runway hallway from start to finish.
My friend who did the travelog went from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. that night with scarcely a break.
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Even the kids were into it, running from booth to booth to get their Passports stamped.
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The couple next to us in the Australia booth were from the Gold Coast of Australia and he was a born entertainer. He and I put on a mock session of razzing each other over how the French spoke vs. the Aussies, the differences in our food, "insulting" each other back and forth to entertain the people by our booths and encourage them to buy what we were selling.
"Jay, you'd better cut those Vegemite samples a whole lot smaller so you don't kill anyone when they taste it. Don't worry people, I have a defibrillator right here just in case!"
"WELL Patricia mate...I hope Gwyn there knows how to use it with all the wine you Frenchies drink!"
And back and forth it went...
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It was a great strategy on Jay's part as he ended up with the #1 top selling booth.
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I was on pins and needles at the end of the fundraiser, as the women counted up the proceeds. All of a sudden I heard a whole lot of racket coming from the table where they were counting up the proceeds. Gwyn came over to tell me I was wanted over there. I was sweating bullets...had I bombed?
I was shocked when the ladies told me they'd more than tripled what they'd made with any of their other fundraisers - and spent so little doing it. All of our hard work had paid off.
WAHOO!!!
The Treasurer was getting ready to write me a check for my services but I told her no. The volunteers I'd worked with from their club were so fantastic and had worked so hard for me, if they could volunteer their services, then so could I.
I told her to donate my fee to their fundraiser proceeds.
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Besides, they'd given me the opportunity to plan my first fundraiser and I was very grateful for that opportunity and for their putting their
faith and trust in me.