Fundriasing part 3

Ok, so this will be the last post on fundraising. I promise.

So the big fundraising event that my family and I pulled off was a Scottish ceilidh. For anyone who doesn't know a ceilidh is a night of dancing set dances which are called out my a caller. They are so much fun.

So the first thing we had to organise was the rough date to host the ceilidh - we couldn't pick an exact date yet as it all depended on when the hall that we hire out was free or not. We decided to host the ceilidh in March- this was not so close to Christmas that everyone was broke, nor was it too close to exam time.

We then thought it wise to book a band and ask if they could keep a couple of dates free whilst we sorted out the date and place. We didn't realise that ceilidh bands are actually fairly expensive - we even considered not having a live band and just having a CD player and a caller. However, we eventually struck a deal with a band called 'The Brookfield Band' who agreed to keep a number of dates free. Yay!

Next on the agenda was to organise where we could hold it. This took a lot of effort. Halls are expensive to hire - even at a reduced rate. We sent out many letters to lots of different places. Dad was sent to check out the ones that replied to see what catering options were there, where tables would go, was there enough room to dance and also where would the band play. Eventually we found a place which sounded suitable and after dad's many trips to try and arrange a viewing we were able to go and see the venue. The venue was Hemel Hempstead Football club and the room was fantastic! It was big enough, we could cater there, there was a bar and there was a stage for the band. Best of all the owner had agreed to give it to us for free because I was with a charity!

The next step was to arrange food. We looked into several catering companies but they were either not what we were looking for or to expensive. As it turned out the football club agreed to cater for us at a relatively cheap price which was fab! We decided to offer vegetable curry, beef stew and a Thai green chicken curry. We bought our desserts from the Waitrose catering section - they were chocolate tart, lemon tart and a vanilla cheesecake (which was super yummy!).

Decorations and a flyer was next on the list.  We went through many variations of the flyer but eventually ended up with this:

As for decorations we got a load of jam jars and put some tiny jelly balls inside which expanded in water. Then we bought some flowers from the florist and also put them inside the jars. There were 1 or 2 jars on each table. We also had tea lights on each table.

We also had to sort out prizes for the raffle. We wrote to a few companies who decided to donate something towards it, we also bought some prizes and some came from family and friends.

The night was a big success. Almost straight after school we went down to the club to put up some tartan banners, some table cloths and lay out the decorations. People started arriving from about 6:45 and we sat down to eat at 7:30. I was doing a lot of running about - making sure I greeted everyone.

The dances were fantastic - even my friends enjoyed them! I danced every dance but one!

The band finished playing at about 11 so for the last half hour we played music from an ipod, which got all my friends and my sister's friends up and dancing!

The night was a huge success and a great way to bring people together. The ceilidh and raffle  managed to raise 1,312.50!!!!

Me and my family after the ceilidh

Our final event was a quiz night. We managed to get our church hall for free :) and we decided that it should be bring your own drinks. We provided the food which we cooked ourselves in both our kitchen and the church hall's kitchen. This worked out quite well but was difficult to cater for so many people.

We wrote out the quiz questions ourselves, well dad did. I did write out about 20 questions but he just decided not to use them!

Anyway, the quiz night was great fun even though my team lost :(

It was a great way to let people know how close I was to finishing my fundraising and to also let them know more about my project as I did a raffle and speech to thank everyone.

In the end we managed to raise exactly £500!

So ends all my fundraising events. Of course I also wrote to loads of charitable trusts and local businesses and a fair amount did give me money - so writing a lot is worth it!

I also had a home collection box which me and my family would put bits of money in every now and then and this combined with virgin money giving donations and other donations from friends and family meant that I reached my target of £5900!

Bye guys!! xxx