How to organize your race night fundraiser

Below are some key points for organizing your race night. 

1. Arrange a Team - if possible

If you have colleagues and friends with an interest in your cause then involve them from the start. Decide on a mutually convenient date, get ideas for a venue, get ideas for race sponsors and later share the task of finding snail sponsors. If you know someone who is a natural extrovert 'rope them in' as your snail auctioneer for the last race.

2. Arrange a Venue

You will need a venue large enough to hold your intended audience. Most fundraising race nights have from 50 to 80 people and larger ones can have as many as 200 people or more.

Suitable venues can be pubs, bars, hotels, club premises, halls or college - university lecture theatres.  Make sure that there is adequate space for your intended audience and enough room for them to move about to place bets.

If the venue has its own bar then the owners should be pleased to offer you the venue as they will have a captive audience for selling refreshments.  Also be aware that many venues have video screening equipment which can save you the need to organise this yourself.

If your venue does not have a bar then you may wish to organise one yourself to raise extra funds on the night. Otherwise you can simply ask everyone to bring their own drinks.

You may wish to organise food at the event. A finger buffet with sandwiches works well, otherwise something simple like hot stovies, or a fish supper can be ideal.

3. Sponsorship

For the Races: Identify local companies or organisations which might sponsor a race. For a small fundraiser, you may wish to bring in the local butcher, the plumber, the garage, the electrician etc. For higher profile or larger events you wish to try your luck with local supermarkets, factories or prestigious stores.  Just bear in mind that larger organizations will need more time to organize funds than small businesses which can often make an immediate decision.

For the Snails: If you have colleagues helping you, then you should them hand them a sponsorship collection form (see left) and ask them to find sponsors for each of the eight snails in a race. Try to find sponsors who can attend on the night. In this way you are involving everyone, lining up your audience and publicizing your fundraising event at the same time. Before ordering you can summarize your sponsors names etc on our Race Card Info Sheet part of which also shows the default names of the snails which will be used if you do not name them yourself.

4. Equipment

To screen your race night you will need either a DVD player, as a standalone or in a computer (or laptop), or a standard video player; sound amplifiers; and either a large television for small audiences; or a projector and big screen for larger audiences. Our technical help  section (above) will guide you.

Many venues will have this equipment readily available but if you need to organise a projector and big screen then you should ask around amongst your colleagues to see if you can borrow one, otherwise locate a local hire store.

5. Consult the professionals - any time

If you have questions at any time then please consult our FAQ section (above), and if it doesn't help just contact us, or use our '123 type & talk' service. The Fundeo team have many years of experience and are always ready to help.