Fundraising for Marie Curie
Ideation
In line with our core objectives, our early team meetings helped us brainstorm various ideas. Through team discussions, internet searches, feedback from friends, and knowledge from past fundraising experiences we formulated ideas that we felt would best engage our target audience.
Mind map of initial ideas
To refine and select the best ideas, we assessed the pros and cons that may be associated with each event. For example, outdoor events such as sports events, picnics, or barbeques were highly dependent on the weather. As such, they posed a higher risk as there may be a low turnout or the event many need to be postponed if there were poor weather conditions.
We decided on an Open Mic Night as the main event due to it being most likely to engage our target audience, and therefore fundraise the most. It also had no limitations with weather conditions or other external factors. We also chose to have an online donation campaign as this would require low time and resource investment.
Idea Development
In line with our core objectives, our early team meetings helped us brainstorm various ideas. Through team discussions, internet searches, feedback from friends, and knowledge from past fundraising experiences we formulated ideas that we felt would best engage our target audience.
This resulted in 4 key parts:
18th July to 12th August
Online Donation Platform
The online donation page was set up as an additional low-investment revenue stream. Initially, we were exploring websites we were more familiar with such as GoFundMe, however, at the request of our client, we decided to use JustGiving as Marie Curie frequently uses this website and, as they are actively registered on it, all donations would automatically be transferred to them directly.
This page was an unexpected success mainly due to team members actively engaging with our personal networks over several weeks to encourage donations, and moreover, we prompted our direct contacts to share the page with their networks, facilitating this through crafting a pre-prepared message that they could send. In addition to this, in all our marketing and on our Instagram page we included a call to action for this page and, moreover, at our events we printed posters with QR codes that people could scan to easily take them to the donation page.
Once launching the page, we had an initial surge in donations which then slowed after the first week. Overall, the JustGiving page was hugely successful and accounted for a large part of our overall fundraising.
27th July to 4th August
Raffle Contest
The raffle contest was one of our secondary ideas that we decided to move forward with as it had a relatively low investment and could bring in additional revenue for our fundraiser.
For this event, we sold each ticket for £2 and focused on engaging with local businesses to see if they would be willing to donate prizes for the raffle. While initially our goal was to source three prizes, several shops were willing to participate resulting in six potential prizes. That said, one shortcoming in our planning was that we did not account for the time it takes for businesses to internally organize a prize. As a result of this, we had to cancel two prizes (from ITSU and Good Day Café) as they could not get the prizes to us in time. As such our final prizes were:
2 Odeon movie tickets
£20 voucher from The Canon
£30 voucher from Fone World
20% discount coupon from iCrack
Regarding the organization of the raffle, after looking into different platforms, we decided to use Raffall.com to host our contest as it is simple to use, secure, and some group members had experience with this platform. While we had several posts marketing this online, we expected a low level of online engagement which is why we planned two in-person selling days. On these days we used a QR code which people could easily scan to enter the contest and used food incentives to encourage people to buy tickets.
The first in-person selling day was at student accommodations on July 29th; on this day, we used any remaining food and drink from the Bake Sale (which took place that same morning) and gave them as freebies with every ticket sold. This benefitted us two-fold as we ensured that no food was wasted, and we still managed to raise money from the products that were not sold at our stall. The second in-person selling day was at The Virgil Building on August 1st as we predicted that many students would be at this venue working on their assignments and so may welcome a snack. On this day, due to their relatively low-cost, we bought several boxes of Sainsbury donuts and gave students a free donut with every raffle ticket they bought, resulting in us selling approximately 60 tickets.
Overall, we sold 17 fewer tickets than our initial goal. Upon reflection, if we accounted for more time to organize the prizes, starting the ticket selling earlier and having an additional in-person selling day would have been beneficial in making up the difference and allowing us to reach our goal.
Friday, 29th July - 9am to 1pm
Bake Sale
The bake sale was one of our two events. Taking place in Kingsmead Square, it required considerable planning and organization from the team as we needed to obtain permits beforehand. Moreover, we also had to source goods for us to sell from local businesses as our plan was to minimize cost by having all our food donated by local businesses. As such, over the course of two weeks, several team members visited cafes, restaurants, and bakeries in-person to pitch our event and coordinate with those that agreed to take part. Finally, we had five shops that donated food to our stall: Sweet Little Things, Nook, The Cornish Bakery, Papaw, and Koky BBQ.
In addition to this, we had to source materials and equipment such as tables, a gazebo, a card reader, and serving utensils. Again, in order to minimize costs, the team first looked into what materials we could borrow before we bought or rented any items. Lastly, on the day of the event, each team member had an allocated role which they were responsible for from set-up to selling and food handling. Regarding the set-up, we put up decorations from the client to showcase the Marie Curie name and logo which helped attract people to our stall, not only to buy food or drink, but also to donate via the cash boxes.
One issue that we faced was that when we applied for a permit, the only time available within our allocated timeframe for this event was a 9am to 1pm slot which we felt was not ideal for a bake sale. As such, we tried to offset this by sourcing some breakfast items, however, it was still quite quiet initially. That said, the choice of our venue allowed our stall to be exposed to high levels of foot traffic and so we managed to make up for this during the busier, peak lunchtime hours.
In addition to this, on the day we realized that we overlooked some minor aspects of the planning. For example, we needed more space for our goods which led us to sourcing an additional table last-minute. Moreover, we experienced some issues with connectivity to the Sumup app leading to some delays as only one phone could be connected to the card reader at a time. Finally, we also reduced the price of some of our products in response to some visitors expressing that they thought it was too expensive. In spite of this, the event ran smoothly, and we sold all almost of the products that we had, allowing us to achieve our fundraising target for this event.
Our main event was the Open Mic Night which required a lot of planning due to the complex nature of the event. After considering several options, we chose The Canon, a local pub in the city centre of Bath as our venue, and, through discussions with the manager, confirmed our event for a Thursday evening as this would be the most mutually beneficial. We could bring them more customers on a night that would otherwise be relatively quiet, and they would let us use the venue free of charge.
Thursday, 4th August - 7pm to midnight
Open Mic Night
Regarding the tickets, we sold each for £3 as we felt that this was a price where we could raise a good amount while not being too expensive so as to discourage attendance. We first used Fatsoma to sell tickets in advance, however, later on decided to also sell tickets at the door using a cash box and card machine with the Sumup app as we felt that many people would prefer this method and it would also allow us to accept passers-by and the wider public who may not have seen our marketing materials.
In addition to this, we had to source performers for the event which was done through networking from existing contacts and via social media pages. To ensure an organized and smooth set up and delivery, we made multiple schedules for the day, including one for the team’s hourly responsibilities depending on what stage of the event we are in, and one for the performers. Furthermore, on the event day, the team met at The Canon in the morning to prepare and decorate the venue, and also work with the staff to test the audio systems.
Although there was extensive planning leading up to the Open Mic Night, there were some final changes implemented to improve the event. When setting up there were initial concerns regarding the audio equipment feedback, however, through working with The Canon staff and friends that were more experienced with performing, we were able to find solutions to minimize this. Moreover, as we only had two mics, for pairs singing and playing an instrument, we realized that the instruments were too quiet, especially given the background noise from the attendees. To resolve this, we asked one of the performers if they would allow us to use their amp for others’ performances which proved to be extremely useful.
Finally, through speaking about our event when marketing it to our networks, we noticed that many people were hesitant to join an Open Mic Night. As such, in the days leading up to the event, we added karaoke (adding this to our marketing communication as well) which many people were more eager to take part in while requiring minimal additional planning on our part. For the karaoke, we created a google sign-up form and printed out a QR code that we put up in the venue for attendees to scan and add their song requests during the event.
Overall, the Open Mic Night was a huge success with feedback from both performers and attendees being very positive. We hosted ten musicians/comedians who were a mix of experienced and first-time performers and ended the evening by opening the floor for karaoke. Ticket sales were a significant achievement, with 40 people buying tickets prior through Fatsoma and 61 buying tickets on the door, allowing us to go well beyond our initial fundraising goal from this event.
