Great Budget Ideas For Fundraising Events

If you’re involved with a good cause of whatever kind, you’ll know how important donations are. The chances are, too, that you will also know just how crucial fundraising events are in terms of giving your coffers a boost. One problem, however, with fundraisers is that they can often involve a lot of outlay, which many charities can really afford - but they don’t have to. Here are some ideas for fundraising events that don’t have to cost a lot of money to put on.

Casino Evening

One great idea for a fundraising event is a casino evening. There are plenty of companies that have mini-casinos, with card games, roulette wheels, and even slot machines for your guests to try out. Alternatively, for most games, you can get the equipment you need yourself. There are two options for donations. You could either play with real money, which would mean that you’d be able to recoup your overlay quickly enough. And, hopefully, people attending would be OK with losing a little bit of money because they know it would go to a good cause. Alternatively, you could use pretend money and have the entrance fee serve as the buy-in. In this case, you could offer a range of non-cash prizes, which would serve as a fun memento for your lucky winners.

You could even try online options. Card Player analysis suggests that online casinos often have bigger bonuses, which is worth keeping in mind. Ideally, though, your charity would be enough of a motivation for people to get involved.

If you are going to be having a casino night, you could really push the boat out and have a themed dress code. Think classic Monte Carlo elegance or nouveau riche Vegas glamour. And, whether it’s James Bond themes or Rat Pack swing anthems, having the right soundtrack to your event is crucial. Keeping on the gambling theme, you could always go for the tried-and-tested option of a racing night. Just get some videos of horse races and let people place their bets on them, all for a good cause.

Quiz Night

Something that is always a fun time for people and could help raise money for your charity, too, is a quiz night. Pub quizzes are immensely popular, with people teaming up to answer trivia questions and win prizes. Likewise, quiz shows are a mainstay of TV schedules, and quiz apps, such as the much-missed HQ Trivia, which, according to Samantha Murphy Kelly at CNN, had more than 2.3 million contestants per episode at its 2018 peak, have always had a loyal following. Something good about a quiz night is that it doesn’t take many resources. You might not even need a venue, because if the pandemic taught us one thing, it’s that people like to take part in quizzes remotely. Anyway, you’ll also need to come up with some questions, work out what your prizes are going to be, and you’re off.

If you are having a quiz night, you could give it a theme related to your charity or, at least, have a round of questions linked to your cause. For example, if you are an animal charity, you could have a round with a wildlife theme, or if you are all about heritage, then there could be some questions related to history. Quiz nights can also be pretty flexible, so it doesn’t matter what sort of people your contestants are because you can tailor questions so that they suit everyone. You could even include a raffle between rounds to raise some more money for you and your cause. Basically, there are plenty of options and flexibility, which is why most good causes will, at some point, do a quiz night fundraiser.

Yard Sale

Another stalwart in the world of fundraising events is the yard, or car boot, sale. Everyone has things that they neither want nor need anymore, and selling them to someone who might want or need them can gladly buy them. This works as a great way of raising funds without having to lay out too much money in the first place because, really, all you need are the things you are going to be selling and a place you can sell them. If there are a lot of people with a lot of different items, you could probably use some tables or stalls, but that’s it. These types of sales are flexible and can apply to pretty much any cause, whether it’s a church fundraiser, something to generate money for a sports team, a community group, or any kind of charity. It’s also worth pointing out that, if you are raising money for an environmental charity, jumble sales are a pretty green activity in their own way. That’s because they promote reusing items, rather than throwing them away.

Something that makes yard sales so popular is that everyone can get involved. For instance, your children may have things that they don’t want anymore that you can sell. At the same time, other people’s children will be going through the same things, so there’s a really good chance there’ll be toys, games, and clothes that they might want, too. You can even harness people’s baking skills by selling homemade cakes and biscuits, as well as hot and cold drinks, to generate a bit more money for your good cause.

Cooking For A Cause

Another idea for something that can raise money for your cause without leading to too much initial spending is to have something that people can eat. There are two options here. One is having a fundraising supper club, and the other is having a baking competition. Let’s look at the supper club first.

In a supper club, the idea is to get people together to create a meal. You can cover the price of the ingredients as part of the entry fee. Supper clubs either work by having each participant bring a particular dish that they’ve made at home, or by selecting someone to do the cooking there and then. There’s even something of a hybrid option if you can hire a decent-sized venue. This would involve an individual chef for each table who can make the meal. This is a great idea if people involved in your organization are into their cooking. You could also run your own bar and, of course, raffles and other little fundraising sections between courses.

When it comes to a baking competition, this is a great example of getting both your supporters and volunteers involved.  Both types of people can bake a specialty item, whether it’s a cake, a biscuit, or even a brownie of some description. You could even have a multi-tiered entry ticket scheme, where people can pay to enter, attend, or even judge the competition in a variety of combinations. Make sure you have your prizes ready, and you might even have some food left over, too. Once it’s all done and dusted, you could even collect the recipes that people have sampled in a physical or digital booklet, which you can sell to raise even more money online as part of a crowdfunding campaign. With as much as $330 million raised on Fundly alone, people are always willing to help out over the internet.

So there you have it. You don’t need to spend lots of money if you want to host a fundraiser event. You just need some good ideas, volunteers who want to make it work, and people who are willing to part with their cash to help a good cause. Hopefully, this article will have inspired you in one way or another.