Recently, we have been focusing our efforts as a Marketing team on fundraising, because as Lisa Mulcahy says “one tried-and-true method is to hold a fundraiser to establish your company in people’s minds as early as possible” (Mulcahy, 2011, 47). As a company, we wanted to raise more money for the show to be able to afford the props, costumes, tech and marketing that we want. Alongside an Indiegogo campaign that we had set up, we held two fundraising events within the University campus: one a pub quiz, and the other a bake sale.
The Pub Quiz
We held a pub quiz at 8:00 on the 7th of April, in the upstairs space of The Swan. We, with the help of Kate Beresford, put together the quiz, and offered prizes for the top three teams. Kate Kelly was the quiz master on the night, and I was her assistant collecting the quiz papers and adding up the scores. On the night, we had nine teams, and we hope that all who came had as much fun as we did putting it on. In all, it was a great success for us as we made a profit of around £20!
The Bake Sale
We held a bake sale from between 11:00-3:00 on the 12th of April, in the library free-space. Many of our company members baked an array of different cakes, cupcakes and cookies for us, including a gluten free cake to cater to our customers. The company each took hourly shifts to run the event, and we very happily had a consistent flow of customers over the four hours. Within the last hour, we took the bake sale on the move to the offices of our lecutures at the School of Fine & Performing Arts, which also helped us to raise money. At the bake sale, we also had a raffle to win afternoon tea for two, gifted to us by the very nice people at thomas2catering. Whilst we did get a few raffle tickets bought, we have decided to continue the raffle on till the performance day, the 17th of May, as a way to continue fundrasising. Overall, this too was a great success for us as we made a profit of over £30!
Both The Pub Quiz and The Bake Sale were a great way to raise money and also promote us as a company.
Works Cited:
Langer, M. (2016a) Bake Sale poster [image].
Langer, M. (2016b) Kate and Charley at the Bake Sale [image].
Mulcahy, L. (2011) Building The Successful Theatre Company. 2nd edition. New York: Alworth Press.