FastTrack Fundraising Tips and Articles

A trivia night is great as a special fundraising event. As people are inquisitive and competitive by nature, the winner of the night is awarded the title “Master of the Trivia”. Meanwhile, all the participants get to have hours of fun in a relaxing yet exciting environment.

Here are some tips on how to organize a successful trivia night:

• Invite people to participate. You will need between five and ten groups, each with four to ten people. Publicize the location, time frame and entry fees of the trivia night, as well as the kinds of food and drink that either will be provided or need to be brought along by the participants. As individuals generally work better with people they know, it is recommended that participants register as a group.
• For a trivia night that lasts up to four hours, you need six to seven rounds of ten questions. Each round can have a well-liked theme such as popular music, famous movies, general history, superheros or sports stars. Within each round, try to mix up general and novelty questions. Alternatively, you can have six rounds of general questions and a final round of novelty ones.
• Between rounds, arrange some games or physical activities for teams to win extra points. For example, each team can send a representative to compete in Karaoke, Twister or Music Chair. Games are fun and can produce a lot of laughter, and a bottle of champagne can be given to the winner.

Whether you are raising funds for your school, church, charity or community group, a trivia night is a great opportunity for individuals from all backgrounds to join each other in a friendly test of general knowledge. More tips on how to organize a trivia night are provided in the next article.

The foundation of successful fundraising events is frequent and direct communications among all members of your organization’s fundraising team. The better connected and informed you are, the better it is for your fundraising initiatives in the long term.

Traditionally we have used meetings in person and telephone calls to communicate with each other. While these remain effective ways to exchange news, launch discussions and debates and provide feedback, people in their busy lives now prefer receiving and digesting information in their own time. This is why certain networking technologies have become extremely popular.

SMS text messaging via mobile phones is perhaps the most popular and convenient way of staying in touch with your fundraising team members. Questions and comments are quickly typed out and sent, and replies are instantly given. As most people carry their mobile phones but only answer incoming calls at their earliest convenient time, it is a non-intrusive way to keep constant contact with your team members.

Email is another handy way in which not only messages but also relevant documents may be sent to your fundraising team members. All you need to do is to set up an email list so that one message can be instantly dispatched to many accounts via a click of the mouse.

Finally, many social networking websites are free for all to use. They allow you to create individual groups and invite other members to join. Within each group, participants can upload photos and post messages to share ideas and opinions.

In short, the key to operating a happy and motivated fundraising team is to keep all team members well informed. By utilizing networking technologies such as mobile phone, email and social networking website, everyone can remain updated with relevant fundraising information on their own terms and at their own paces.