Fundraising Idea for a Charity Run

As many races increase in popularity – especially marathons, half marathons and triathlons– the ability to gain entrance into these events becomes more difficult. Many races now open up a certain number of spots to people who run the race for charity. For example – you can run the New York City Marathon through a group such as Team for Kids. While raising your targeted amount (roughly $3,000), you are guaranteed entry into the marathon, the group helps you train, and you meet some really great people.

So you have your goal – to run a marathon – and you decide to run it for charity in order to guarantee your spot in the race. Now you need to actually raise the money.

Here’s one fundraising event idea that you can use to help get to your fundraising goal: throw a happy hour at a bar and do a raffle.

Here’s how it works.

The Basics: Hold a happy hour cocktail event at a local bar. The event should last 2-3 hours and be on a night after work when you feel you can get most people. For example, Monday’s are not good as it’s the start of the week. Try for a Thursday. People are more apt to go out for a cocktail after work on a Thursday. Work with the bar you are holding the event at to see if you can get a portion of the money they make during the evening donated to your cause. Also, hold a raffle. Sell raffle tickets to your attendees. All proceeds from the raffle are dollars raised for your cause.

Location: Find a local bar that is a good spot for an after-work happy hour and ask them if you could hold a charity fundraising happy hour there. Usually bars have areas they can section off for you. You may need to give your guests wrist bands so the bar knows they are in your party. If you have a relationship with the bar (i.e. you frequent it often, know the manager/bartender, etc.) it is better, as they may be more willing to help you. See if they can offer drink specials and if a portion of all the proceeds from the evening can go to your charity. Many times bars are willing to help as A) you are guaranteeing them a large number of patrons for the evening and helping to promote their bar (these patrons could become repeat customers) and B) its good marketing for them to be seen as promoting their community.

Raffle: Entice your guests to attend and raise dollars by holding a raffle. Talk to friends, family and local merchants and see if they have items they can donate. Good items would be tickets to an upcoming ball game, beauty products, gift card to a restaurant, beauty services, etc. Have your guests buy raffle tickets (i.e. 1 for $10 or a book of 5 for $45). Put all the tickets in a bowl and pull out winning raffle tickets and announce the winner on the spot. Do these as often as you can depending on the number of items. For example, if your event is 2 hours and you have 10 items you could do a raffle every 15 minutes or so. By spreading it out people might want to buy more tickets so keep asking if people want to buy more tickets.

Guests: Talk to the bar to see how many people you can have at the event. They may have a limitation due to the size of the space. Then invite away! Invite friends, friends of friends, coworkers, family, etc.

Invitation: Be sure to give details of your event on the invitation, not just about the happy hour and raffle, but also about what you are raising money for and why. Include links to your charity in the invitation and invite people to donate. You never know – someone might not be able to attend the happy hour, but would be willing to click a link and donate to your cause.

Here are some photos of a recent happy hour fundraising raffle supporting the American Cancer Society. The event brought in over $600 in one evening. Rather than one raffle jar, the hostess put jars in front of each item. People could buy as many tickets as they wanted and put them in the jar for the item they wanted.

Have you thrown a happy hour raffle fundraiser for a run? How did it go?

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