The Spay-ghetti &
No Balls Dinner

(continued from the Fundraising Tips page)

". . . because the Elks lodge had a full kitchen. And they had the giant roasting pans for keeping sauce and noodles warm,” she says. In fact, Bonnie got everything donated for the dinner, except the salads, which she got at cost. “But I think I can get those donated this year too,” she says.

What she hadn’t planned for was that the noodles being donated wouldn’t be cooked. “I found out at 2pm on that day that the noodles were raw. But this lady who does church dinners saved the day! She came right over and spent the afternoon cooking our noodles at the Elk’s lodge,” recalls Bonnie with a sigh. “It’s funny now, but at the time I was about having a heart attack.”

The meal included salad, garlic bread, spaghetti with either a meat or vegetarian sauce, ice cream, and a drink. At the door, they suggested a donation of $10 for adults and $5 for kids.

She says that asking for a donation rather than setting a price allowed everyone who wanted to to come. “We had people from all walks of life coming in there. Whole families came,” explains Bonnie. “And most people gave more than the suggested donation.”

The community is actually very small, with a population of only 8,000. Yet off the dinner alone, they raised $1,800. And they also held a silent auction at the same time, which raised an additional $1,200.

“We had the silent auction upstairs in the lounge, but we should have had it downstairs where people were in line for the dinner,” says Bonnie who gotten a local band to donate their time to play upstairs in the auction area. “But after they ate, people just went home. We would have made a lot more money if we’d had it downstairs.”

The PR beforehand was as straightforward and simple as you can get. Posters, posters, and more posters. Two months before the event, Bonnie made 100 humorous posters and posted them around town and in surrounding communities. They showed the classic scene from “Lady and the Tramp” where the two dogs are sitting in front of a giant plate of spaghetti and unknowingly sucking on the same noodle until their noses meet. Beside that was the image (shown above) of a strike-through, "no" icon over a trio of tennis balls. At the top was the hilarious and memorable name of the event, “The Spay-ghetti and No Balls Dinner.”

“For me, I think the funnest part was distributing the posters and having people laugh their heads off when they read them,” recalls Bonnie. “We only got one official complaint about the name, but everyone else laughed their heads off.”

Volunteers were the toughest part. “I had a hard time getting volunteers, and I think next time it will be so easy, because it was so much fun,” says Bonnie, who explained that all the shelter personnel were involved in the three-day s/n clinic (they performed 596 free spay/neuters in just 3 days!). “So I dragged my parents up here on their fortieth wedding anniversary and had my best friend fly in from Albuquerque. One of my sisters came from AZ. My Mom said ‘I’ve never worked so hard in my life.’ “

But Bonnie also found a source for volunteers in the community, the Girl Scouts. They were the servers for the whole event, which ran from 5:30 to 9:30pm. “And I found out later you can call the Boy Scouts for help with more physical things, like set-up and break-down,” says Bonnie.

I learned a lot,” she continues. “I think it would be worth it to advertise in the classified ads. I spent way too much time putting up posters, and I don’t think that’s the way.”

After the event, Bonnie bought a thank-you ad in the paper listing all the businesses who donated and all the volunteers. “It was a full-page ad in one of those monthly papers, so it was out there for a long time. And they gave me a really nice price-break,” she says. “You don’t want to devalue what’s been given to you.”

©2004 Jane Ehrhardt

From the Organizer....

Best part of organizing the event: “Distributing the posters and having people laugh their heads off when they read them.”

Worst mistake: “We had the silent auction upstairs in the lounge, but we should have had it downstairs where people were in line for the dinner. We would have made a lot more money if we’d had it downstairs.”

Greatest shock: “I found out at 2pm that the noodles were raw. I had to find someone to cook them all just 3 hours before the event.”

Best advice: Ask for a suggested donation rather than a set price. That way anyone can attend, even whole families, “and you’ll find that almost everyone will give more than the donation anyway,” says Bonnie. “They don’t do that with a set price.”

Helpful Tips:

• Take the leftovers to the local foodbank.

• Lots of vegetarians will show up, so be sure they have meat-free options. “We had 10 gallons of meat sauce and 5 gallons of vegetarian, and we had way more then we needed. But that was okay, because the foodbank loved it.”

• At the auction, don’t group things. Sell them separately and you’ll make more than if you sell them as a group.

• Put the retail value and a minimum bid right by the item. Make the minimum bid about 40%-60% of its retail value. (“It’s a fundraiser, not a yard sale!”)

• Place a big poster right where everyone can see it, such as while they’re in line, thanking all the businesses and people who donated, and say what they donated.

• Use any items that don’t get bid on at later events as give-aways and thank yous.

Organizer: Bonnie Goodman, volunteer

More information at: www.bonnifidedesigns.com (click on “email us” or “about us” to see pictures of the “Fixer Upper” clinic)

Organization: Stafford Animal Shelter www.montanapets.org (then click on "Livingston") and the Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force (www.mtspayneutertaskforce.org)

Population of community: 8,000

Date of event: Friday, September 12, 2003 5.30pm – 9:30pm (“but we didn’t get out of there til 10:30”)

Ticket price: Suggested donation of $10 adults, $5 kids

Amount raised: $3,000 ($1,800 at the dinner; $1,200 from the silent auction)

Expenses: $175 to buy the salads and ice at-cost

Years event has been held: 1st year held

Sponsorships: not sought

In-kind Donations:
• All the silent auction items.
• Food — One restaurant donated the sauce and the noodles; another donated the garlic bread; Meadow Gold donated ice cream (“I found out Ben and Jerry are also good about this if you put in your request 3 months in advance.”); Albertsons (the grocery store chain) donated ice-tea and coffee;
• Dinnerware — Costco donated paper plates, cups and plasticware.
• Music — a local band donated their time for the night
• Location — the Elk’s Club donated their lodge, including use of their fully-equipped kitchen
• Servers — Girl Scouts (“You can contact the Boy Scouts for help in breaking down”)

Planning team: 1 (Bonnie)

Volunteers at event: 12 volunteers. (“We could have used more for clean-up, because that was just me and a couple of others.”)

PR: 100 posters, and press releases to the local papers.

Marketing at the event: “You know how people always ask why we charge to adopt a pet?," says Bonnie. "Well, along the line where people were waiting to come in, I put up posters comparing the cost of fixing and vaccinating a female cat at a veterinarians — I’d called around to local vets to get the right average — and that was like $220. And then right next to it, I put a big sign that said ‘$50 to adopt a vaccinated and fixed cat at our shelter. What a deal!’ I did that for dogs and cats and males and females. It opened a lot of eyes."

“A lot of people assume all local shelters are funded by the local government, so I put up a big sign that said, ‘We receive no funding from the city. We rely solely on your support.’ And I think that was a surprise to a lot of people.”

©2004 Jane Ehrhardt