Event : A fundraising dinner

Cause : Collecting money to assist single Mothers in need

Date : 16th of October,2019

Number of guests: 100

Venue : The Palm House Restaurant

Address: Laguna Apartments, Palm Beach, Magusa, North Cyprus, Nadir Sk,
Famagusta

Theme : The Great Gatsby (20s )

Introduction
Fundraising event is a very great platform to use for a great cause of helping
others in need . The reason I have chosen this event topic is to simply catch two
birds with one stone. Hold an event for this course and at the same time raise
money to help one of the most vulnerable people in our society ,single Moms
raising their children alone with little money. A great way to gather people not
only for enjoying a party but also contributing to a great cause. Therefore, it is a
win-win.

Theme
I chose The Great Gatsby ,20s fashion theme , to make an event more
sophisticated and interesting.

Sponsorship
This event was possible because of the generosity of the venue owner and also
other businesses that contributed to this wonderful charity.

For the venue I chose 3 restaurants next to the beach as I knew not all of them
will agree to give us discount to hold the event. I particularly chose them because
I wanted to hold the event next to the sea for the great and romantic ambiance it
has. The venue location and ambiance is very crucial to a successful and
memorable event. I had meetings with all 3 restaurant owners and one of them
agreed to participate in this fundraiser. He gave me 50% discount which was
amazing.

Catering was also done by sponsorship, we got 50% discount on food. The food
was prepared by the same restaurant we rented for the venue. The Menu was
made by me as a manager ,2 volunteers as my assistances with gastronomy
education background and the venue s kitchen chef .

Budget
The budget for holding the event was tight as all of the participants including
myself are students. But I found a really good solution to make it bigger. First of
all , we collect 100 lira from each volunteer ( we were 20 students) . Then I made
a GOFUNDME account on gofundme.org website which is dedicated to assist
people around the world to collect money for a good cause . I explained my
reason and people started to help , the total amount collected from that site was
4000 TL which was a great help. In total our initial budget for the event was 6000
lira.

Actual amount Paid amount

Venue 2000 1000
Catering food 4000 2000
Drinks (wine and 2000(25bottles) 2000
water)
Decoration (flowers) 100 100
Decoration (photo 100 100
booth)
Staff (volunteers) 0 0
Entertainment 0 0
Advertisement 0 0
Staff uniforms 0 0
Miscellaneous 100 0
Expenses
Total SPENT 5,200 TL
Miscellaneous Expenses were for unexpected expenses that might happened
before or during the event ,for example: equipment malfunction or changing a
light bulb etc. In this event everything went according to the plan and we did not
have to spend this 100 lira so we added it to the net income(profit).

Participants and staff

All the people involved in this event worked as volunteers and were my peers
from tourism faculty. This was a hug step helping me gather more money as a
profit for the charity.

Every single person had a specific job which will be listed below:

• The manager(planner):Me

• One assistant to monitor everything when I am not available.

• 1 person responsible for advertisement .

• 10 people as waitresses and waiters for food service.

• Entertainment : 1 student and her band of 3 .

• Accounting : Me as a manager and 1 person as a money collector .

• Hostess : A female student as a hostess .

• Silent Auction Supervisor: 1 person to run this section .

Total 20 student volunteers participated in this event.

I should mention that the entertainment was done by Asal

Mohammadzedeh , one of the fellow students in food and beverage
management class . She is a professional singer and has her own band ,
therefore, I saw it as good opportunity to have a free music performance in
my event.
 The hostess job is to welcome guests and collect the entry fee according to
the guest list in order to prevent unwanted people entering to the event
causing problems.

The photo booth was another idea to entertain the guests, it was located
at the venue s private beach and was decorated by flowers and sponsors
names , creating a very beautiful place to take exquisite pictures for social
media as the target demographic for the event was peer students from the
university. This booth made the event unique and memorable.

The Silent Auction was another great way to add to the profit and
generate more money. I asked students to bring art crafts and items from their
countries to use in the event by putting a piece of paper and a pen next to each
item , the guests will write down their desired price and it will be sold to the
highest biter .

All the participants attended meetings scheduled by me as a manager

before the event date to discuss, practice and plan the perfect event with
minimum fails. In total we had 5 meetings before the event and we started
all preparations 2 months prior the event date to make sure everything is
planned and on point. The singer had rehearsals with her band and my
assistant and I were there for evaluating the performance each time. I
chose 10 waitress and waiters from the students whom passed the food
and beverage 1 course to make sure that they are aware of the etiquette of
fine-dining food service and by doing that I also had the opportunity to save
more money in uniform section because all those students already had
service uniforms in their closet.

The decoration

As I mentioned before I chose this restaurant with the purpose of using it

as a venue, save up more money with discount agreement with the
owner ,also more saving on the decoration as this place had already a very
beautiful decoration perfectly suitable to my event s theme . Because of
that I did not have to spend extra money for decoration . The only part that
needed more effort was the photo booth on the beach which was
decorated by flowers .

Advertisement
The demographic target market for the event was our faculty s students
and teachers, therefore, for advertising without spending crazy amount of
money and paper which is bad for the environment too , I decided to do it
by first mouth-to-mouth advertising, getting the message through . Then
with the advertising team we created a hashtag for the event and used it in
all social media platforms such as : Instagram, Facebook and Twitter
alongside the EMU university hashtag . I also asked the tourism faculty
social media admin whom I know personaly to post stories and inform
everyone. With this move I saved the advertisement money and added it to
the profit at the end.

Menu Making
For the menu I had a meeting with the chef and I brought 2 gastronomy
students with me and we made a menu that was perfect for our budget and
theme. I brought those 2 students because they have more knowledge and
experience than me and they were able to create a perfect menu for that
night. Before finalizing the menu , the chef and the gastronomy students
made the food and we tasted them to see if they are suitable to everyone s
palate. Here is the final Menu:
 Table D”hote Menu

Starter

Soup of the day served with Crusty bread Roll

(Mushroom soup or Tomato soup)

Main Course

Chicken breast topped with Mozzarella cheese served with sauté

potatoes

Steamed Smoked Haddock with Poached Egg and Herb oil

Dessert

Vanilla cheesecake with Lime Mascarpone

Drinks: Alcoholic and Non-alcoholic

Blanc De Blanc

Lux Pinot Noir

Sparkling Water

Donations and other ways of raising money

Individual Donations 1000 TL
Silent Auction 2500TL
Entry Fee 50tl per person 5000TL
 Photo Booth 10tl per photo 500TL
TOTAL 9000TL

Initial budget 6.000tl Initial Net income 800tl

Total expenses 5,200tl

Net income 800tl Total donations 9,000tl

Total profit 9,800tl

The initial goal was 8000tl and we managed to collect 9,800tl of profit.

The invitation card and Poster

Both invitation card and Poster were designed by me. After designing I
consulted with my advertisement team about my ideas for advertising online and
without usage of paper to avoid making the environment polluted and they liked
this idea , after the agreement on the designs we created a list of people we want
to invite to the event including the teachers in our faculty and sent the invitation
card by email , and on that email I mentioned that I need the confirmation of the
guest to make sure that all my 100 guest will attend . The people who accepted
my invitation replied back and were included to the hostess list. we also asked
them to keep the invitation card and email in order to use it as a entry ticket at
the time of event. The poster was used as an advertisement flyer and was posted
on different social media platforms to inform people about the event.

After the successful event my team and I sent a Thank you letter(email) to each
guest thanking them for attending and donating.

Conclusion
The event was a total success, everyone performed their best .The total amount
which was 9,800 lira was donated to “Single Moms” Foundation.