Make giving fun – create a beautifully handcrafted or funky, decorated container for guests to deposit their donations, if they are not paying it online.
Raise Additional Funds at Your Cuppa:
Shared Hosting of Your Cuppa:
The best way of getting tables sold and to save on expenses is to get people who are willing to be table hosts.
Each table host takes responsibility for selling tickets for his or her table, decorating their table and providing eats as well.
Hold a competition for the most beautiful table and you will be astounded at the love and care table hosts put into their Cuppa tables. Some hosts even insist on bringing their own tableware – and this again saves costs.
Various themes can be used for each table. Prizes can be awarded for the most innovative use of the theme.
Organise a Raffle:
Try to arrange for a few sponsored gifts from your local community e.g. beauty products, books, vouchers, etc – get each guest to pay a particular amount to enter the raffle when they arrive at your Cuppa and draw the lucky winners before they leave. Let your guests know beforehand that they need to bring a raffle fee.
Organise an Auction:
Try to arrange for sponsored or donated items for your auction. You can also auction a guest (their time or skills)! Get your guests to come prepared with ‘silver change’ and notes for an ‘American Auction’. Organise a few runners, an auctioneer, timer and stopwatch – it is wise to organise a small float in case guests forget to bring ‘change’.
The timer stands with his or her back to the guests and starts the stopwatch. While the auctioneer opens ‘bidding’ get your runners to move through your guests with containers to collect ‘bids’. The idea is that when the timer calls proceedings to a halt (at his or her discretion), that the last person to place a ‘bid’ in a container, wins the item on auction. The auctioneer needs to keep his or her eyes open and the runners need to put their hand up to indicate the guest who had their hand in the container when the auction was called to a halt. Guests can win a lovely prize for just a few rand…
For the really daring and those with more cash at their disposal, you could of course organise a traditional auction!
Organise a Competition:
Arrange for sponsored or donated items as prizes and organise a competition at your Cuppa – guests may have to compose something, or create something – to enter the competition each guest would pay an entry fee. Guests could ‘compete’ as individuals or groups – have fun! Let your guests know to bring a little extra cash along…
Ideas for Corporate Cuppas:
- Should you be too busy to fit an actual Cuppa sit-down event into your work schedule, get staff to donate a particular sum of money per Cuppa-of-something-they-drink at work on a particular day.
- Alternately, challenge staff to donate 1 hour of their salary to support the Cuppa cause and of course, lead by example!
- Employees who organise a Cuppa-do, could ask their employers to match the amount they raise rand-for-rand. Company donations are tax deductible and Section 18A tax certificates can be issued by CANSA for all donations received from South African individual donors or corporates.
