Planning a Craft Event for Charity

My friends and I are a group of 20 somethings in South Florida who have decided we'd like to do our part in helping the community through charity events involving art & music. Being that this is our first event we've been doing a lot of research and working to figure out the ins and outs of organizing such an event. We've decided that we'd like our first event to be an arts & crafts show with some local music acts, various raffles and we'll be donating the proceeds to a charity of our choice. (obviously this charity will be chosen before any event promotion and solicitation of vendors.) One of the struggles we've ran into when speaking to other craft show organizers is that they seem to have started with funding from sponsors or donations. This makes it's difficult for them to relate to our situation when it comes to giving us advice. So, I was wondering if you had any advice to offer on how you started your event, if you had outside funding, venue situations, and if you faced similar struggles how did you overcome them?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

XOXO

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2 replies since 23rd October 2008 • Last reply 23rd October 2008

Reply #1:

HAHA! Funny, I am going into event planning in my degree. I think it is good that you are doing research with your event. Make sure you budget...EVERYTHING! As for your other craft show organizers, they may be funded by sponsors or donations, but they can give you an idea of where to start. Explain to them what your purpose is and what you would like to do. If you have to...offer to volunteer for some of their events and request that they take part in your event. You could make it into a BIG crafting event by having a bunch of people come. Think of various ways of making it for charity. I assume all of your craft show organizers are a non-profit organization, which means they will not have a big spending budget, but...they may beable to write grants. If you present your idea..to even just one organizer, explaining to them what your purpose is and maybe suggesting that your friends get together with that organizer, it may help. Hope this was helpful!

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Reply #2:

ooh, I donate my art to events like those all the time. and then people who buy my art, the proceds goes to the charity. Most often you can get dance groups to peform free and bands as well.

Most often we arange an art show in an open space donated by someone[like a church or community hall] get a live band and ask friends and family to make goodies, like sandwiches and cookies. Charge 5 dollars for an entry, then it will be like a live show. we would have dancers doing contempory routines to the band's music. A bar[where the proceds went to the charity] and they could wander around and look at the art, dance on the dance floor...

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