QUIZ MASTERS

August 28, 2018 0 comments

What?! No Colour Powder?!

With our fundraising target and deadline both approaching our group decided that we needed to run another major fundraiser. We spent some time brainstorming and decided that a quiz night would be the best option. We were a little bit nervous about running something that wasn’t either a BBQ or a colour run but we were confident that we could learn the skills required to do a great job. Just to be sure, we added a BBQ to the night because we know we’re good at those!

Planning

We were perhaps a little naive going into this event because we were convinced that it couldn’t be as much work as the colour run… we were wrong. We quickly found that sourcing prizes, designing games, writing questions and organising food were all big jobs.

One of the first things we did was to start trying to get prizes and auction items donated. We sent out letter after letter and were thrilled when businesses and sports teams started to donate to our cause. The Port Adelaide, Adelaide, Hawthorn and Geelong football clubs all sent memorabilia for our auction – although we gave the Hawthorn prize to one of our favourite teachers who was leaving the school. An anonymous donor gave us over $600 worth of painting supplies and we had wine and tee shirts donated as well.

We were also lucky to have several Zorich Group gift cards from Sportspower Elizabeth which had been left over from the last colour run. Just when we though we had all of the prizes we needed James from J & S Quality Meats contacted us to offer us some vouchers for the night.

Our next problem was to sort out the running sheet for the night and the questions. This turned out to be a huge job which required a huge team effort. The whole group came into school on a student free day and worked together to complete a massive presentation for the night.

The Auction

We were excited to have so many great auction items but a little concerned that there wouldn’t be enough people at the quiz to actually bid on them. Luckily, we came up with the idea of having a pre-auction on Facebook. We posted all of the items and gave people the opportunity to bid.

We were so excited to see that people were sharing our auction items album and starting to make bids. This meant that we had made a profit before the night even started.

 

 

 

 

Not Everything Went Smoothly

One thing we have found while doing all of our fundraising is that, while most people are amazingly supportive, some will choose to be negative just for fun. This happened when someone decided to troll our auction items in a drama that we quickly began referring to as ‘Paint Gate.’

Something that started off as just a mean comment on Facebook rapidly resulted in phone calls being made across the country. Everything turned out okay and we were so lucky to have the amazing support of our teachers at school to help us solve the problem.

It was a valuable lesson for us though as we had to remember to be polite and diplomatic over social media – even if we weren’t thinking polite and diplomatic thoughts! We’re proud of the way we handled the situation and glad it all worked out.

 

 

The Nervous Wait

When the day finally arrived we were all feeling very nervous. We met straight after school in the senior centre to set up and have one last run through of what we needed to do. Miss Woodrow had to go to J & S Quality Meats to pick up the vouchers and while she was away we rearranged the room. We think it looks even better than it did before!

We had a practice of our coin toss game and started going through our speech folder to decide who would be saying what. Miss Woodrow told us that she would only be speaking at the start so we sat down and started dividing up everything else – there was A LOT! This was certainly much more public speaking than we had needed to do at any of our other events and we were all feeling very nervous about it.

 

 

The Night

We were relieved when people started arriving for the quiz with their teams and snacks ready. Before we knew it was time to start. Miss Woodrow opened the night before handing over to Jordy who started explaining what would be happening. We all took our turns at speaking including Robert who isn’t coming to Cambodia but wanted the chance to work on his public speaking – he did a great job! We were also pretty thrilled to find out that our friend, Maison, has the best quiz master voice we have ever heard!

Before long it was time for our first team game which saw each of our teams using straws and sticky tape to try to build the tallest tower. Miss Woodrow’s brother was there and his team had a slight advantage because he happens to be a civil engineer. Their tower was sooo tall that they moved one of the ceiling panels to keep building!

 

 

We continued with the quiz and then had our break with a coin toss challenge. People had to throw gold coins at either a bottle of wine or a Tunzafun card with the closest throw, as judged by Liam, getting the prize. People had a great time playing this and we raised heaps of money from it. Our winners were pretty excited too! Over the break people also had the chance to bid on auction items or buy raffle and lucky squares tickets and it was really exciting to see so many people getting involved.

We drew some raffles after the break, including our door prize and our sausage sizzle raffle – anyone who bought a sausage got a ticket. Both of these were $50 Sportspower gift cards and the winners were very pleased.

We kept powering on through the quiz night with teams getting more and more excited about the questions. We also had a game of heads and tails and yet another Sportspower winner was announced.

 

 

Finally we were ready to announce the winners of the auction and were really grateful to find that so many people had chosen to bid on items. We ended up raising over $500 from the auction alone!

We had lucky square cards for a Sportspower gift card and a J & S Quality Meats voucher but told the crowd that we would have to draw these later as all of the squares hadn’t sold. We were absolutely overwhelmed, however, when people stepped forward to buy all of the remaining squares. These people donated over $50 just in that moment.

After a long night we were ready to announce our prize winners with ‘The Optimists’ taking home first place convincingly. We thanked everyone for coming and were really pleased when people told us what a great night it had been. One group, who attend several quiz nights, even told us that it was one of the most well organised nights they had ever been to. Not bad for a group of year 11’s!

 

 

Packing up

We were really tired by the end of the night and worked hard, with the help of Chloe and Maison, to clean up as quickly as possible. Some of our group had to head home so we weren’t able to count the money straight away like we normally would. We realised that the next time we would be able to met up was Monday so we decided we would count the money over some well earned pizza then.

Luckily, the next day we were able to get together and were excited to count our profits. We all thought the night had gone well but when we played our usual ‘guess the profits’ game, no one was even close. We managed to raise $986.40!!! This was really exciting because we really hadn’t expected such a success but, also, it meant that we were finally within $1000 of our target. With just over 100 days until we fly to Cambodia we couldn’t be more excited.

Thank you

We would like to thank everyone who came along, especially Mr. King and Ms. Train, it really means a lot to have our teachers supporting us. We also want to thank everyone who donated prizes or bid on the items. We wouldn’t have made it this far without the support of so many people!

Peace Out.

PIC Cambodia Team 2018

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Return to Uncategorized