Movies for moolah

Earlier this year I was really excited to find out that I’d been offered a place at an International Youth Development program in Sweden in June 2006. The program is an International version of a program that I co-direct in Melbourne called RYLA and heading to Sweden is a fantastic opportunity for me to learn more about myself and to advocate for a youth-led RYLA model in other regions around the world.

When I was nominated to attend the program it was agreed that I would help to raise enough money to cover the cost of my flight to Sweden, while the people nominating me to attend agreed to pay the conference registration fee. A number of Rotary clubs in Melbourne have been really supportive and have made cash donations towards the trip, but I was left with about $1500 to raise.

A friend suggested contacting a local cinema and organising a fundraising screening of a new release movie to raise the remaining funds. I was a bit apprehensive, as I’d organised movie nights in the past and found it difficult to sell tickets, but decided to give it a go.

I approached a number of different cinemas and looked into different options for the fundraiser. I managed to find a small cinema close to the city that had an established program where they supported organisations and individuals to organise events. The cinema’s policy meant that we only needed to sell a minimum of 20 tickets to profit from the event, which took the pressure off from needing a huge turnout. The tickets were sold to us at $8 each, and then it was up to us to choose a ticket price and decide which film to see.

I decided to charge $15 a ticket, which was what it would normally cost people to go to the movies, and after spending a day or two reading reviews of movies chose a film called ‘The Squid and the Whale.’ The title was intriguing, it was receiving good reviews, and most importantly it was only released a few days before the screening so it was unlikely that many people had seen it yet!

Ticket sales were slow at first, so I decided to be really clear with everyone about what my goal was for the evening – to raise $700. To raise that amount we would have needed about 100 people to attend the screening. I found the easiest way to promote the event after that was to approach about 25 really good friends and ask them to help by bringing along 3 friends.

In the end we only sold about 30 tickets, but quite a few people who couldn’t make it to the night decided to make a donation, which meant that I was much closer to my target that I thought I’d be! A couple of days later I emailed all of the people who supported the screening to say thank you and ensure they knew how much I appreciated their support, especially those who helped by bringing along their friends.

So would I do it again? Definitely! Organising a movie night was a relatively stress-free way of raising money fairly quickly, and a great night out to boot!