There are endless possibilities when it comes to hosting a quiz night; from offering one mammoth quiz on 80’s trivia, to hosting an event that involves a plethora of quizzes throughout the night on a whole host of different general knowledge subjects.
Here are some of our best ideas for organising a quiz night fundraiser including having a fancy-dress theme, encouraging local businesses to participate and selling food and drinks to raise money for charity with a quiz night!
Money making ideas for a quiz night
The easiest way to raise money for your chosen charity is to charge for entry, but a good way to generate some excitement and raise even more is to keep things interesting. So we’ve compiled a list of unique ways to make money from a quiz night below!
Fancy dress theme
Make it a fancy-dress themed quiz night and charge people to enter the competition for a chance to win a prize for the best dressed.
Mammoth quiz
Encourage local businesses to sponsor different categories of a mammoth quiz. For example, ask a local restaurant to sponsor the food theme quiz or get the local library to sponsor the history quiz.
Sell food and drinks
This is a great initiative to raise money on a quiz night as people are likely to get hungry throughout the evening, especially if it’s in the evening or lasts for a few hours!
Hold a raffle
Hold a raffle between each round to keep everyone entertained and to raise even more money!
Make cheating illegal!
‘Fine’ anyone who is found cheating throughout the evening by looking up the answers to the questions on their phones!
Sell ‘cheat sheets’
Alternatively, you could also sell ‘cheat sheets’, so quiz groups can purchase an answer to a question for a donation. Make sure you limit the number of cheat sheets available so not everyone takes advantage!
How to effectively organise a quiz night
Organising a quiz night involves more than just a sheet of questions and answers. Below are other ways to raise funds for your chosen charity.
Find a suitable venue that will fit everyone in
You need to ensure that you choose a suitable venue in an accessible location to the people that you want to attend.
Your ticket limit should be set based on the size of your venue. Work out how many tables you can fit and how many people you can comfortably fit on each table. When you know how many people can fit in your venue, you can work out how many tickets you need to sell and how much they need to cost.
Food and drink
If you plan to sell food and drink at your charity quiz night, you will need to buy them at an upfront cost before the event, so you’ll need to ensure that you sell the food at a profit to ensure you’re raising enough money and won’t be out of pocket.
Depending on your budget, you probably won’t be cooking gourmet meals as they are time-consuming and expensive.
We recommend choosing popular food ideas like hot dogs and burgers, chips, jacket potatoes and bacon and sausage sandwiches.
Alternatively, you can make foods like spaghetti, curry or chilli which are cheap and can be made in batches.
Equipment and costs
Similarly to finding the correct venue, you’ll also need to source the equipment you will require and the costs you will incur as a result.
Quiz nights often have a DJ or at least someone with a microphone to read out the questions and answers; you may also need to invest in flyers or posters to advertise the event.
Legal issues you may face
Some legal issues you may face include playing music at your venue; if you host the quiz night at a bar or pub then they will already hold a licence for playing music. You also need to prepare all food to FSA standards.
If you plan on selling alcohol as part of your fundraising efforts, the venue will also need to be equipped with a licence to sell alcohol on the premises as well as someone who is legally permitted to sell alcohol. Bars, pubs and restaurants will already have the correct licence so you could hold your charity quiz night there.
How to promote your quiz night
When raising money for a charity, a school or your local village’s community centre, you want to ensure that the event receives as much awareness as possible in order to raise as much money as possible.
See the list below for the best ways to promote the event.
- Raise awareness at least two weeks before the event.
- Create flyers and posters with all the relevant details of the quiz night such as the time, date, location and what attendees can expect from the evening and post them around the town or village that it will be hosted in.
- Create a ‘quiz night’ specific Facebook event and invite as many people as you can who you think will be interested in the event.
- Consider asking your local radio station to do an announcement about the upcoming quiz night.
Some places that you can advertise the charity quiz night include local pubs, shop windows and bars and restaurants.
Other top tips
- Make sure that the people who are helping you organise the quiz night are trustworthy and reliable with looking after donations, helping to organise the event and being responsible on the night itself.
- Do lots of research when finding questions to your quiz; make sure that there are plenty of questions of all levels of difficulty.
- Don’t let the evening run on for too long; be conscious of timings and organise the event so that it doesn’t last all night, especially if it’s being hosted on a weekday and people have to be up early for work the next day!
- Get an engaging and upbeat ‘quiz master’ to ensure your night is fun for everyone!
Further reading to help make your quiz night a success
At KeepFundraising.com we want to ensure that you’re fully equipped with all the relevant knowledge and information to help your fundraising efforts run smoothly. Check out the list of further resources below for even more tips on how to run your own quiz night!
https://www.blf.org.uk/take-action/fundraise/what-next/how-to/quiz-night-tips
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/alcohol-licensing
https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/londons-ten-best-pub-quizzes
We hope that the tips and advice above has inspired you to organise your own fundraising quiz night!