Information Table at Benefit Dinner

This table was used to display Alex’s Well-Wish book, a shirt I had made him, and Well-Wish forms. I wish I would’ve taken more time to provide country specific information regarding Ukraine’s culture, food, heritage, and of course the need for families to adopt their orphaned children.

Raffles at Fundraising Event

The Prize Raffle is really a “Chinese Raffle.” This is how it works:

Ask for donated prizes from family/friends and local businesses. i.e. - Gift certificates from restaurants, gift baskets from Mary Kay, Avon, etc. I would recommend at least 5 donated prizes. This works like a silent auction.  Each donated prize needs an enclosed container of some sort that allows people to put their ticket(s) into. An hour before the dinner ends, have the drawing for each prize. People need not be in attendance because their name and number will be on the back of the ticket.

At the door, ask people to purchase tickets for the prize raffle or “Chinese Raffle” items. You will need a single roll of tickets. Each person will have to put their name and phone number on the back of the ticket. Charge $.50 - $1.00/ticket. (We charged $1.00 per ticket, $4.00 for 5 tickets, $8.00 for 10 tickets, etc.) Make sure they get a discount for every 5 tickets they buy.

Allow people at their own leisure to participate in this raffle. Make sure each prize has a detailed description of what the prize is and who/where it came from. Don’t forget to tell people the time of the drawings (an hour before the end of the dinner).

You can also Google “Chinese Raffle” to obtain a much better description.

The 50/50 can be done multiple ways. We did it this way:

People had the option of buying their tickets when they first came into the door. Most people didn’t buy their tickets until right before each raffle.

You will need a double roll of tickets- one for the person and one to go into the drawing container. Name and phone numbers are not needed for the 50/50 unless they will not be in attendance for the raffle. We had a raffle every hour. You could have a raffle every half hour (depends on the amount of people present). You’ll want to make 2 announcements before each raffle. The first will be made in order to allow people a last chance at buying tickets for the raffle. The second announcement will be made in order to warn people that the raffle is about to take place. During each raffle, announce the amount the winner will receive. Choose random people to draw the ticket and read off the ticket number (for added excitement). You’ll find that most people will donate their winnings to you or will use their winnings for the next 50/50. In the end, you usually end up with most, if not all of the 50/50 money.

There are of course different ways of doing each of these types of raffles. You could also consider auctions/silent auctions.

Spaghetti Dinner Tickets

A sample of the tickets is at the bottom of this blog post. We created it in Microsoft Word by inserting "rows" to format the page. We created a fundraising logo of sorts to make it fun. The tickets were important because family and friends wanted to "pre-sell" the tickets before the event. Originally we only planned to sell tickets at the door which I do not recommend.

We tried very hard to recruit family/friends to sell tickets wherever they could (work, school, even during errand-running). This worked ok but would’ve worked better had we started selling tickets at least 2 months prior. You could also ask your church if you could sell them before/after services. If they are not willing to provide a fundraising location, at least they may be willing to let you sell your tickets on location.

Something we didn’t do was offer to mail tickets to people. We thought the expense might be too high with postage. But, you could offer to send an electronic version of the ticket if you know a lot of people online. You could send the tickets in a PDF format if you are nervous about them being duplicated. As far as preventing a photocopy, only a watermark would work there. Each ticket has a specific ticket number which is important if you decide to sell your tickets to strangers within your neighborhood/community- you never know with some people. If you would like any document converted into a PDF format without having to pay for it, go to: www.cutepdf.com/ and download the Free download under the title, PDF Creation. My husband and I have both used this program and it works pretty well. Honestly though, I wouldn’t bother with electronic tickets as long as you make the tickets available at the door of your event and you aren’t trying to get a food count.

If you notice on the left side of the tickets, they are numbered. These number combinations aren’t random. We wanted a numbering system that people wouldn’t be able to duplicate easily, but would be easy to keep track of (because we were selling tickets to complete strangers). Our combination was a 12 number combination derived from combining family member’s dates of birth with the last 3 saved for specific ticket count, i.e.- 001,002,003, and so on. If you are not concerned with numbering tickets and do not plan to sell tickets to strangers then a cute numbering idea is using: “JAMES1:27” in place of any numbering combination. We used this for the tickets we sold at the door.

All tickets were printed on card stock (you can use any color) and we used a straight edge paper cutter to cut out each individual ticket. We printed 6 per 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

A sample is below:

Spaghetti Dinner Details

We had spaghetti with some options: meatless sauce, sauce with meatballs and a standard meat sauce available. We had dinner salads and the choice of 2 dressings, dinner rolls, butter, and salt & pepper. We provided a dessert table and ALL the dessert was brought by family and friends. People will ask what they can do and having them bring a dessert is a simple way for people to provide help. We had a lot of cookies, Texas sheet cake, apple & cherry pies, brownies, cupcakes, and Jell-O.

We purchased most all the food and miscellaneous items from Gordon Food Service (GFS), except the meat. We bought all the meat from a local meat market. They tend to have better pricing on bulk quantities. GFS has a free service that assists you in calculating ingredient quantities for benefit dinners. If you do not have a GFS near you, check with anyone that works in the cafeteria at the local schools or talk to someone who does catering, they may be able to help in deciding how much to buy. On www.allrecipes.com, I believe you can edit the serving sizes and it will tell you the quantity of each ingredient needed or appropriately altering a standard spaghetti recipe would work as well.

Even though we used GFS, I don’t have the exact recipes or ingredient quantities because a friend of the family volunteered to cook all the spaghetti for us using their own personal recipes. However, I can tell you the process we used to prepare and serve the food.

The day before-

I would highly recommend preparing the meats and sauces the day before. The pasta, dinner salad, and dinner rolls can all be prepared the day of the event.

-Brown the meat for the meat sauce and bake the meatballs (if you choose to have meatballs).

-Combine the browned meat with sauce in order to make your meat sauce. Place in disposable chafing dishes and cover with tin foil or chafing dish lids. Then, store the meat sauce in a refrigerator overnight.

-Combine the baked meatballs with sauce and place it in disposable chafing dishes (cover with tin foil or chafing dish lids, as well). Store the meatball/sauce combination in a refrigerator overnight.

Combining the meats and the heated sauce and then allowing it to cool together will enhance the flavor of the meat. If you are using store bought sauce, heat up the sauce and again, combine the meat with the sauce so that both may cool together overnight.

You should also have extra sauce that wasn’t combined with any meat to be used the next day with the pasta.

The day of-

You’ll have 4 pots on the stove throughout the entire dinner-  

Pot #1 for boiling water in order to reheat the noodles

Pot #2 for reheating the meatless sauce- low heat; stir to prevent burning

Pot #3 for reheating the meat sauce- low to medium heat; stir to prevent burning

Pot #4 for reheating the meatballs and meatless sauce combination (if you choose to have meatballs)- medium to high heat; stir to prevent  burning

Earlier that morning, start boiling the noodles as well as warming all the meats and sauces. As the noodles are done, store them into sterilized coolers that contain cold water.

There will be 3 chafing/serving dishes on your food/serving table. The only chafing dish you will be serving pasta out of is chafing dish #1. The remaining 2 chafing dishes will only contain the meat and sauce combinations, as explained here:

Chafing Dish #1: Used to serve the reheated pasta combined with the reheated meatless sauce. To reheat the cooled noodles place them into pot #1 until they are warm enough to serve, remove them from pot #1 and transfer them to chafing dish #1. Then, transfer an appropriate amount of meatless sauce from pot #2 into chafing dish #1. Repeat this process to keep chafing dish #1 full throughout entire dinner.

Chafing Dish #2: Used to serve the reheated meat sauce from pot #3 (with no noodles).

Chafing Dish #3: Used to serve the reheated meatballs and meatless sauce from pot #4 (with no noodles).

(Refill each chafing dish as needed.)

If you choose to have a dinner salad, I would recommend purchasing bulk bags of premade dinner salad. This way all you have to do is rinse the dinner salad about an hour before the dinner actually begins and serve. We served the salad out of an oversized mixing bowl. (Don’t forget appropriate utensils for serving the salad.) We purchased 2 normal sized salad dressings and served each dressing out of bowls using mini ladles.

If you choose to have dinner rolls, put them into a serving dish of your choice. Do the same for the butter chips. The dinner rolls and butter chips should be set up only moments before the actual dinner starts. Depending on the temperature, you may want to serve the dinner chips on ice so that they don’t melt. However, if they are too cold, it does make them impossible to spread. We chose to use butter chips because we felt it was more convenient for people, rather than attempting to butter their roll out of a typical butter dish, while standing in line.

Don’t forget disposable salt and pepper shakers.

We went back and forth about controlling people’s portions by having someone stand at the food table and serve cafeteria style; rather than treating the dinner as a buffet style dinner. Thankfully we had people serve themselves buffet style because we had a lot left over.

The food table was arranged in this order: Plates, plastic ware/napkins, chafing dish #1, chafing dish #2, chafing dish #3, dinner rolls, salad, dressings, salt/pepper, and parmesan cheese.

For drinks-

We served lemonade, water, and ice tea from drink coolers that were included in the cost of the dinner. From the bar, we served bottled water for $1.00; canned beer for $1.50; and canned soda for $1.50. We also served free peanuts at the bar.  Since legally, we couldn’t sell alcohol, the signs said, “Beer $1.50 Donation.” We also had the “bartender” checking ID’s when someone’s age was questionable. On the dessert table we had caffeinated and de-caffeinated coffee.

*Note*Check your facility’s policy on liquor and be sure to follow your local laws.

I would like to add that spaghetti isn’t the only option. I’ve been to Taco Dinners, BBQ’s, and pig roasts.