Last year I tried to have a band night to raise money. Not knowing much about sounds systems, bands that would get people to come or how you would tell people about it, I got some help from a few friends in the music community at Lancaster Uni, I figured it was a good start. It went ahead, with a facebook event posted of course and good friends coming to support me.And that was pretty much it. 250 flyers, 100 posters and about 20 people at the actual night. The main mistake was not listening to my gut feeling, I had many ideas of how to get people interested and how to sell tickets the days before, but I figured people who had arranged loads of gigs new better. Don't get me wrong, the help was good when we had to get the bands and figure out the technical stuff, but I learned the hard way that some times you should also go with the ideas you have, even if you are doing something new
Which meant that this year we did things a bit differently. Last year I had no team, this year I have a great one that I got through SIFE (Student In Free Enterprise).Every year the colleges around campus has an end of term party called the Extravs, usually there are themes, drinks, decorations and bands all night. Great fun, many students stay around or come back from home just to attend the best ones. But before you get there some colleges have an event where bands can battle it out for a spot to play at the Extravs- an Extrav Factor. We got in touch with the colleges and arranged with them a deal where we could charge at the door, help with the marketing and get people to the event. They would earn more money through bar sales and find a popular band to have at the Extrav and we could raise some money for our trip, both through the tickets and donation boxes
March 13th we had the first one, in Lonsdale bar, with Heidi Burford, Chris Matthews with band, Lonsdale JCR and Boo Boo Kiddy Fonc playing. As there was a different event on as well that night we didn't do tickets, but had donation boxes at the bar and in the hands of helpful team members and with some of the bar profits we made close to £200, which might not sound like much in the big picture, but with four more gigs lined up and tickets to Tanzania still going for about £400 its half a ticket for a team member to go down in September (Both Chris Matthews and Boo Boo Kiddy Fonc will be playing at the Lonsdale Extrav 2009)
The thing with students is that it can always go both ways. You can get brilliant excited team members ready to do the dirty work to get to the trip and to helping Tanzanians. And you can get people always wanting to do things the easy way, or the fast way or the cheap way, pretty much the less effort the better. I'm sure you get that in any business, but with students there are no threats of being fired or not getting promoted, there is only a shrugging of shoulders and plenty of excuses. I have found it interesting to discover what kind of personalities the ones you can count on seem to have and how you can pick up on those who will give up under stress.I any case I've learned a lot from that, and I'm quite happy about the fact that I seem to have a nudge, a gut feeling if you will, that turns out to be spot on in most cases.
Nothing like a good guess to boost your confidence :)
So, the team pulled together really well, we are ready for the next gigs, and as we are all taking products from Neema Crafts home this easter we are all excited to present our friends and family with elephant dung cards and notebooks, just to see their faces
And I am ready to go network a bit (April 1st) before coming home (April 2nd) to the snow and sunshine in Norway :)
