Fun Quizzes for Charity Fundraisers

Fun quizzes are a great fundraising idea

Holding a quiz is a simple, popular and profitable way for many organisations to raise funds.

They work because they are:

• Straightforward to organise
• Require little equipment other than a venue
• Provide a great opportunity for a social event
• Can be easily scaled up or down to suit all sorts of gatherings
• Can be easily tailored to suit particular groups of people ie seniors, sports teams etc
• Can be themed to suit annual celebrations such as Christmas, Halloween etc

Arranging fun quizzes for your organisation is pretty straightforward.

As with many fundraising activities good planning is key:

What type of quiz?

Decide what type of quiz you will be holding. Fun quizzes work for all sorts of different groups and organisations. But you need to make sure that your evening and quiz questions will match your participants.

You may also like to add an extra dimension by adding a theme

For instance:

• Christmas Challenge
• Pop / Music Quiz
• Film Trivia

The key is to match what you plan to your target audience.

Make sure that your idea has enough meat on it to sustain a whole evening.

If not you could always turn your ideas into individual rounds or parts of a more general quiz.

Choose a venue and date

All sorts of places can be used for fun quizzes:

School rooms, village halls, social clubs, bars etc all make great venues.

If you plan to serve drinks and food you need to take this into consideration.

Using a venue with bar facilities can make life easier (and your event more popular) but does mean that the venue will be taking a slice of your profits.

Some establishments however might offer free refreshments in return for you bringing in 100 customers all likely to spend money at their bar. Look around and see if you can strike a deal.

Your quiz should ideally take place in the evening and Friday or Saturday are usually best.

When choosing a date beware other important events on the calendar such as sporting fixtures, school holidays and rival local events.

The quizmaster / compere

Finding the right quizmaster for your event is vital.

This is no job for Shrinking Violets or Timid Tims.

You need someone who has a certain natural authority and presence. Someone who will be able to hold the room's attention.

If you can also find someone who is a bit of a wit and can crack a few funnies so much the better.

It is vital that the quizmaster understand the questions they are asking. It is therefore often left to that person to come up with the questions.

Quiz night questions

For an average quiz night you need around 60 good questions.

It is usual to split these into particular rounds or sections.

Most quizzes will have different topics for each round.

Every team will have people in it with knowledge about different subjects. Having rounds that suit and include your audience is important. For instance someone might be useless at science but a whizz at soap opera trivia.

Suitable topics might include:

• General Knowledge
• Around the world (Geography)
• The past (History)
• Sport
• Film and TV
• Famous People
• Pop Trivia or Music
• Cookery

A good format is 8 rounds of 8 questions with a break in the middle.

There are lots of places you can look for your quiz night questions.

Reference books are obvious places to look if you want to come up with your own questions.

There are also no shortage of books and internet sites where you will find complete lists of questions ready to use.

A good quiz question should be:

• The right level of difficulty for your audience
• Easy to understand and have one clear answer
• Be reasonably interesting - you want people to be interested in the answers

Need some great quiz questions? We have put together an entire quiz for you!

Click here for a complete set of Free Quiz Questions

Teams

Nearly all charity fun quizzes involve teams of between 2 and 8 people. These can be arranged in advance or happen spontaneously on the evening. It is usual for the venue to be arranged so that each team can huddle around their own table.

Each team needs a good name.

It seems to be a tradition at fun quizzes for these to be generally quite jokey and a good set of names adds to the fun.

Answer sheets and marking

Each team should have just one answer sheet. This should have on it all the named sections and clear numbered spaces for the answers.

Marking usually takes place after each round (or sometimes 2 rounds) while the questions are still fresh in people's minds. Marking this way also establishes who is in the lead and who is challenging. A bit of friendly rivalry is an important ingredient of a good quiz!

At some quizzes all the sheets are collected in and marked by the quizmaster and maybe a helper.

Alternatively teams can exchange sheets and mark each others.

Half the fun of a good quiz is the little cheers of pride or cries of disappointment from the teams as they hear the quizmaster read out the correct answers.

Extras

It is common for there to certain extra rounds that teams work on throughout the quiz finally being marked at the end.

These usually come on separate sheets and are handed out at the start.

Examples would be:

• Picture Round - A number of pictures or photographs of famous people, buildings, outlines of countries or states etc which people have to name
• Anagrams - The names of film stars, sports heroes or politicians scrambled up. All needing to be identified.
• General - This would be something like -Name 30 countries in Africa or name every team in the Premier League.

Prizes

Cash prizes are most common with a percentage of the total take going to the winning team.

A nicer idea perhaps and potentially a cheaper one is a bottle of wine or something similar for each team member.

As it is a fundraiser most people will be happy with a token prize. Its more about the "honour and the glory" and all the friendly banter and bragging rights that go with it.

A mock serious presentation of a small trophy is another neat idea to crown your champions.

Making money at fun quizzes

You can make money at your event in several ways:

• Entry fees - Charge per person or per team
• Sponsorship and Advertising - You may be able to get a bit of fun advertising or sponsorship out of local businesses.
• Sell food - You can sell this individually or include it in the entry fee.
• Sell drink - You may want to set up a licensed bar. You could also make it bring your own but charge for corkage (people pay to use your glasses and bottle-opener)
• Raffles and Tombolas - These are obvious extras for the evening.

There is something else however that fun quizzes should be about as well as money. They are a chance to have fun and interaction with other people.

Its a way of building a community of people interested in you and what you are doing.

Building these relationships will always pay off in the long term, whatever your short term goals.

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Note - Fun Quizzes is often mis-spelt Fun Quizes - You wouldn't make that sort of mistake would you?!!