Are you tired of your company spending
thousands on forcing people to make bridges out of straws, fall over each other
and sing happy, clappy songs in the name of team building, then why not try
something different? You could do something for your favorite charity instead.
Volunteer your group for a day at a local charity. Cleaning up the grounds for
example. Gets everyone working together to help the community and they get to
do all of those team building skills too. So, you select one to be the team
leader, a sub team leader, just like on the Apprentice. Have them work out
where they will get tools, see if they can work out what is appropriate
clothing for a day of gardening. And all it will cost the company is a day of
training.
If you want to do something a little more
ambitious then what about a fundraising event. This will cost you a lot more
time and money but then they get a lot more experience. You could do something
simple like a coffee morning. That is nice and easy, get a venue and marketing
team and give them a few hours to organise the event. They get to learn
budgeting skills, marketing skills, and you have to do minimal effort. Then you
just need to have the cakes and the coffee made on the morning. Send them all
off for a baking course the day before or give them a budget for cake buying as
see what they come up with. Do they know how to make tea and coffee for 100
people or is there a queue waiting for the kettle to boil? (This is not an
exaggeration I have been to events and weighted 10 minutes for a cup of coffee
since 10 people wanted it and they had to boil the kettle twice! Good job some
people settled for cold drinks.)
Or you could be more ambitious. This week I
organized a Royal Tea Party for Cancer Research UK. A wonderful charity and
last year I joined my local fundraising committee. So if you need help
organizing an event I suggest that you contact your local committee of your
chosen charity and ask for help and advice on setting up a fundraising event.
So, I decided that my event would be a tea
party with a speaker. Having been to lots of charity talks over the years I had
a good idea of what is a good speaker. Firstly, think about your audience and
pick appropriately, e.g. a motivational speaker in a tracksuit is not
appropriate as a speaker for successful banker and academics. Than you need to
think of someone people will pay to see and thirdly you want them to go away
happy so they will give more money and come back to your events. So, there was
one name that stuck in my head as a witty, interesting and would appeal to a
large audience. Hence, I gave William French, a Falkland’s veteran, butler to
the Royal Family and other celebrities, a call. You can see why he would appeal
to large audience, those interesting in the military, the Royal Family and film
stars would want to listen. But the really reason I asked him was that he is a
very good speaker with a great story to tell.
So, I had my speaker, now I needed a venue.
I went for my local theatre, (which is also a charity) lovely old theatre
called the Robin Hood Theatre. A really gem, which helped me loads in
organizing the event. Then there was advertising, amazing how much free
publicity you can get for interesting charity events, newspapers and radio.
Food I organized and got for the Cancer Research committee, (great set of
bakers), local WI and a few over contacts. Raffle prizes I begged off everyone.
On the day, the committee stepped in once
again to help me in the kitchen and selling raffle tickets, the theatre helped
me in the box office and with lighting. Within 4 hours we set up, got everyone
into their seats, laughed over William’s life story, stuffed people with cake,
delighted half the crowd prizes and cleaned up. We raised over £1,300 for
Cancer Research UK.
