What does leading fund raiser event mean to me?

Though I led many mega events in college and organized may parties at Infosys, but this time I got opportunity to lead Vibha's Bowl for a Child event for year 2009 in Minneapolis. I would like to share my experience with you.

It started in December last year, when me and Shreejith were named as the lead for this event. Shreejith gave it a great start and then he had to visit India in January. I called managers of different bowling lanes in Minneapolis to find out which one suits best for the event. I had to look at many aspects like cost, number of lanes, distance from Minneapolis downtown, availability of pizza/pop etc., for finalizing the bowling lanes. Finally AMF at Brooklyn Center was chosen and Vibha-MN team gave green signal for it. The event date was finalized as 04-Apr. The ticket price was kept at $25 for two games of bowling, pizza and unlimited pop.

The next step was to prepare the flyer and publicize the event. We contacted different media agencies in Minneapolis. Shreejith designed the flyer and ticket. In March, we had to sell all the tickets. We had target of selling 216 tickets. Everyone in Vibha-MN team helped us a lot in selling the tickets. I remember, me and Shreejith used to approach people everyday in our office, explaining them about the event. That really helped. Most of the people are too busy with work schedule and we are not able to remember about such events. But when approached one by one, we get good response. We also had to make sure that tickets returning from Vibha volunteers or our contacts get sold to someone else quickly. We distributed tickets to Vibha volunteers during potluck at Veeresh' house. Also, we had two conference calls in between to check the status of the tickets and planning for the event. We also had Vibha-MN meeting on 28-Mar at the bowling venue itself, to plan for organizing the event and assigning responsibilities like Registration desk, Vibha booth, food counter etc. Just two days before the event, we were able to finish selling all the tickets. It was great relief, as we had reached our target. Actually there were more requests, but we had to say no to those. It really feels great when you reach the target. I must thank everyone who bought the tickets for the bowling event.

On 4th of April, we reached the venue at 1:00 PM and everyone got into action for their assigned responsibilities. Next eight hours at the bowling venue were awesome. With so many people at the venue, it was great seeing everyone having fun. At about 9:00 PM, we had finished our calculations and the result was great. We found that we had raised $3550 from this event. I had great pleasure in announcing this to Vibha volunteers (you can see the video below). This was more than double of last year's revenue from the same event at Minneapolis. Some of us went to Denny's for coffee and dinner, for a nice break after the day-long event.

The next Vibha event at Minneapolis is Taal, a dance and music competition for children. Everybody is invited and there is no entry fee for viewers. For any questions about the event or more information, you can contact Sindhu Nair at 763.221.5337 or sindhuknair@gmail.com



The satisfaction of leading a fund raiser event can not be expressed in words. I feel that each one of us has immense energy & capabilities and we should use that in right direction. I gained very valuable experience to lead event for a very well structured organization like Vibha and I am going to take it forward wherever I am. More importantly, I am more than glad to spend my time and effort for helping the underprivileged section of the society.

We are lucky that we can buy what we want, but not everyone in this world is fortunate. Some need our help. Give it a thought !!! Think beyond luxury of life and help the needy in some way. Please contact me, if you need a direction to go forward and it will be my great pleasure to do my best for the cause.

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