Race Nights - a great fundraising night out

From now through to the end of Spring we're busy with Race Nights. With all our own equipment, we're ideally placed to help raise funds for community groups, sporting clubs and the like. That said, we have also staged Race Nights as part of corporate functions, as a social break for conference delegates - and even for private parties. Whilst we have travelled as far north as Inverness and as far south as Torquay, much of our work is concentrated in the Social Clubs of London and the south east of England.

If you've not tried them, it's worth considering them - they're great fun and will invariably contribute well to good causes.

Our Race Night is a self contained package of eight races – we supply the races, the equipment, including projector and screen; we also supply a wide range of accessories including free personalised race programmes, sponsor forms and prizes (prizes charged extra). We personalise supervise and manage the evening – including acting as MC. If required we can also operate the Tote at no extra charge. All we ask is for a float!

The races are a mixture of DVDs and videos of British horse races – we also supply a couple of surprise races on the evening. Each race has eight horses – numbered 1 through to 8. Guests then choose which horse they think will win – and place a bet on that number prior to the start of the race. Bets can be either in multiples of 50p or £1 depending on which you think is best suited to your guests. Bets are usually for ‘win only’ - and although no ‘each way’ bets can be placed, we can also incoporate a 'Forecast'.

Profits from the evening come from a percentage of the tote sales – we normally recommend that you retain around 50% of the tote, with the other 50% being returned in winnings.

Each race is selected at random by a member of the audience – so nobody knows which horse will win the race until the film has finished.

If you are planning a Race Night, we offer a comprehensive pre-event service to advise on staging the evening. For instance, we recommend that you look to raise funds in two other important ways. First of all, if you can obtain sponsorship for each of the eight races – we normally recommend around £25 each from local businesses or individuals. Sponsors then have the race named after them – e.g. ‘The Rose and Crown Grand National’.

Secondly you should try and obtain sponsorship for each of the horses in each race – a total of 64 horses. If you can sell these for, say, £2.50 per horse you’ll have another £160 income. The winning ‘owner’ of each horse then wins a prize – which, if you can have them donated will maximise your profit. We normally recommend that these are sold in advance – perhaps to those who cannot attend on the evening – but, if not, we are happy to sell them for you amongst the guests on the evening.

We also suggest, if you have enough people present, that you hold a special Race 9 – an auction race. In this race, each horse is auctioned off to the highest bidder – 50% of the auction takings are retained and the other 50% paid out as a special cash prize to the winning owner.

A typical Race Night should, if it attracts enough people, earn a reasonable amount of profit. Our experience shows that if you have 100 people attending and if you can secure sponsorship, the evening should make between £800 and £1,000 - made up of:

8 races – 4 sponsored at, say £25 = £100
8 horses sponsored in each race – 64 horses at £2.50 each = £160
Surplus of bets placed over winnings paid out (assuming 50p bets), say, £320
Auction Race proceeds – say, £200

This should produce a profit of around £800 on the racing alone, after paying our fee. You can add to this the proceeds from a raffle – which means you could easily make a profit of around £1,000 or more

We can supply you with sponsor sheets in advance of the evening – and don’t forget those personalised race programmes!

If you'd like more information on staging a Race Night, visit the Nice Work website http://www.nice-work.org.uk/race_night_events.html