Young Farmers Fundraiser

So, as you all know from my raving on and on about it, our young farmers were holding a "welcome in" dinner fundraiser. Well, that was last night. And it went perfectly - I almost couldn't fault it. Such a relief,  considering I organised it all, I never expected it to go as well as it did.

We had 35 tickets sell, plus a few extras who turned up and didn't buy a ticket at the door, or who came in a half hour late, so them buying a ticket wasn't really necessary.

Nick and I got in there for about  5:30 to start setting up, my laptop needing hooking up through to the projector to make sure it all worked, all the prizes needed sorting and laying out and we needed to confirm that the room was set up correctly with tables and such. Once that was all done, Ryan, the owner, shouted us each a bowl of chips and a drink - I was like, wow, ok! Then he sat with us while we had our dinner and basically said that Wednesdays were his most quiet nights, so he was stoked to be having an almost full house for a change.
6:30 came around jolly well fast, and our club started arriving - by now I was getting a little nervous of what was to come, as this had been my idea, I didnt want it to fail and make me look really bad.

7PM knocked on the door and suddenly people start arriving, OK, game face "ON''! lol And it flowed really well, everyone came in with their tickets or paid for some, mingled around with everyone else - as they were all farmers, so why wouldn't they. Their dinners all started to come out; an amazing $20 set menu, which is a really good discount for quite a few of the meals on offer.

Nick opened up the night at 7:30, we had a quick fire True/False quiz session and gave away the first prize (to one of our club members, lol), and the lucky ticket draw (a double pass to the movies). A little while after that our mystery auction started, with our auctioneer being a well known local from PGG Wrightson who runs the saleyards every week - man there's a reason he's good at his job!
I couldn't believe it, I expected there to be very little bidding going on, or that we'd sell each item for around $10 a piece - heck, try nearly $50 a piece! Everyone was bidding on photos on the big screen that began with a jolly flash red Ferrari (hehe), and changed between the likes of a Hawaii as a holiday destination to a Kune Kune piglet pushing a trolly with a glass of beer in it. One person just kept on bidding and bidding, and bought quite a few things from the likes of a small bag of dog food with a fuel voucher to small tools.

A little while after that I surprised myself and happily took on the mic and ran our "have you ever?" game - another last man standing wins game, and it was so fun and easy! Who would've known that I would be great at public speaking?? It's as if someone filled me with a confidence burst, then I was running it with no issues whatsoever. I do wonder though, whether having a mic was better, because that meant everyone had no choice but to listen to me, as usually everyone likes to speak over me...
This was the game that some of our members weren't happy about, thinking it was childish, but alas, it went great. Everyone was laughing and having fun, especially after I asked if they'd ever watched the movie "Frozen"? Most of the room sat down, then I moved on to asking if they'd ever used Tinder? That was hilarious as one guy we know as happily married, seemed to think he had used it, his wife went kinda ballistic and told him to sit down! hehe I don't quite think he understood that one...

We then had a guest speaker from Ospri (TB Free) do a quick presentation, then announced the raffle winners. We had three raffles, and one members' girlfriend, Molly, asked if she could announce them. If I wanted to describe Molly, I would say imagine me as a usually bright and happy person, and multiply that by about a million. Molly, is, blimmen funny. She's only my age, but she got super excited and was the perfect person to announce the winners. As soon as she started I wanted to burst out laughing because of how crazy and excited she was getting over it, while at the same time wondering why on earth I'd let her do it - I should've known better...hehehehe I think it was a great end to the night!


Everyone in the bar/restaurant kept coming out and thanking us for holding it - I imagine they would've gotten a really healthy turnover from it that they wouldn't usually get - saying what awesome customers our club were, as we often bring in more and more people to the restaurant. Unfortunately we discovered that two people had walked out without paying for their meals - an easy thing to do, but still a little annoying. So we had to cover it out of the money we'd raised. Not that it was a big issue, as it was only $40, but still.

Then I came home and counted up the money - including the $40 we lost, we raised $710 over the night. Oh My Gosh. I knew it was a lot, but I didn't realise it would be that much....I've just got to take out a small amount to pay myself back for a few things, then the rest will be banked into the club account to pay for something - T-shirts maybe. I just hope that they now realise that I am a member to be respected and not to be messed with, so long as they all appreciate all the hard work I put into it....We might also have three new possible club members out of it, yet another bonus!


Now tonight we've got our monthly meeting, not that many people will show up, as they don't like travelling too far two nights in a row, which I can understand. We've got out three new people coming along for tonight, so it should be great. I'm on secretary duties tonight, a first for me, as our secretary can't make it. AND I've still got to write up the report of last night, detailing all the in's and out's to be put in the minutes - how much we raised, how much we got in sponsorship (just under $700 we estimated it to be) etc etc.


Still currently buzzing about how well the night went :D Yay!