Ahh the joys of Christmas – family, friends, alcohol, and why not add a charity event. Our friend, Lisa Jansen helps out with the Santa Crawl each year, and this year they wanted to have a “starter” event where proceeds would go to the Hashimoto Widows and Orphans fund. The charity provides local families of fallen law enforcement officers with financial assistance, and we were planning on having a Pajama Ball the Friday before the Santa Crawl.
We started planning with a group from YPN as were on a short timeline without any money. We decided to hold the event at the National Bowling Stadium to give a little bit of flair to the event.
Here’s a short list of some of the cool things people did:
- Buckbean Brewery are All-Stars. They came in clutch when we needed them
- MetroMix provide us with a sweet red carpet, some prizes, and good photos
- Harrah’s helped us to get the event rolling
- Charter Media ran our commercial dozens of times
- RSCVA helped promote the event
- National Bowling Stadium staff (except for the beverage vendor) were great
- EJ Presents (EJ the DJ) also helped us out in a few different ways
- Chocolate Walrus supplied us with a fashion show
- We even received a donation from a lady I connected with on LinkedIn who wanted to help. (Jean Hart)
Here’s a bulleted item of the not-so-cool things that happened:
- Weather: We had people waiting at the door, but it started to snow heavily about an hour after the event started, and people stopped showing up.
- NBS Catering Vendor: Sierra SportService was really the only unpleasant part of this. By contract, we had to use them with the bowling stadium. Sierra SportService set their own pricing with $6 per drink, which we tried to negotiate down. Despite it being a charity event, they didn’t care. BuckBean even offered to donate a few kegs, and then SportService said they’d then profit $5 from each beer, and we could keep $1. We declined.
Despite this, we were still able to raise a few hundred dollars for the Charity. People seemed to have a lot of fun while at the event, and I even know a new couple that met from that night. Hmmm… if things work out, they should name their kids Buck and Bean in honor… or PJ and Metro are good names as well.
