Game Show Night & Dessert Auction

Who: All. Family
Objective:Mix, Mingle, Raise Money for YW Camp
Budget: $75, actual spent: $65
Flyer:

Set-Up: We had the stage set up for the game show and borrowed buzzers from a lady in the ward who uses them for school competitions.

Special Instructions: We served a simple dinner of Sloppy Joe's and chips with water to drink. I also set up a PB & J station with a couple loaves of bread, as the bread was on sale for .98/loaf. I grabbed the PB & J from my food storage and voila! We didn't want to serve up a big meal, because we knew that "full" people wouldn't feel like bidding on dessert items.

The Young Women brought in single portions for the "Buy It Now" Bake Sale Table. Items were either 25 or 50 cents. This kept making change a simple task. They brought cupcakes, rice krispy treats, brownies, bars, etc. Some of the YW and many members of the Ward brought in other yummy desserts to be auctioned off.

First we started with the dinner at 6:30pm.

At 7pm, the bishopric was ushered on staged. We played 3 rounds of "Stump the Bishopric". We had a panel of judges and a score keeper as well. 10 audience members came up for each round. They held up an item they had brought from home and the challenge to the bishopric was to see which one of them could be the first to somehow relate that item to the gospel. i.e., a light bulb is like the gospel because it sheds light on a lot of topics and can help light our way, etc. If the panel was pleased with the answer, they got the point, etc.

At 7:15pm, we ended the game and started the dessert auction. We had a member of the ward who is known for his un-shy antics and off-the-cuff humor be our auctioneer. He had the audience laughing. Our ward has gotten much smaller over the past two years, so I was really worried that we wouldn't raise very much money. I have heard of huge family wards raising in excess of $1,000 at their dessert auctions. We had about 30 dessert items to auction and brought in, with the bake sale table, $622.25. For our first year doing this (in over 5 years) I think this was a success. We plan to make it an annual event, although I think we will do just the dinner and auction next time and keep it simple.

We were finished with the entire activity by 8pm.

Turn-Out: We had about 65 people in attendance.

I was so busy with the auction items that I forgot to take any pictures. However, we had some really awesome cakes, including "The Golden Plates" and some fun dessert ideas, like caramel corn in a cute Americana Tin.