How a Race Night Works
Putting a race night together.
On booking your charity race night with us, we will send you a confirmation pack along with a sample race program and an owners selling chart . Ways to promote your event include contacting your local newspapers (who often have a 'what's on' listing) and placing flyers in local shops and approaching companies for sponsorship.
If you are running a race event to raise funds you might want to sell tickets. Ensure that people understand the purpose of the event is to raise money for good causes. If you are charging for tickets, you may also wish to consider putting on something extra like a buffet to make the ticket price more attractive.
Another simple option for raising funds is to sell ownerships of the race runners. With eight races and eight runners in each race, you have a total of 64 runners to sell and the price of each horse ownership is determined by you. If you sold each runner for £5, you will have a total of £40 per race (8 runners x £5). The winning owner of each race can then receive a percentage of this total (or a prize donated by a sponsor) leaving the remainder to go towards your charity or good causes. This simple concept works as a mini-lottery draw where each entrant has a one in eight chance of winning. If you have many prizes then you can sell each horse more than once – great for raising extra money and the owners of the horse all get a prize!
Two to Four people will be needed to sell the tote tickets and look after the cash. You will also need a small cash float so you can give people change. 50p or £1 is a commonly used price for tote tickets although you can sell them for as little as 20p each if you wish. Your ticket sellers will need a table which will act as the tote kiosk. The tickets are clearly labeled and colour coded (i.e. Race One - Runner One, Race One - Runner Two).
The payout is easily determined by first establishing the total amount taken in for the race, then deducting your percentage for fund raising, and dividing the remaining amount by the number of tickets sold for the winning runner. For example, if runner number one wins the race and 20 tickets were sold on number one, after deducting the percentage to go to the fundraising, you will divide the remaining total amount to pay out by 20. of course, we will do this for you!
Once we have worked out and announced the payout, the tote staff can pay the winners on receipt of their tickets. Another great idea is to ask people to write their name on the back of their losing tickets and place them into a bucket or raffle drum. At the end of the night, you can hold a raffle for all the losing tickets. This encourages people to buy more tote tickets, because even if they lose they still might win something!
