Looking for a little help - ok maybe a lot

[melo]

anyone with experience running or starting a charity event

Hello everyone! A year and a half ago my best friend from college killed himself after dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts for years. He had a great support system and doctors, but in the end just couldn't cope. I'd really like to begin a charity golf tournament here celebrating his life and raising money for research and treatment of clinical depression and other mental disorders. He and I went to a very prominent and major university here and have great community ties, we both worked for the university after graduating, so I'd like to think my network is pretty strong. What I'm looking for is "how to" if you will, or a step by step guide to getting this thing rolling and ready to go, ideally it would be held next April, as the 2nd anniversary of his passing, but if that is too short a time frame i understand. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated..


Thanks in advance!

Matt

[whitefro]

Wow, this is a really big question. I am going to give you a short answer to get you going. The first thing you need to do is pick out a charity and contact them regarding your intentions. Then you need to find a golf course that will host your event and what they will cost, when this is established you can set up what the fee will be to participate (I wont get into how you will break down cost/expenses how much to donate etc, thats all you). Once the charity and golf course are locked down you need to determine what type of tournament (this should probably already be known by this point) you are going to have. Those were the easy steps, now onto the hard part. Marketing.<BR>With some common sense, how you market should come naturally. You will need to be prepared to present your idea and how far along you have come with involving the charity and the course. What I would do at this point is get in contact with a friend or aquaintance who is a graphic designer and have that person create a template flyer (hopefully for free, since you will include their info on the flyer, if not you can take money out of the tourney fees for expenses) in which you can show to the people you are trying to get to sponsor the tourney. This is so they can see where and how they will be represented from a marketing standpoint. I will reiterate here, it is key that you appear to mean business and that you are very prepared before approaching businesses for sponshorship. <BR>You need to contact everyone you know and get the word out. Approach business associates and maybe even small business that you frequent and ask for prize donations (or maybe even a small tournament sponsorship) in return for exposure in your marketing and at the tourney. For every sentence that I type I come up with even more to write. This is a VERY brief surface layer introduction on what will need to be done, though it can easily be done by April if you grind. Since there is way too much to put into a post I will PM you my number if you want to hash out some details. I lost my nephew in May to suicide and would love to help you in any way I can. <BR><BR><BR>Edit: tried to edit in paragraphs but it didnt workl for some reason <BR>Edit 2: Empty your mailbox Melo!