This article was written by John Dooley, Events Coordinator for BNI Takapuna / Financial Adviser at Spratt Financial Services
Recently the BNI Takapuna chapter in Auckland held an enormously successful fundraising event for Hospice North Shore that I was fortunate enough to coordinate. We ran a quiz night because we felt that it would be a fun social event that everyone could get involved in. At the same time we decided to run two auctions, one silent and the other a standard one using an auctioneer, to help raise additional funds for Hospice North Shore.
As most of you will know, BNI has a long-standing relationship with hospices throughout the country. BNI supports the important work hospices do with a range of fundraising events and working bees. I and other members of our chapter have personal experience of loved ones who have gone into the Hospice North Shore or others, so we understand how vital the services they provide are.
On the 20th of September we held the quiz night at the Marist North Harbour Rugby Club rooms with around 120 people attending. We were overwhelmed with donations for an auction we ran on the same night – including signed North Harbour rugby jerseys and Breakers kit. The Marist North Harbour Rugby Club was also generous enough to offer the use of their facilities for free on the night.
Everybody had a fantastic time and in total $5,500 was raised for the hospice. Hospice North Shore was overjoyed to receive this amount and last week hosted our chapter at a breakfast.
Hospice wish to redesign and replant their garden, therefore some of the money raised will help to pay for plants to greatly improve the garden environment for staff, patients and visitors. Our chapter has also planned to do a working bee during November to carry out all the planting for their garden upgrade project. One of our members, Bruce Robinson who owns Lanzpec a landscaping company, has also very kindly had one of his garden designers develop a plan which we’ll follow during the planting process.
So a wonderful occasion was held. A number of members expressed to me how much fun they had and how happy they were to be donating to such an important organisation. It’s the type of event we’ll definitely look at running again and I encourage other chapters to give it a go – there’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition between chapter members either!
