"Where's the funfair?" I asked the school's security guard as I did not see any notice or banner outside the entrance gate of the Paya Lebar Methodist Secondary School nor the adjoing Primary School. An animal activist invited me to attend the fundraising for NANAS (Noah Arks' Natural Animal Sanctuary). I thought it would be a typical school's funfair with lots of stalls and food. Probably a boring hot but sunny Jun 14, 2007 afternoon.
"You mean the dogs?" the big woman security guard sat on her chair and pointed to the school canteen. At the corner of the canteen, I saw tables with white plastic top and merchandise laid out manned by student volunteers. It was nearly 2.30 pm when a very large crowd of young ladies swarmed round the tables.
During my 1.5 hours' observation, this fundraising was successful in that there were crowds. I will comment on the operational factors for the benefit of any group who does fundraising to help the animals.
1. CREATING AWARENESS
As this is a in-house affair, no external gate notice was put up.
2. WHITE BOARD LAYOUT
The advertisement was a white board to the left side of the sales area. The sales area consisted of a table for the laptop and photo printer and the other tables formed in a L-shaped layout for sales of merchandise.
2.1 "Fund Raising" should be written as "Fundraising". English can be a difficult language to master as I also used two words instead of one in my picture caption.
2.2 The layout of the advertisement is important to provide information efficiently and effectively. Before I took the picture of the white board for this article, the animal painting was covered by a black T-shirt and an A4 paper listing the price of the merchandise.
2.3 I took away the A4 paper and removed part of the tape sticking the T-shirt so that I could take an unobstructed view of the animal painting. This animal painting would be best positioned on the top left corner of the white board. The NANAS pictures and text would be placed on the left 1/3 of the white board so that the reader needed not look for the extreme right hand side of the white board to read the rest of the story.
The A4 paper listing prices of products (I stuck it at the bottom of the white board to take this picture), the "Photo With Dog" price list (near the Canon printer), the T-shirt and other matters would be positioned to the middle and right 1/3 of the white board.
The bottom part of the white board would still have the date and time in large letters as shown. "Help the animals" wordings might be more easily read if the words were in black ink.
3. TAKING PHOTO WITH A DOG. This service was not well publicised as the A4 paper listing the fees were in light blue words. The paper was taped onto the back of the laptop which is used for picture processing. You might be able to see this advertisement in the picture.
It would be better for the service table to be located in between the two tables selling merchandise so that there was greater awareness of this unique service which other fundraising events would not have.
4. The ELECTRICAL WIRE might need to be covered by tape. There was an electricity supply interruption during the printing one photo. The photo had to be discarded.
5. ADULT DOGS USED. Puppies should never be used for fundraising because they usually cannot take the stress of crowds and handling. Certain breeds like Chihuahua puppies are are likely to pass blood in watery stools and die, if they are exposed to crowds, in my experience of some cases.
The adult dogs enjoyed the low work load. They seem to enjoy the attention of posing in the shady garden nearby. One Miniature Dachshund had her beauty nap on a chair while sales business was being conducted. Was she not having sufficient work?
6. INSTANT PHOTOS. The use of an almost instant printing of photo service using the Canon printer belong to animal activist Lynda was a brilliant idea. This saved time and expenses in having to post pictures to prospects.
7. AN EXPERIENCED DOG PHOTOGRAPHER volunteer. Mr Nicholas Lee, a dog photographer was not full time but he took perfect pictures of students and dogs. Without him, the technology would be useless.
8. A VARIETY OF PRODUCTS. A variety of merchandise to attract buyers as you can see from the pictures. I bought a writing pad, a T-shirt and a dog picture. I wanted to buy a story book about the work of NANAS rather than a writing pad with pages to be torn out.
What better way to create market awareness than telling newbies what NANAS is all about and its history since its founding in 1995? 12 years had passed by and many achievements would be of great interest to animal lovers.
Overall, I sensed that there was great fun from the noisy secondary school students. Both the dogs and the students including 3 adult teacher assistants enjoyed the fundraising.
I wanted to buy an XL Nanas T-shirt for myself.
"Sorry, the T-shirts are cut and trimmed in size for girls only," Lynda laughed at me. "This is a girls' school you know?" Lynda presumed I needed to fix my eye sight. Or she deemed me an alien from another planet?
I guessed there were no big-sized girls requiring XL and no provision for men's T-shirt in this fundraising but it is always good to BE PREPARED (Scout's motto) when we want to maximise earnings for the fundraising for animals in need of help.
Anyway the student volunteers were persistent. I bought the black L-sized NANAS lady's T-shirt. I now need to tranform to become feminine.
No comments:
Post a Comment