30th Anniversary Event Ideas

[sher1]

The non-profit organization I work is celebrating their 30th Anniversary.  The Anniversary is going to be held in the San Diego Auto Museum with the theme surrounding automobiles.  There is going to be a lot of fundraising efforts in order to reach our goals.  But I have offered to chair the decorations and food committee.  However, I am stumped as to what food we could order that would circumference the auto theme.  Dependent on the price, we would like to do a sit down meal as we would like the event to be black tie.  I was thinking of having an ice sculpture of a car as the centerpiece but I think that may be out of our financial range.  I would LOVE any and all suggestions.

[radaro]

Don't serve scrapple or Spam!

[execsec]

My husband used to manage a local restaurant called "The Service Station." It was housed in an old gas station that had been converted into a restaurant (we met there, another story).  Anyway all the food had automobile related names.  Fried okra was hubcaps; french fries were dipsticks; fried mushrooms were lugnuts; the sandwiches were named things like: El Camino; Rolls Royce; Thunderbird; etc.  I used to love their chicken nuggets, a side salad, and sourdough bread which was called the "repair kit."  The byline to the name of the restaurant was "food and fuel."  They even served steak and lobster on the weekends for dinner.  I'm sure you could come up with all kinds of names of things.

[bethalize]

There must be some names of cars that you can use to fit the food. Off the top of my head, Taurus=beef, Silver Ghost=trout, seville=Orange parfait. Get some key word ideas and do a search on epicurious.com for recipies.

Ice sculpture is nice, but if it's too pricey consider a cake in the shape of, or with a picture on the top, or individual deserts with pictures, or maybe even something to do with the petit fours. You may feel that this is going overboard, however, and might just want to put in a couple of themed items at strategic points, like little petit fours that are in the shape of cars, or little car shaped boxes of party favours as the guests sit down. If it doesn't fit easily I wouldn't push it though.

Wheels are a good theme, then you can decorate with big circles.

[kknisley]

Since I work in the Community Relations office in our company, we are constantly bombarded with requests for donations.  I do know we are asked quite often to underwrite some of costs.  For instance, we have been known to donate printing costs for the program.  You can do "levels of sponsorship" and the higher the level, the more they will be acknowledged.  For instance, you might charge $25,000 for a Platinum or Event Sponsor.  With that sponsorship they could get a full page ad in the evening's program, table recognition, table for 10, mention in the nonprofit's newsletter, etc.  Lots of bennies.  You can charge a per person cost and a table cost.  Normally table costs are a "buy 9, get one free" type of cost.  Or you can charge a little extra and throw in an ad for free (1/2 page or 1/4 page) depending on the table sponsor level.  



Also, don't worry too much about cost, especially if it is black tie.  Most nonprofits in our city think nothing of charging $120-$250 and up per plate and they get it!  Depends on the nonprofit and their target donors.



If you need some suggestions, feel free to contact me at knislek@nationwide.com

[Katie G]

Radar!

Now I've got iced tea snorted all over my keyboard!          

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