Geoevent Planning-giveaways/donations

[nickie218]

I am trying to plan a Geoevent in April 2004, I have been contacting the various GPS suppliers requesting any type of promotional items that they may offer for giveaways for my event. I am also looking into INExpensive custom giveaways for the day of the event but I am running into a wall. Most suppliers want minimum orders on pens,pencils, key chains ect, that I just can not afford nor need.

 

Any ideas on what else I can do?

 

E-mail nickie@csx.org

 

Thank you!!!!!!

Nickie

[+Lazyboy & Mitey Mite]

I wouldn't worry about making it too fancy. On our first event we gave out some ribbons that cost us about 40 cents each to have custom made up. After that we discovered that people just like having some laughs and they don't need stuff.

Edited February 12, 2004 by Lazyboy & Mitey Mite

[+Team GPSaxophone]

I wouldn't mind having my Memorial Day event sponsored, but it's my first event. Maybe I'll look into it for next year...

[+southdeltan]

'Round here - we just mention there's going to be door prizes and ask people to please bring one. You don't have to - but everybody there is elligable. I've only been to 3 events but all 3 had plenty of items. One had enough for everybody to get 2 things.

 

I have thought about sponsorships - more along the lines of the free food thing (IE - the catfish for our cookout provided by X Catfish Processing, or something similar).

 

If anybody ever has any success - please share it with us :>

 

southdeltan

[+9Key]

Its been our experience in Texas that its much more effective to ask for donations rather than sponsors. Many companies see sponsorship as a long-term deal.

 

We've been very sucessful with donations from grocery stores. They love to give away free food it seems.

 

Having a statement of non-profit status for your geocaching group will get the donation count up. Many companies require this status in order to make a donation.

Edited February 18, 2004 by 9Key

[+trippy1976]

My experience is the same as 9Keys. Grocery stores and nonprofit status.

 

We find Meijer (groceries) and others are willing to give you stuff, especially for CITO events, but dont' really care about having banners up, etc.

 

As you grow larger, you'll be able to negotiate as well. I got Gander Mountain to give us a 15% match on the gift certificates we bought from them for one event. But we had to buy something to get that.

 

A lot of our donations come from members also. Which I think is great.

 

For us, it's a crap-shoot though and 99% of our best leads come from suggestions from our members. I say - rely on your members. One of our biggest 'wins' was from a *gas station* that had a case of old travel mugs in their warehouse they wanted to get rid of. And 144 disposable cameras!

 

But remember you can get free hot dogs from grocery stores pretty easy too

[+The SuzyQs]

At the last couple of events we have attended, everyone was asked to bring a cache item in the $5-10 range for the table. You got to pick your prize from the table in the order you finished the event.

[+E = Mc2]

We had an local event where everyone brought a trade item. The person who hosted the event brought the container. One lucky person walked away with a ready-made cache! We also had a handful of Geocaching stickers which were given away as door prizes. Those two-tear raffle tickets are available in rolls for cheap at party or craft stores, should you decide to give away door prizes. Oh, and don't forget the name tags!

[nickie218]

Thank you so much for the ideas, I do like the idea of having everyone bring a trade item for a "ready made" cache container.