Bush Dance Fundraiser

We had a great bush dance last night.  Great music, absolutely supurb hamburgers, catching up with friends.  But as a fund raiser .... well lets just say that the effort per dollar raito was quite high.

For some reason it seems to me that bush dances do not draw people.  This is not the first time that I have been involved in groups where it has been decided to run a bush dance as a fund raiser and the only people that turn up are those involved and a few close friends.  In fact I can not recall a successful bush dance fund raiser.

Mind you there are plenty of excuses.
One friend said to me that [her husband] did not want to come"
"The kids don't like dancing"
another person when to great lengths at church to absolve her guilt by telling some story about having to translate Spanish to English or some such irrelevancy.  Yet another

Marcus had invited some friends but they too managed to come up with excuses of their own.  One girl apparently had to have a ballet lesson.  On a Saturday night - wtf.  "They all found that they had to watch paint dry".  Marcus kindly managed to raise himeself from his death bed after exhausting himself on computer games and support his family.

It seems to me that as a generalisation, bush dances are great fun and 'work' but that the group has to already exist.  A church group, a school group, a social club or in the case of the very successful and fun dance we did at the Uni, a group thrown together in the pursuit of higher learning.

I wonder if it comes down to a time / place / expectation question.  For some reasons, bushdances do not engender that desire to attend.

The Washington Post ran an interesting experiment in 2007.  They got a world famous violinist - Joshua Bell to "busk" at the subway.  This fellow had receintly filled auditoriums at $100 per head and yet no one stopped to lsiten and after an hour of busking he had only raised $US32.  You can read the full story here.


Is the solution advertising?  Do we somehow need to create that aura or expectation that would cause people to get off their bums and come to the dance and then in a fund raising context, would the effort be worth it or are there better activities that generate more dollars per hour of effort.

There are some fund raising activites that do seem to have traction.
Trivia nights for example.  We ran one last year and people at work have asked will there be one this year.  Other have reported similar enthusiasm by people to attend trivia nights for other fund raising causes.

Wine - This lot sold over 70 cases of wine at just under a hundred dollars a case.  I wonder how many people one has to "sell" a bush dance to at $5 a pop to bring in the same profit?




Massi operating the mixer.  Dan seems to be in agreeance with whatever he is doing.

The absolute best hamburgers