Quiz: Galas, Fundraisers, and Social Celebrations
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. Cost per dollar raised for a well-run gala, against a well-run major-gifts programme:
(a) About the same (b) Roughly $0.20–0.30 against $0.05–0.15 (c) Roughly $0.05 against $0.30 (d) Galas are not measured this way
Answer
**(b).** Fairhaven's gala ran at **$0.373 against $0.06** for major gifts — **six times the cost**, plus 1,100 volunteer hours and four months of the development team.Q2. Donor acquisition mail costs more than a dollar per dollar raised, deliberately. What does that establish?
(a) That acquisition should be abandoned (b) That the ratio is a bad measure (c) That fundraising is a portfolio, and instruments can lose money for what they produce downstream (d) That galas are efficient by comparison
Answer
**(c).** **Which is the case a gala has to make and almost never does.** The ratio is not a verdict; it is the beginning of the argument.Q3. The thing a gala does least efficiently:
(a) Cultivating major donors (b) Giving the board something to do (c) Recruiting (d) Raising money on the night
Answer
**(d)** — **and it is the one everybody names.** **A gala is a major-gift pipeline that also happens to raise money**, and if the objective is genuinely only the money on the night, the honest advice is often not to hold one.Q4. If the objective is cultivation rather than the money on the night, the most important document of the evening is:
(a) The run of show (b) The seating plan (c) The auction catalogue (d) The sponsorship deck
Answer
**(b).** **Who is in the room matters more than how many**, table hosts are selected rather than sold to, and **a development officer's job that night is three conversations, not a hundred.**Q5. The two revenue streams that produce most of the money for almost none of the effort:
(a) Tables and the live auction (b) Sponsorship and the paddle raise (c) The silent auction and the raffle (d) Tickets and sponsorship
Answer
**(b).** **The paddle raise is twelve minutes with no procurement, no goods, and no cost of any kind.** The silent auction is the inverse — least money, most effort.Q6. A $500 gala ticket, after a $165 cover with the banquet multiplier, $110 of shared production, and card fees, nets:
(a) $412.00 (b) $277.00 (c) $152.49 (d) $89.20
Answer
**(c).** **Thirty per cent of the ticket price reaches the cause**, before anybody counts four months of staff time — **which is why a gala becomes efficient by making the food somebody else's line item, not by cutting it.**Q7. The paddle raise should be placed:
(a) At the end of the evening, after dessert (b) Before the main course (c) During the reception (d) After the live auction
Answer
**(b).** **The room is present and sober, has not yet spent its attention, and nobody has left.** The move is free, takes one conversation with a caterer, **and in Case Study 32.2 is worth $102,000.**Q8. Without a pre-committed lead gift:
(a) The paddle raise takes longer (b) The top rung gets silence, the auctioneer drops a level, and the whole ladder is one level lower (c) The auctioneer starts lower deliberately (d) It makes little difference at a large event
Answer
**(b).** **Nobody wants to be the first person publicly giving $25,000 in a room of five hundred.** Two lead gifts, secured weeks in advance, with the donors told the exact moment.Q9. A live auction should have:
(a) As many items as can be procured (b) Twenty to thirty (c) Three to six (d) One
Answer
**(c)** — unique, unbuyable, with a professional benefit auctioneer, fifteen minutes, **after the paddle raise.** **Item seven is where a room dies and it never recovers.**Q10. Fairhaven's silent auction raised $61,000 from 1,100 volunteer hours. The cost nobody computes is:
(a) The storage and insurance of items (b) The unsold items (c) What those forty volunteers — mostly donors and board members — would have produced doing something else (d) The credit-card fees
Answer
**(c).** Redirected to sponsorship solicitation, the same people took sponsorship from $265,000 to $420,000. **The silent auction did not cost nothing. It cost $155,000 of the thing those people are best at.**Q11. Underwriting the evening's costs:
(a) Reduces cost per dollar raised (b) Does not reduce cost per dollar raised, but changes what you can truthfully say (c) Is the same thing as sponsorship (d) Should be avoided as it restricts the gift
Answer
**(b).** **The costs are unchanged and the gross grew.** What it buys is *"because our sponsors paid for this room, every dollar you give tonight goes to the ward"* — **the strongest sentence available before a paddle raise.** A board that thinks it made the gala cheaper has misunderstood its own accounts.Q12. At a bar mitzvah or quinceañera, the recurring failure is:
(a) Under-catering for teenagers (b) An event beautifully executed for the adults that is not the young person's day (c) Insufficient religious observance (d) Overspending on décor
Answer
**(b).** **The subject is a child and the client is their parent**, and those are frequently not the same taste or the same idea of a good evening. **The fix is asking the young person what they are dreading** — which is almost never asked.Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. Announcing the gross figure from the stage is harmless.
Answer
**False.** Donors form a belief the audited accounts will not support · **the board sets next year's target against the wrong number** · and **the staff who know the real figure learn that the organisation prefers the flattering one**, which is corrosive and hard to reverse.Q14. Growing a gala's guest list reliably increases the net.
Answer
**False.** The worked example: 300 → 500 guests, **gross rose $152,000 and net fell $8,000**, because discounted marginal seats brought $760 each and cost $800 each — **and a guest who came for a cheap seat does not raise a paddle at $2,500.** Cost per dollar raised went from $0.278 to $0.427.Q15. A committee meeting is the right place to settle the menu and the centrepieces.
Answer
**False.** A committee is for **selling tables, securing sponsors and lead gifts, and lending their networks** — and every hour spent on linen is an hour of extremely valuable network not being used. **A specific, individual, quantified ask works; a general collective one does not.**Q16. A planner should quietly complete the tasks committee members have not done.
Answer
**False, and this is uncomfortable.** **A planner who absorbs a committee's unfinished work has produced a smooth event and destroyed its actual purpose** — the unsold tables are relationships that did not get built, and the board member has learned somebody else will do it. **Report the gap, to the chair, with names.**Q17. The volunteer hours donated to a gala are free.
Answer
**False.** They have an opportunity cost, **and for a board member or major donor it is the highest in the organisation** — because the one thing they can do that nobody else can is ask their friends for money. **A board member sorting auction items on a Saturday is the most expensive labour in the sector.**Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. Explain why cost per dollar raised is not, by itself, a verdict on a gala.
Answer
**Because fundraising is a portfolio, and portfolios contain instruments that lose money deliberately for what they produce downstream** — donor acquisition runs at $1.00–1.50 and is correct. **A gala's honest defence is the same defence:** it does five things a letter cannot, **and the real one is cultivation** — putting a major prospect in a room with the CEO, a clinician, and a family who benefited. **The gift arrives eight months later and is not counted as gala revenue.** **What the ratio does is force the argument to be made.** A gala that cannot state what it does besides raise money is one whose ratio *is* a verdict.Q19. Describe a paddle raise completely, and say which component is most often missing.
Answer
**Twelve minutes. A descending ladder** — $25,000 down to $100. **A specific need, not an operating fund**, with a **unit** attached: *"$2,500 keeps a family in the house for a month."* **Spotters** with sightlines who call paddle numbers. **A recorder.** **And a close that never trails off** — end on a level that fills the room with hands. **Most often missing: the lead gift.** Pre-committed, secured weeks in advance, the donor told the exact moment to raise their paddle. **Without it the top rung gets silence and the whole ladder drops a level** — a five-figure difference decided three weeks earlier. **And in the sample ladder, the top two rungs are 32% of the total and are decided in advance**, while the bottom two are 248 paddles for 13% — **who are next year's room.**Q20. State the seven rows of a gala's report and identify the one almost nobody produces.
Answer
**Gross, net, and cost per dollar raised, together, always** · **revenue by stream with the cost of producing each** · **volunteer hours by activity, and what they were worth per hour** · **attendance by segment** — donors, prospects, board guests · **new qualified prospects identified, by name** · **and twelve-month follow-up: gifts from first-time gala attendees.** **The last one.** It requires somebody in April of the following year to run a query and attribute a major gift to a dinner eighteen months earlier — **and it is the only honest measure of the thing the gala is actually for.**Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. The Marchmont Literacy Trust. Annual gala, 380 guests. Last year: **gross $522,000 · cost $248,000 · silent auction of 110 items raising $44,000 on roughly 820 volunteer hours from 30 people (11 of them trustees) · paddle raise at 9:50 p.m. after a 19-minute film, raising $96,000 · sponsorship $118,000 · no underwriting.** The trust's direct-mail renewal runs at $0.13.
Produce: the ratio and what you say about it · three changes with a target value for each · the paddle-raise ladder you would build · and what you tell the trustees about the silent auction.