I decided to hold a cake sale because (1) I work in an office environment and we eat cake and sweet treats at least twice a week; and (2) my colleagues love baking and are also quite competitive.
I called the event “the Great Cake Sale”. A few weeks before the event, I sent an email out as an expression of interest and got the office talking about the cakes they would make. I then gave colleagues approximately10 days notice of the event and advertised on the intranet. I also sent an email to my friends in different departments and asked them to forward my email onto their colleagues.
A few days before the event, I asked colleagues to confirm what they were making so that I had an idea about what I was going to make/buy.
On the day, I set up in a prominent area of reception (high volume of ‘people’ traffic) and put up posters.
A friend from my department helped me to set up and also helped me to sell. We did a sale at teatime and at lunchtime. Most cakes sold at £1 per slice. Many people donated more than the £1 per slice and some even put money in the NDT bucket but declined the cake.
We had about 25% of the cake stock left at the end of the day, so I decided to do a second day of reduced price sales. A friend had baked and decorated a beautiful cake which I couldn’t bear to cut, so I decided to raffle it instead. This ended up raising £100 towards the total sales. (I sold tickets at 50p each or a strip for £2.50)
The final figure raised was £487.76 which far exceeded anything I ever expected!!
My total outlay for the event was about £50-£75 which included ingredients and equipment for the sale.
I could not have done this without the wonderful support of fantastic work colleagues!!!
Tania Legore