One of the ways you can raise cash to pay for your pageant expenses to a state or national pageant is to host a local pageant in your community. There are many young girls and women who would like the experience of participating in a pageant; but they don’t want to invest the time or expense into a larger established pageant system.
In order to host a successful pageant, keep it simple. The focus is to keep your expenses low and the logistics easy to manage so you make the most money you can and the contestants have an enjoyable experience.
- Find a location to have the pageant and set the date. School stages, churches, and community clubs will sometimes let you use their facilities for free or a low fee. Look for a Saturday morning time slot from 10am to noon. Give yourself at least three months to organize the event and get contestants.
- Have the contestants arrive with their hair and makeup completely done, and have just one outfit for the competition.
- Order your crown and sash from Allen’s Crowns www.acrowns.com or a similar online company. Make sure you order these a month before your pageant so you have them.
- Collect donated products from local businesses and direct sales people to create gift bags for the contestants and prizes for the winner. You need to have gifts for all the contestants. I approached directors from the larger pageant systems in my state and asked them for a certificate of free registration or $100 off the entry fee into their state pageant to give to the queen of my pageant. I also collected tons of personal care and beauty items to fill a gift bag for each contestant.
- You will need a minimum of 6 people to help you run your fundraising pageant. You’ll need an Emcee, someone at the registration/ticket table, a person with the judges, someone in the dressing room who stays with the contestants, a tabulator, and someone running the music/sound system. You’ll also need a detailed oriented person who is good at organizing events to help you.
- Find three qualified judges who will volunteer their time, for sure show up and who don’t know the contestants. They can be directors from other pageant systems, other queens, or people who have judging experience.
- Keep your admission charge to a couple dollars and take only cash the day of the pageant. Have your payment deadline at least three weeks before your pageant so all checks can clear for the pageant. Use PayPal for credit card payments. Collect all registration fees before the pageant. If you allow people to pay the day of the pageant, you will have “no shows” and you will make no money.
- Keep areas of competition limited to personal interview, one onstage question, and modeling their dress. All three of these can be done in one dress.
- Keep your registration fee around $75 and have a minimum of 10 prepaid contestants. Honestly, it’s not worth your time if you have less than 10 contestants. That’s why you want your deadline three weeks out so if you don’t have the numbers, you can cancel the event. Don’t assume that people will just show up the day of the pageant. It doesn’t work that way.
- The pageant should be about 70 minutes in length with 10 contestants competing in three areas of competition.
- Find contestants at cheer gyms, dance recitals, other pageants, through social media, and schools. Getting the word out about your pageant is the key to your success. The more people you involve, the greater your income will be. If you hold your pageant during a crafts fair or local festival, you will get more people, too.
You’ll have greater success hosting a fundraising pageant after you have competed in a couple pageants yourself. This way you are connecting with other pageant families (future contestants) and you are getting the feel of how a pageant should be run.
This is one way where you could raise several hundreds to a couple thousand dollars depending on how many people you have helping you and how much time you put into it.
Rhonda Shappert is an expert pageant coach, an iPEC Certified Professional Coach, an Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner, and an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coach Federation (ICF).
She created Winning Through Pageantry® to partner with pageant contestants and their support people to provide complete pageant preparation, achieve winning results in life through pageantry, and to Succeed From The Inside Out®.
She has over 30 years experience in the pageantry world as a contestant, judge, emcee, staff member, mother of daughters who compete, Mrs. Ohio America 2005, and has held multiple titles at the local, state and national levels.
Rhonda graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelors degree in Musical Theater from The Ohio State University and has performed on stage in 15 countries on the Asian, European and American continents. This mother of three home educates their children and has been married 23 years to her husband Stephen, is the former mayor of her community, and serves on the board of two non-profit organizations. She and her husband perform original contemporary Christian music. For more information on Rhonda, visit www.WinningThroughPageantry.com.
