After reading this I felt I should mention a couple more things. Our show
is held in a botanical garden that charges admission. Since people have
already paid to get in the garden, we don't charge anything more for them to
see the show. Getting people to sponsor trophies can have a big effect on
the finances, sometimes we don't get enough sponsors for all of them. We
really haven't sold much ourselves at the show. A couple years ago we sold
snacks, but since the garden has a food vendor that can be a touchy subject.
The smaller society that co-hosts our show is going to try a repotting table
this year as a fund-raiser for their society. That's probably a good idea.
We have about a dozen vendors, mostly plants but we also have glass artwork
from Nature Glassworks and last year we had painted silk banners and scarves
from Silk Synergy. It's nice to have a couple non-plant vendors there.
-danny

"Diana Kulaga" wrote in message
.. .
Our major fund raiser is our AOS judged show in March. Normally we have
ten vendors, but this year we had twelve because space usually taken by
100 sf displays was available. We generally have four Society displays,
but two of our local groups were still pretty devastated by the
hurricanes. Our vendors pay a fee to be there (the show goes on for three
days), and we ask a $3.00 donation for entry. The center of the room is
taken up by vendor displays on 6' x 30" tables, and on a stage we have 4
or 5 30" square table top displays by members. There is also a display of
"mini niches", cut flowers in containers. Over all, it is an impressive
sight, and there is lots of oohing and aahing from the visitors. We have a
waiting list of vendors. There are new venues being planned and/or built,
and we may need to move to larger quarters at some future time. There has
been a huge population increase here, and loads of upscale new
construction, so demand will be there. We are thinking about a Fall Fest,
on a smaller scale, but it might just be too much to handle on top of
installing displays for other Society shows.

At this show, we sell books, shirts, pins and such, and we have a raffle,
with plant donations from the vendors. To make things even more
interesting, we have hourly door prize announcements. These gifts are
donations from local vendors of all kinds, including Home Depot, and last
March we actually had too many, LOL! For our trophies, we obtain
sponsorships; many vendors sponsor trophies, and many of our members do,
too.

We also have two auctions annually, in April and November. We take a
percentage of the price of each plant. We don't purchase plants for these
events; our members bring in plants they want to sell, with a beginning
bid price noted on a leaf. Last March a mature B. digbyana (I know, I
know - it's Rhyncholaelia) sold for $105; the owner was very pleased.

We have raffle plants at every meeting, and sell past editions of Orchids
very inexpensively. Raffle money goes into our Scholarship Fund. We sell
ads in our news letter, but that is a very minimal source of funds. All in
all, we're in very good financial shape.

Diana