The event I have chosen to critique is a Dog Show that was run by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). The RSPCAs vision is to “live in a world where all animals are respected and treated with compassion” (RSPCA, 2017). The charity has been around since 1824. One of the main reasons why they have been able to stay successful and continuously improve the lives of animals is that they have been able to move with the times. “The greatest shift across the times has been in attitude… When we were founded it was a challenge to get the British public to recognise animals as sentient beings – and not just commodities for food, transport or sport.” (RSPCA, 2017).
Like most charities the RSPCA relies on the support of the local community through donations and volunteering. The RSPCA hosts many events every year to raise money so they can help animals. These events include; auctions, cake sales, fun fairs, charity games, quiz nights and dog shows. The event I have chosen to analyse is the dog show I volunteered at. Members of the public could sign their dogs up to partake in different competitions such as agility, best party trick, best in show and many other categories. As well as the competitions we also had a raffle and other items for sale.
Charity events have become very popular recently and are a common way of raising money. “Since 2007, the number of fundraising events has increased by 700% and participant numbers have doubled.” (Booker, B. 2017). This suggests that the general public find events interesting and are possibly more likely to give money to the charity when they get to participate in an event. According to Cardwell the top 10 charity fundraising events in the UK for 2014 were as follows:
- “Race For Life (£51,521,000)…
- World’s Biggest Coffee Morning (£25,102,796)…
- Movember (£11,000,000)…
- Moonwalk (£8,168,992)…
- No Makeup Selfie (£8,000,000)…
- Ice Bucket Challenge (£6,800,000)…
- Dryathlon (£5,000,000)…
- London to Brighton (£4,308,599)…
- Christmas Jumper Day (£4,300,000)…
- Go Sober October (£4,300,000)…” (Cardwell, 2015).
All of these events require the general public to donate their time and effort to raising money for different charities. As you can see from the amounts raised that if someone decides to participate in an event then they can raise some significant money for the charity. Therefore, by asking for the public to participate in the dog show the evidence would suggest that the money raised was due to the inclusion of the public.
Event Management 