How to Throw an Insanely Fun Trivia Night Fundraiser

Lauren Barrett

I love trivia. I would consider myself decent at it, but the thrill of it is what makes it fun. 

The vibes are good. You don’t have to make awkward small talk. The food and drinks are good. 

The past year, my mom, dad, brother, husband, and I assembled a pretty good team and went around Raleigh doing trivia. We did well and placed a few times. 

So, back in March, when we decided to start the adoption process, I knew that I had to host a trivia night fundraiser to help raise money to support our birthmother. 

But you can throw an insanely fun trivia night fundraiser for any reason to raise money. 

Just follow these steps…

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1. Pick a Venue

Obviously, since this is a fundraiser, we needed to make it as cheap as possible without stiffing our guests of fun. 

We decided to hold it in our backyard which was perfect. The weather cooperated for us. It was a beautiful spring evening. 

I highly recommend having in it a backyard because there is little you have to clean up. 

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2. ​Invite Your Guests

I used Evite, a free online invitation website. I was able to customize my invitation with all the details for our trivia event. 

I could even link the invitation to a fundraising account called Pledge, so guests could see where to donate. 

Evite notified me every time someone RSVPed. I could even send out messages to all the guests with updates. 

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3. ​Choose Your Food

I posted in an adoption Facebook group about ways to serve food on a budget. 

I was unsuccessfully able to get any restaurants or stores to donate food, but if you are able to do that, go that route. 

Instead, someone recommended a nacho bar. Here are the ingredients (feeds about 25-30 people): 

1. Tostitos restaurant style chips ( I bought 6 bags for our group)
   
2. Gordo's nacho cheese 
   
3. Salsa, 1 of them was the avocado one
   
4. Sour cream
   
5. sliced black olives (2)
   
6. 2 jars of nacho jalapenos.
   
7. 3 cans of the Hormel chili with beans
   

The total cost was under $100. I also was able to get two large pizzas for half off. And then my mom made some Texas Caviar and bought a fruit tray. 

Lastly, we bought cases of water, beer, and seltzer along with two bottles of wine. 

In all, we spent less than $200 on food. 

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4. ​Gather Your Supplies

Here is everything we needed for the party. We either had all of these things or borrowed from people. 

• Tables and chairs
• Microphone to read the questions
• Corn hole
• Trash bags
• Speakers to play music
• Printed out trivia sheets for each team
• Laptop with the questions on it and an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the points each round
• Lanterns for when it got dark (I got 2 for $5 at Target)
• Prizes for 1st and 2nd place (We did a gift card to a brewery)​

5. ​Come Up With the Trivia Questions

Having played trivia before I have some knowledge of the typical categories and questions used. 

Since not everyone is a trivia buff like me, I knew that I had to make the questions not obscurely hard but not ridiculously easy that there was no competition. 

I decided on 5 categories with 8 questions each and a final question. 

My 5 categories were

• Fictional TV Show Cities
  
• Celebrity Mashup 
  
• Chevy Runs Deep
  
• Science
  
• Books and Literature
  

Some of the questions took just a quick Google and then I picked out the ones I liked best from the list. 

Others, like the Chevy Runs Deep category, I made up on my own. In this round, every answer was also a type of Chevy. 

For example, one question was This U.S. lake is 1,645 feet deep making it deeper than the Empire State Building is tall.

The answer is Tahoe which is also a type of SUV made by Chevy. 

I then decided to do a Final Question where points were tripled. 

Players were given 10 U.S. cities and then had to place them from North to South geographically. 

The trivia should last from 1-2 hours. 

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6. ​Come Up With Rules

As you can see from our trivia sheets, we had rules. Every trivia night needs rules and a particular format. 

Here were our rules: 

• This game is intended for fun and friendly competition…so have fun and be friendly. 
  
•  Please don’t shout out answers!  
  
• Teams may consist of no more than six (6) players.  
  
• The use of web-enabled electronic equipment, cell phones, and books is not allowed.  
  
• Decisions of the judges are final.
  
• There will be 5 rounds and a final question. 
  
• Each round, you can wager 1-8 points for each question. You can only wager one number once. For example, I would wager 1 point for a question you are unsure of and 8 points for a question you’re absolutely sure on. 
  
• I’ll read all the questions twice. At the end of the round, I’ll play a song, and you’ll have until the end of the song to turn in your scoresheet. 
  

Adding in the wager element allowed for an interesting twist and more team strategizing. 

My husband was the DJ and had fun mixing the music between rounds. 

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7. Host the Event

The event was so much fun! We raised our goal for our birthmother, and we have a special memory to share with our child one day. 

Remember to send “thank you” cards after the event is over and share on social media.


That’s it! Super Simply and insanely fun! 

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Lauren Barrett is a multi-passionate mom working to help all parents become their best selves and build positive relationships with their kids through mindful parenting. She has a degree in deaf education and a Master’s in Reading Education. She is a high school teacher of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing by day, a cross country coach by the afternoon, a writer/author by her son's nap times, and a full time mom to an amazing toddler. Lauren is a 3x author of the Add One-A-Day 30 Day Challenge, children's book, Henry's Hiccups, and parenting guide Now What? Mindful Checklists for Life's Hard Parenting Moments, a blogger at Lauren Barrett Writes, and has been published on sites like A Fine Parent, Pregnant Chicken, Pop Sugar, Her View From Home, and Scary Mommy.  She loves her faith, running, visiting MLB stadiums with her husband, chocolate, scrapbooking, pretending she would actually do well on the Amazing Race, re-watching The Office, listening to Bobby Bones, and helping out all moms. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, James, and son, Henry. Follow her on Instagram at @laurenbarrettwrites, and get her free guide on what to do during the middle of a tantrum. ​