A quiz night that has to raise money, once

A pub running a weekly quiz can have a bad first night and fix it by the third. A charity quiz happens once, in front of people who paid to be there, often organised by somebody who has never run one.

That changes what matters. Not features, preparation. Print the table codes the day before rather than the afternoon of. Read the pack through end to end. Run five questions with a friend so the host view is not new to you at eight o'clock.

One session, all five built-in question packs, up to ten tables. For a village hall or a function room, that is a whole fundraising night at no cost, which is the point of saying it plainly: money raised for a cause should not be going on software.

If you are expecting more than ten tables, a month of Pro covers it and can be cancelled afterwards. Ten tables is the number to check against your ticket sales before the night rather than on it.

The quiz is the reason people came; the fundraising is what happens in the gaps. Entry per team at the door, a raffle drawn between rounds, a bar that stays open because the room has a reason to stay in it.

The gaps are yours to make, because you launch each question. A raffle between rounds does not have to fight a countdown, and the quiz picks up when the raffle is finished rather than having moved on without you.

A charity night draws a broader crowd than a pub quiz: people who came for the cause rather than for the quiz, across a wide age range, some of whom have not done one in years.

Flat scoring is kinder than time-weighted for that room, and General Knowledge and Food & Drink travel better than Pop Culture. Keep it shorter than you think: six rounds is a long evening when half the room is there to support a cause rather than to compete.