Around this time last year me and my mates were looking to put on a dubstep night in Leamington Spa as finalists at Warwick University. We could have either put on a smaller alternative night at a pub, or gone full-out and tried to put on a proper night with two floors and a headliner at either of the two big clubs in town. Things broke-down around this decision: the effort and relatively smaller benefits of the pub night VS the idea of putting-down on a headliner and risking money that none of us had. At about the same time, I put on a bet for Ryan Giggs to win Sports Personality of the Year thanks to a well-worded article in the Telegraph which I picked up on a No. 3 bus in London. I don't usually bet, so I put £50 down - he was 51/1.

During the six months the bet was on I just started thinking fuck it, I should give the money to charity – it's not really my money anyway. You win £250 on a bet, you take your friends out on a good, solid, wayward weekend, or, you just about have enough to pay your mates' entry fee for an Outlook pre-party. £25,000, and you've got a down payment on a one bedroom in Catford. £2,500 is a bit of an in-betweener: it's enough to make things easier, but not enough for any lasting happiness. Actually, no, I could make £2,500 go a long way, but however far I could make it go for myself, far more could be done with it elsewhere.

Come December, Giggs came through, as always – this coming from a Palace fan - and we had the money. I'm not exactly sure how the idea of doing a series of nights for charity came about – it was ideologically driven and funded by the bet, but it wasn't exactly just ideologically agreed, it was a practical choice.

 

There were five of us who wanted to help run, promote and DJ at this night, but we also needed more DJs and other promoters; how could the money divvying ever work and who would decide who got what? Who had the right to decide? I made the move and started making arrangements with the club and I had the money. Usually there needs to be someone who takes the reins in these situations, gets well-drawn dollar-sign eyes, has an assistant Robin-type, but would pay his mates and everyone else a standard promoter/ DJ fee (if at all), taking the rest for himself. I think that this might be The Man, but none of us would have been that person taking the money over their friends. Some class these people 'leaders'; we tend to call them cunts. The problem was, none of us were cunts. So instead, having £2,500 to work with, we decided to try and make double that and raise £5,000 for charity.

Picking a charity was a little bit tricky, but I always think as a Western European, that grass roots West African healthcare is an obvious choice. I chose Save The Children and their project in Kroo Bay, Sierra Leone, where one in four children die before they're five years old.

We called the night Eve and had the upstairs as a dubstep / electro / drums room and downstairs as RnB / hip-hop / funky. Eve worked: on the opening night, we just missed capacity but managed to reach capacity on four of the other six nights we put on. But it was doing the night for charity that was the real success: it made everything easier, more profitable and far more enjoyable than putting on a normal night could have been. A better vibe was made because primarily - blanket policy - everyone works for nothing apart from the headliners. There are no difficult monetary decisions to be made. In terms of working for the night, the DJs who play upstairs either make the poster and the flyer or help making sure people see them. Second room DJs essentially self-promote and help the night too – facebook is a gift for this.

A charity night comes with a communal atmosphere, as everyone is working / pleasuring on the same basis: raving and saving. There's nothing like coming out of the club's office at the end of a night, holding two grand above your head and shouting 'look what we just did'. We get to tell everyone how many people were there, exactly how much we made etc. – it's a wholly inclusive, communal event.

On top of that, the night was far more profitable than it would have been, had the profits not gone to charity. Everything was cheaper. The club, SMACK, gave us a better cut than they do most other nights: on the £5 entry fee, they only took £1.50, where usually they'd take £2 or £2.50. Management, Scott and Steve, also gave each DJ a £10/£20 bar tab for each night we put on. The local printing company, Classic Printers, gave us an extra 20% off on-top of a student discount, which generally cut costs around £30 for every event.

 

Plus every artist who played agreed to take a cut. Or rather, when negotiating with agents, I was able to ask for a much lower price for charity and all the agents we dealt with were extremely amicable and flexible with our situation. So a massive thanks to Breakage (Lou at Coda), Emalkay (Tom at Coda), DJ Vapour and TMG, Goth-Trad (Rob at Faze 2), Oneman (Belinda at Elastic Artists) and DJ Madd and Kito (Steve at TWU). In five months, we put on six nights and battered our target by making £8,292. But the crucial part is comparing our final total with what our total would have been had we done the night for personal profit:

• Money we saved on artists' fees - £925
• Money we saved from the printer's 20% discount - £180
• Money we saved from the club giving us a better cut - £1,677
• Money we saved on not paying bar tabs (standard payment for amateur DJs) - £750
• Total saved - £3,532

The £8,292 we made would have only been £4,760 if we'd decided to do the night for personal profit. And even then, the £4,760 would have to be shared between the five of us, giving us £952 each. On top of this, having put a poster up for the first Eve at my Chinese takeaway and having explained the night to Mama Chu, she always gave me free prawn crackers with every order – priceless.

In the end, the five of us, plus another four DJs and two promoters put hours into this night without monetary incentive – the music was always enough. Giving to charity was always second behind putting on a successful night we could all enjoy and could play our music at. The situation was perfectly, positively balanced with everyone winning.

I don't think it's enough to just practice what you preach, which is the reason for this feature: you have to preach what you practiced. I think our situation is easily translatable to many other situations around the country. If you're at Uni next year and you're thinking about starting a night, get a group of your friends together and do it for charity – the benefits are massive. It's literally fed us this year. You can make a lot more money than you ever could going solo and you'll still get all the experience of putting on a night, which I feel has taught me just as much as my entire university course.

Eve is in pole position for a whole new year of frivolity with a new batch of Warwick third years at the helm. They have a fresh aim to raise £10,000 and a broader aim of having Eve in a similarly strong position next year so it can be passed down again to another set of third years.

You never know, in five years' time, Eve could still be standing strong having raised over £50,000 in total – aim for the stars, you might hit the moon. I have high hopes: the vibes were amazing and as long as the simple formula of putting on a night for the music and a charitable cause doesn't change, neither will the atmosphere.

Words: Ben Jacobs

 

Download an Eve podcast here

 

Related Links:

• BCee Grows Tash For Charity
• Raising Money For A Good Cause
• Raising Hope
• Makoto Releases Charity Compilation Album
• Upfest 2011

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