Cinema Screening Guide

CINEMA SCREENING GUIDE

Cinema screenings are a super effective way to raise money and awareness for PANDA, and it’s easier than you might think! With the help of this quick volunteer guide, hopefully you’ll feel ready to take on this fun and rewarding challenge.

Pick a movie

This is an essential first step! Think about your audience. Are you planning to invite friends, workmates, members of the public? What films might have wide appeal, or feel particularly relevant? All major movie distributors will publish their titles and release dates for the year ahead, available online. At PANDA, we also curate a list of promising up-and-comers, so drop us a line if you’d like a recommendation!

Approach cinema

Most major cinemas have a page on their website about organising a fundraiser, including Village Cinemas and Palace Cinemas. Other major cinemas, including Hoyts and Event Cinemas, have a functions contact email through their corporate solutions page which is appropriate for a community cinema screening enquiry. They receive fundraiser enquiries regularly and will have a guide for booking with their specific cinema ready to go!

Choose to book general or private

There are two main ways to organise a cinema screening: discounted tickets for a general session, or booking a private session.

General session: If it’s your first time organising a cinema screening, you don’t have a lot of experience with events or you have a smaller group of attendees, this might be the option for you. Many cinemas will offer groups of 10 - 20 or more people discounted tickets for a fundraising booking in advance. If you are happy to share the cinema with other customers, then you can simply book your group into a general session and you receive the discounted ticket price.

Private session: If you think you’ll have a large group that is likely to fill a cinema, which (depending on the cinema) can vary from 25 – 300+ seats, you may prefer to arrange a private screening.

PANDA – Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia Inc A007201S 810 Nicholson St T 03 9926 9090 National Helpline ABN 64 063 647 374 North Fitzroy F 03 9482 6210 1300 726 306 All donations over $2 VIC 3068 E [email protected] panda.org.au are tax deductable Sell tickets

Social media is the best way to get the word out there! Create an event on Facebook and invite friends, as well as encouraging people to share the event. You can also contact your local paper or radio station as they often have segments for charitable events at little or no cost.

Online ticket booking is your friend: a free online booking system, like Trybooking or Eventbrite, makes it easy to sell, refund and keep track of tickets.

Fundraising

Once you have your discounted tickets, charge an additional amount to cover your costs and donation. For example, if you receive the tickets for $11, charging $20 so that the additional money can go toward meeting costs and PANDA.

A great addition to a cinema screening can be running a raffle! Approach local businesses to donate prizes that can be raffled at the event. It can help to create an Excel spreadsheet and note down the people who have donated prizes, what they are, their value, if it's been collected/dropped off and the contact details of the person who donated it.

Make it PANDA

PANDA can send you flyers, factsheets and postcards to hand out at your event. Plus, we have a special ‘supporting PANDA’ logo for fundraisers you can add to your invitations as well as a video about PANDA you could show on the big screen. You can find the video on PANDA's YouTube channel. If you'd like to show the video, get in touch so we can send you the file.