How to Host the Perfect Quiz Night Rules to Follow

A quiz night can be a great way of raising money for a good cause, whether you want to raise funds for a well known charity or for your local scout hut, people love quizzes and you can guarantee if you advertise your quiz night properly people will turn up.

So you have advertised your quiz night in your local paper and you have a few teams booked in to attend, how do you make sure you have a successful evening and that everyone enjoys themselves?

Firstly be organized, make sure that you have the questions written down clearly in a book that only you as the organizer has access to, also make sure you do the same with the answers.

Arrange for help to mark the answer sheets.

Make sure you have access to a microphone and amplification system so the question master can clearly be heard.

Don't make the questions too difficult, people soon get bored if they cannot answer any of the questions because you have set them at mastermind standard. Aim that most teams will be able to answer correctly around 66% of the questions set, try a few out on some of your friends.

Always check and double check your answers and carry with you a source of where you got your answers from, there will always be someone who will question one of your answers.

Try to make the quiz fun, a quiz where you have a picture round, an audible music round, a dingbats round or anagrams will be more fun for the contestants than just straightforward questions.

Have plenty of question rounds, ask at least a hundred questions even better more and split the questions into 10 or 12 different rounds, for example history, geography, music etc.

Include a few bonus questions where teams can get extra points, for example in the music round answers, one point for the song and a bonus point for the artist.

Have a break halfway through the quiz to enable people to get a drink , have a cigarette or something to eat, even better provide food, charge a little extra on the entrance fee and arrange with a local takeaway.

Run a raffle, this is a great way to raise more money for your cause, ask local businesses to supply something for your raffle, you will be surprised how many will contribute if its for a good cause.

At any quiz you will always get one or two teams that are far better than the other teams so offer a couple of alternative prizes, for example best team name, or a booby prize for coming last, this will encourage players who haven't done so well to turn up again if you run another quiz.

If you feel up to grabbing the microphone and asking the questions yourself then great but if not try to find someone with a clear voice who will do it for you, preferably someone with a bit of a personality who will drop a few jokes and witty comments in.

During the quiz keep a running total of each teams score, read the answers out after each round and let the teams know how they are getting on.

Give out a prize for the first 3 in the quiz.

I have run hundreds of successful quizzes in the past and i'm sure if you follow these rules your quiz night will be a complete success, Good Luck