Big Man on Campus!
 

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone on here has ever held a "Big Man on Campus" competition. We've never done it before, but I'm social chair and plan on doing one early February.

If you've held one of these before, what did you do? What were the prizes? What did the guys have to do in the pageant? How did you get people to attend? Who did you open it up to?

I would also like some input on good prizes (cheap ones, too!) Since we are doing this to raise money, here is what I have planned so far:


Open it up to all greek men on campus AND athletic teams.

$10 entry fee. Each group can have more then one guy in the competition.

Categories they will compete in ARE: Evening wear, swimsuit, talent and best cross dress.

To win, I THINK we're going to have one of our girls represent a guy, and if people in the audience want to vote for him, they put a dollar or so into a container. The guy who has the most money at the end .. wins!

Any suggestions whatsoever would be AWESOME! I'm trying really hard to make this awesome, and BIG!

Thanks a lot!

I havent ever planned one, but I have been to a few, and I know what goes on. The ones that we have on our campus, are normally benifits, rasing money breast cancer. There normally arent any prizes, but if you wanted to do prizes you could either do gift cards, or cute "sister deeds", like the winner gets to have their laundry done by a sister for a month.
The night normally goes like this...
They have a introduction, where the boys come out dressed as the theme of the night, like beack wear. They come out and introduce themselves, with a little speech.
Next there is a talent portion.
After that the panel of judges voted for their top five and you announce that.
Then the top five answer a question, and the judges vote who the winner is....
Hopefully this helps you a bit :)

Thanks so much! I didn't get to do it last semester, but I'm definitely going to this semester!

Hey- like smgdancer I have never organized one, but there are a few of these types of things that go on on my campus each year. Some ideas for you:

-In order to raise more money, you can open up fundraising efforts to the competitors themselves. For example, start publicizing EARLY and close entries 2-3 weeks before the competition. Have the competitors dormstorm, table, write letters, or make phone calls to get donations. Whatever money they raise beforehand will be combined with the money that is raised for them during the show (via audience donations). Judges can take their fundraising efforts into account when they make their decisions, and the $10 entry fee can go towards your administrative needs should you need more budgeting.

-I like the idea of "sister deeds" as prizes; also, sometimes campus foodservice or the campus bookstore are willing to donate gift cards or meal passes as prizes for charitable events. I chaired a benefit concert this spring, and most of our raffle prizes were donations from local businesses: gift cards, gas cards (big hit!), free oil changes, baked goods- use your imagination and ask around.

-I like your entry categories. The categories I have seen used are: talent, swimsuit, togas (if they are Greeks!), formal wear, cross-dress and questions. Some of these can be combined: for example, a Q&A session while dressed in togas or formal wear. Three events usually seem to work pretty well- long enough to raise donations, but short enough to hold the audience attention.

-Consider asking the participation of an on-campus performance group, such as an a capella group or a dance group, to perform near the end of your show (after the last event, before announcement of the winner). This will draw in some extra people, give you time to count money or for judge deliberation, and the performing group will also likely help out with your fundraising efforts.

Sorry for the novel- I wish you the best of luck, let us know how it goes! =)

They (DZ) held one here. When I showed up though, all of the competitors ran away (some of them were crying.) I guess technically I won but all of the girls were mad at me for ruining their philanthropy and wouldn't give me their trophy.

please tell the rest of this story

ahhh nick you just had to tell the story......lol

I'm a Zeta and we do BMOC at my school. The way we do ours is a week long competition. Kind of like a mini greek week. Last year we had a dogeball competition: The Big Man and his grou he's representing would play; a fundraising day: Each Big Man got a container to walk around campus with to collect money; A pie eating contest: the Bog Man would compete against the other Big Men to eat the most pie. Each activity was worth a certain number of points. And at the end of the week we had the Pageant. The winner of the pageant also go a certain number of points. THe overalll winner is announced and they got a certain portion of the money we collected to go towards their philanthropy.

Our pageant is basically what you described already. We did a silent auction and also had a "Best Legs Competition" where we took a picture of each guy's legs and would post the picture on a jar...people put money in which ever jar they think has the best legs lol.

Oh and we were get local places like restaurants and such to donate gift cards to hand out to winners...and we sell t-shirts. We get shirts that don't say zeta so everyone can buy them...

I keep remembering things and add them as I do! I'm BMOC chair for my school so I'm trying to remember everything!

It might be a little late in the game to give this advice, but here I go anyway -

My chapter did Mr and Miss GU to raise money for our philanthropy. It was a huge event so we had to hold it in the main gym, so if you need a large space on campus, make sure you reserve that stuff now so you can get your dates set!

We sold advertisements for the programs that got handed out, and then we sold tickets to the event, $3 presale and $5 at the door. Each contestant had to be sponsored by a campus organization, but it didn't matter what organization (one year the commuter group put up someone for it, and his question during the question and answer portion of the event was "what do you think of the food in the cafeteria?" and his answer was "well I've never eaten there personally but I really feel like all my friends that do eat there tend to leave full!").

We have a theme every year - Wild West, Hollywood, 80s, etc., then all the contestants did a dance number to that theme, wearing costumes that they put together themselves to fit that theme.

Then there's talent, evening wear, and question and answer. Everyone had so much fun participating, we had everything from comedians to singers to dancers to a guy that smashed lightbulbs on his head (I think after that year we limited talents to things that didn't make a huge mess with shards of glass). We always have a panel of judges - someone from the charity, the greek advisor, and someone who's active with clubs on campus but is not directly affiliated with any one of them (most often someone who's affiliated with the Office of Student Development). Often we have someone from a local radio or TV station as our fourth judge, which is great because they give the event FREE PUBLICITY if they mention that they're judging the event on the air.

We have a Mr/Miss Congeniality competition where we set up jars with the contestant's pictures on them at the main desk in the campus center for people to donate all week, and then at the door you can donate more. Whoever raises the most wins.

During the final tallying of the judges' votes, one of the winners from the year before always came back and performed their talent for the crowd so that they wouldn't get bored and walk off.

Honestly, the biggest moneymakers for us were the ads in the programs - I think a full page ad was $50 and half was $25 but I'm not sure. A lot of the chapters and other organizations put ads in the programs supporting their contestant, a lot of parents put ads in congratulating their (Alpha Gam) daughters on their bids/grades/graduation/birthdays, a lot of local businesses bought ads - it was really awesome.

If you do decide to sell ads, do it soon. Often, if you can't get a business to buy an ad, they might donate something anyway or give you freebies to give to your contestants.

One year, Dominoes gave us pizza galore to give to our contestants back stage, which was really nice because we try to raise the money for the event beforehand but that allowed us to give some of our food budget right back to the philanthropy.

The other chapters on campus were our biggest supporters though, some chapters just outright gave donations, plus put up a contestant (paying a fee to be part of it if I remember correctly), plus the entire chapter would come to the event, plus they would put more money in their contestant's congeniality jars. It definitely would not have been the event it was if they didn't help us so much!

The winners often received gift certificates to local restaurants or movie theaters - most of the time those were donated by those restaurants as well!

That looks like so much fun. my sorority hasn't done anything like that before, but sounds pretty cool.

Purdue ZTAs have a huge Big Man On Campus philanthropy. They have week long fundraising with penny wars, date auctions, restaurants on campus donating, tshirt sales, and the list goes one! Then at the end of the week the guys compete in a talent and question pageant. It is so much fun and a really well done production. Last year they raised several thousand dollars for breast cancer awareness, it was awesome. If you want to know more, I would check out their website or try to contact one of them
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~zta/philanthropy.php