Charity gala run of show template
Room set through to carriages, with the auction, the appeal and the courses interleaved the way they actually run. Guest arrival stays pinned to the invitation time.
Your gala run of show
| Start | Length | Item | Who |
|---|
Built free at 1pm.app/tools/run-of-show Take it further
Print it, save it, or move it into 1pm to share it live with your crew and suppliers.
Copied. Three steps to have it live:
- Start a free 1pm trial, no card needed.
- Create your event and edit the event portal.
- Choose Paste in and paste. Every row lands with its time and length.
Add a row with a name on it first, then there will be something to copy.
Saved in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account to create.
The gala run of show in full
Starting at 16:00 it finishes at 00:55 the next morning, a span of 8h 55. Change one length and every row below it moves.
| Start | Length | Item | Who |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16:00 | 1h 30 | Supplier access, room set and dress | Venue |
| 17:30 | 30 min | AV and sound check | AV |
| 18:00 | 20 min | Auction lots staged and displayed | Committee |
| 18:30 pinned | 45 min | Guest arrival, arrival drinks | Front of house |
| 19:15 | 15 min | Guests seated | Venue |
| 19:30 | 10 min | Welcome from the chair | MC |
| 19:40 | 30 min | Entrée served | Kitchen |
| 20:10 | 40 min | Live auction | Auctioneer |
| 20:50 | 40 min | Main course served | Kitchen |
| 21:30 | 20 min | Fundraising appeal | MC |
| 21:50 | 30 min | Dessert and coffee | Kitchen |
| 22:20 | 20 min | Guest speaker | MC |
| 22:40 | 15 min | Raffle draw | Committee |
| 22:55 | 1h 30 | Dancing | DJ |
| 00:25 | 30 min | Carriages | Front of house |
Why "Guest arrival, arrival drinks" is pinned. Guest arrival is pinned to 6.30pm, which is the only time on the invitation. The set, the sound check and the auction staging above it have ten minutes of slack between them and the doors.
Service and programme are the same timeline
A gala is two events happening in the same room at once. There is a dinner, which the kitchen is timing to the minute, and there is a programme of speeches, an auction and an appeal, which the MC is running. Most galas plan those two separately and then discover on the night that they are one timeline, not two.
The moment the appeal runs ten minutes long, the main course has been plated for ten minutes. The moment the auctioneer finishes early, four hundred plates need to go out sooner than the pass expected. That is why every row in the template below has an owner and why the kitchen rows and the programme rows sit in one list rather than in two documents that agree only in theory.
Where the money actually gets raised
- Auction after the entree, not before it. A room that has not eaten does not bid. A room mid-main course cannot. The gap between courses is the window and it is worth building the whole service pattern around it.
- Appeal after a speaker, not after a break. The appeal converts on emotion, and the emotion comes from whoever has just spoken. Put a break between the two and you have given the room time to check their phones.
- Do not stack the formalities. Welcome, speaker, auction, appeal and raffle back to back is forty minutes of people talking at a room that came for dinner. Interleave them with courses and the whole night works better.
- Give the auctioneer a hard finish. Not a suggestion, a time. It is the row most likely to run over and the one where nobody wants to be the person who interrupts.
Nights that run past midnight
Galas end late, and a plan that quietly stops at 23:59 is not much use. The builder above carries times past midnight properly: rows that roll into the next day are shown as such, and the finishing time in the summary tells you plainly whether you are past your vacate time. Check that number against your venue agreement and your licence before the night, not on it.
One sheet, filtered per person
The other thing a gala exposes is that different people need different slices of the same plan. Your kitchen cares about eight rows. Your auctioneer cares about two. Your committee wants to know when the chair speaks. Sending everyone the full operational run of show is how you end up answering questions during service.
1pm shares one live run of show and filters it per person, so each supplier and crew member opens a link and sees only the items that involve them, updating as you edit. When the sheet above is right, Copy for 1pm moves it across in a single paste.
Also worth reading: the BEO doesn't lie, three of them do, and the other starting points on the run of show builder.
Common questions
Put the live auction between the entree and the main, and the appeal after the main. The auction needs a room that has eaten something and had a drink but is not yet full and restless, and the appeal works best straight after a speaker has given the room a reason. Both are the reason the event exists, so build the courses around them rather than slotting them into gaps left over from service.
Two to three minutes per lot with a good auctioneer, so eight lots is around twenty to twenty five minutes. Longer than about forty minutes and the room stops bidding regardless of what is left on the list. If you have more lots than that, run some as a silent auction alongside and save the live section for the ones that will actually compete.
Later than you planned, which is why this template runs past midnight on purpose. Dancing after the formalities routinely takes the night past twelve, and the builder handles it: rows that roll into the next day are shown as such rather than wrapping silently. Check the finish against your venue vacate time and your bar licence, because those are the two that cost money to get wrong.
The kitchen, the auctioneer, the MC, the AV crew and the front of house team, and they all need the same version. A gala is the format where a run of show most obviously earns its keep, because service timing and programme timing are locked together: if the appeal runs ten minutes long, dessert is late, and the kitchen has to hear about it while it is happening rather than afterwards.
A version of it, yes, and this is where filtering matters. Your committee wants to know when the chair speaks and when the raffle is drawn. They do not need the room set, the sound check or the pack down, and handing them the full operational sheet just means questions you have to answer on the night.
Yes. Delete the auction and the appeal rows and you have a seated dinner with a programme through it, which is the same shape as an awards night, a club presentation night or an annual dinner. Keep the arrival pin, because the invitation time is the one thing you cannot move.
When the appeal runs long, the kitchen needs to know now
1pm shares one run of show with your kitchen, your auctioneer, your MC and your AV crew in real time. Each of them sees only their own items, on their phone, with no login. Move this one across in about a minute.