Rising for the Rising (pun intended)

Hi,
These days, have been really busy organizing the Mangal Pandey premier show for the movie club. This show was for a premium, with the ticket priced at 90/- , which is almost double the ordinary price. We planned to donate the surplus, so collected, to an NGO called Little Angels for Aged, which serves the old people who were abandoned by their kith and kin. It does an excellent work and certainly needs a helping hand from us. Ora Vols( Oracle Volunteers)® have been associated with this NGO for some time.
The project started with high expectations, with an initial plan of donating about Rs. 15,000/-. However, suddenly, the entire momentum was lost and things started crawling. We had to run places just to make sure that the entire event wouldn’t turn up in to a fiasco. Finally, it ended up in a decent way. We initially started with the target of selling about 250 tickets and if still people were left, we thought we would conduct one more show the next day. Though the bookings started the way we expected them to, but as the time progressed, bookings almost got stagnated. At this juncture, we had to some how see to it that the bookings picked up again. So, we decided to send the org-wide mail, reminding people that the bookings were still open and that they could still avail the opportunity. This helped us a little. Also, I reduced the total number of tickets to 200 and cancelled the plans of the second show totally. Even this could not solve our entire problems. Just to make things worse, our strength went down by 3. We had too much of work and too few people to handle. Being the in charge of the Movie Club, I literally had to spend my entire time for this, on the day before the show. I had to collect the money, go to the theatre, pay the guy, get the tickets, group the volunteers, sort the tickets, distribute them and collect the money. To top this, there were many small issues like seat adjustments, last minute cancellations and requests that ate away my working hours. We were finally left with four un-sold tickets. But, that’s O.K. finally had a decent surplus. I guess, with the money so collected, we will be able to give something to the NGO.
From all this, I have learnt one thing. Never take things (and people) for granted. This will only inhibit you from planning for contingencies. I presumed I would be able to sell all the 250 tickets and so, did not really care to think about what I would have to do in case I was not able to sell them all. Also, I still feel the timing of the show was not apt. Had we gone for a first show or a matinee, we could have sold more tickets. Any ways, I don’t have any regrets because all these are just lessons to learn and nothing more than that.
Well, time for me to have a shower and leave for my friend’s treat.
Luv