Interested in hosting a Dance-A-Thon satellite event of your own? Nathan has provided a list of notes and recommendations, things that worked really well for at event and things he would do differently. You can use them as a springboard and create an event of your own. You can also check out “Swing Dance For Life’s” website!
1) People really will go to amazing lengths to support a good cause –as exemplified by the great volunteer and support staff that helped out with the event; having a reliable and trustworthy support crew was essential to pulling this off. Thank you to all of them!
2) Yes, 5-weeks of lead time *is* enough to plan and promote a fundraiser of this scale…assuming you don’t have a day job and have a good support crew.
3) If you’re doing a workshop and dance party like we were…get the instructor bios, class descriptions & band listings up ASAP! People want to know what they’re getting.
For us three bands for the evening dance was impressive and nice variety…some people commented that two bands would have been more than enough.
4) The “Swing Clinic” idea where students could sign up for 15-minute mini-private lessons with local instructors was extremely well received….in hindsight, maybe we should have charged a sliding-scale “co-payment” 
5) Burnie Gipson had a great idea for the dance contest format which earned a nice $415. Audience applause selected 3-4 final couples, and the audience chose the winner by donating cash into a jar for their favorite couple. Highest earning couple won a donated prize, with all the money in the jars being donated to the Dance-A-Thon fund.
6) Local instructors are a great resource! We had a resounding yes! from local instructors wanting to teach and support the event. Nearly every instructor in town on the event date taught for us.
7) People still definitely waited until the last minute to sign up….and some of my assistants/advisors were worried about critical mass and questioning whether we chose a correct price point ($65/$50/$20 early or $75/60/30 full price for the full/workshop
only/dance only registration). People showed up though…and we did have people paying $30 admission on the night of the event.
8) We had some poster board and art supplies where people could put up their decorated personal dedications and create a collage. This was a last minute idea/addition intended to give the event a more personal touch that was a huge success. For the future I would recommend letting people know about it earlier so they have time to bring their own photos to include.
9) It was extremely helpful having people capable of taking 100% charge and responsibility for their part of the event…dedicated sound man, dedicated staff dinner organizer, dedicated raffle and contest prize coordinator were all hugely helpful. I had one major
assistant who shared the month of pre-planning and organization, but once it was event day, I was extremely surprised that our volunteer staff took care of themselves…we didn’t really have to do much at the event itself, except make sure things were on time.
While emceeing the event was fun, I recommend having someone dedicated as the emcee. I was definitely running on adrenaline by that time and hoping that my sentences were intelligible on the few hours of sleep I had.