written by Meg Martin, GM
There are many 'sophisticated' ways to raise money for a community organisation. You can run a gala dinner. Apply for grants. Build a donor programme. Organise an auction. Sell tickets to something impressive involving fairy lights, tablecloths, and an energetic person with a microphone.
OR!
You can put some sausages on the BBQ outside a shop and see what happens.
I'm a Canadian who moved to New Zealand way back in 2009. I was used to fancy events, school fairs, or recycling drives. But, for generations of New Zealand clubs, schools, charities, and community groups, the sausage sizzle has remained one of the great constants of fundraising. It is beautifully uncomplicated.
Sausage. Bread. Onions, if you've got someone patient enough to deal with them (and the resulting tears!). Sauce. Possibly mustard if you're running a particularly sophisticated operation. And somewhere nearby, a handwritten sign explaining that yes, you do take EFTPOS.
Well. Hopefully.
Because the sausage sizzle itself may be simple, but anyone who has actually organised one knows there is an entire logistical operation hiding beneath that innocent slice of white bread (or wholemeal! See aforementioned 'sophisticated operation').
First, someone has to book the spot.
Then comes the calculation. How many sausages? This is where confidence goes to die.
Buy 100 sausages and 150 people will appear. Buy 300 sausages and you'll spend the final hour staring at several untouched trays of sausages while encouraging everyone you know to have another one.
"You could take some home for dinner?"
Nobody wants sausage sizzle leftovers for dinner, but desperation makes optimists of us all.
Then there's the bread.
You will need approximately the right amount, except somehow you won't do it. The relationship between sausages and slices of bread exists outside the normal laws of mathematics.
And onions. Ahhhhh the onions!
Every sausage sizzle starts with someone enthusiastically saying, "We should definitely do onions". Three hours later, that same person is standing over the chopping board with tears streaming down their face and the haunted expression of someone reconsidering every decision that brought them to this moment.
There's other questions. Who has the tongs? Did someone bring gloves? Where's the cash float? Who was bringing the chilly bin? Why are there 6 bottles of tomato sauce and no mustard? Can we put that table there? Is this gazebo actually ours? Does anyone know how to fold it back up?
And perhaps the most dangerous sentence in community fundraising: "Someone will have one".
Someone does not always have one. This is how community organisations slowly become owners of 13 extension leads, 4 trestle tables, and a collection of miscellaneous plastic tubs that no one remembers buying.
Then there's the shifts! You start with a beautiful roster:
10am to 11am: Joan and Mike
11am to 12pm: Sarah and Dave
12pm to 1pm: Michelle and Steve
By 12:20pm, Joan is still there, nobody has seen Dave, Steve thought it was next Saturday, and someone's husband has been recruited because he happened to walk past.
Honestly, the longer I spend here in New Zealand, the more I think this might be the most authentic form of community volunteering there is. Because somehow, despite all of this, it works!
People stop.
They buy a sausage even when they're not particularly hungry...or because their dog is giving them the eyes.
Sometimes they hand over $5 and tell you to keep the change. Sometimes they ask what you're raising money for and end up having a 10-minute conversation with the person behind the table.
Kids hover hopefully near the sauce bottles. People you haven't seen for months appear.
Someone will inevitably tell you that you need to put the onions underneath the sausage (Bunnings... I'm looking at you!). Someone else will strongly disagree. Entire relationships have probably ended over this issue.
And buried underneath all the jokes is something quite lovely. The sausage sizzle works because it is accessible.
Nobody needs to buy a $100 ticket. Nobody has to dress up. Nobody needs to understand a complicated campaign or fill in a form.
You walk past, smell onions (ideally!), find a couple of dollars, and help the local football club, rescue organisation, school, kapa haka group, animal charity, scouting group, community trust, or whoever else is standing behind the BBQ that day.
It's fundraising at its most direct.
There's also something important happening on the other side of the table.
A sausage sizzle gives people an easy way to help.
Not everyone wants to join a committee. Not everyone can commit to volunteering every Thursday night. But there's lots of people who will happily give you two hours on a Saturday to cook sausages, take payments, or shout "SAUSAGE SIZZLE!" at strangers with an enthusiasm that becomes increasingly unhinged as the morning progresses.
These small jobs matter. They bring people into organisations. They give existing volunteers something sociable to do together. You talk while you cook. You catch up. You complain about the weather. Someone tells a terrible joke. A new volunteer learns everybody's names.
Sometimes that connection is worth almost as much as what goes into the fundraising tin.
Of course, the return on sausage-related investment can vary. Wildly. If you spend $280 on food and supplies, recruit 8 volunteers for four hours and finish the day $93 ahead, you may understandably begin questioning the business model.
That's where a little realism comes in.
Sometimes a sausage sizzle is a fantastic fundraiser. Sometimes it's better at visibility than revenue. Sometimes it works because food has been donated, the site is busy, and someone on the team knows exactly what they're doing.
And sometimes you finish the day thinking, "We are never doing that again!". Only to find yourself doing it again 6 months later.
Because there's a reason these things survive.
Community fundraising doesn't always need to be innovative. We spend so much time looking for the next idea, the clever campaign, the new income stream. Sometimes the old ideas keep turning up because they still do the job. They raise a few dollars. They put an organisation in front of its community. They give volunteers a reason to stand around together for a few hours. They start conversations. They make people feel involved.
And, occasionally, they provide lunch. With onions. And mustard.
So here's to the humble sausage sizzle. To the early starters, the onion choppers, the emergency supermarket runners, the person guarding the cash box, the volunteer who somehow ends up staying for all three shifts, and the brave soul who agrees to clean the BBQ afterwards.
You may not feature prominently in the annual report, but you are part of a very long and noble New Zealand tradition.
Now....who's got the tongs?!