Volunteering with Girls on the Run of Las Vegas, I had the privilege of serving as a local event coordinator for LUNAFEST Las Vegas, a fundraising event that was held yesterday at Homewood Suites in Henderson, Nevada.

LUNAFEST is a nationally touring women’s film festival that is sponsored by LUNA Bar, this makers of the women’s nutrition bar. Women-focused non-profit organizations can apply to host an event in their community, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to charity. Fifteen percent (or a minimum of $250) goes to LUNA’s featured charity The Breast Cancer Fund, which is dedicated to eliminating the environmental causes of breast cancer, and the remainder of the proceeds benefit the local charity. This year over 150 events were held nationwide. From the LUNAFEST website you can also search if there’s an event being held in your community.

LUNA selects 10 short films each year to be shown nationwide. You can read about this year’s selections here. My personal favorites were Tightly Knit, Touch, Top Spin and Mother of Many. If you’re a film-maker, you can send in a short-film for consideration and the chosen film-makers each win $1,000. The films this year were a mix of drama, animation, documentary and foreign short-films.

LUNA provides a tremendous amount of tools to help you put on a successful event. If you’re selected to host an event, you have access to checklists, time lines and event planning tools so that even someone with limited event planning experience could host a successful event. With our Girls on the Run of Las Vegas event, I worked with members of our advisory team to plan the event, so we split the workload in terms of marketing and logistics. Almost everything for our event was donated from community partners – the venue, raffle prizes, swag bag items, and much of the food and wine – so that nearly all of our proceeds could benefit charity. If you’re thinking of hosting a LUNAFEST event, I would estimate the commitment to be around 10-15 hours per month for the 4 months leading up to the event.

Overall my Girls on the Run colleagues and I were happy our first attempt to hold a LUNAFEST. The event yielded over $1,000 for charity through ticket and raffle sales. Best of all, our attendees seemed to have a great time.