One of the key factors to a successful fundraising event and future fundraising events is to follow up with the supporters, volunteers and participants after the fundraiser is completed and the numbers are tallied!

Taking the time to add that personal touch will go a long way in the eyes of your supporters, participants, volunteers and sponsors. Take the time to send them a thank you card and thank them for the time spent helping through out the fundraiser. This will help assure that they are pleased as well and they will want to participate again next year.

Not only should you thank your supports, merchants, volunteers and supporters for their participation and contributions within your fundraising event but they will most likely want to know the ending results of the fundraiser. How much money was raised in total – Yet another reason they will want to participate in your next event, after seeing how much they raised for a good cause! Be sure and thank all the volunteers as well! While we may have good intentions, sometimes the volunteers end up getting over looked but they are the backbone of the fundraiser in most cases.

Most importantly, while you still have everyone excited about the fundraising event that just ended, take this opportunity to pick their brains and find out what they thought of the event. What did they like about the fundraiser the most? What would they do differently next time? What can be changed and why. This information is critical to the success of your next fundraiser. Be sure to ask while the information is still fresh in their minds. Who better to get feedback from then the ones that were in the trenches with you! You can create a simple questionnaire and mail them off or you can take the time to phone and ask your questions, don’t miss this opportunity to get vital information for future fundraising events!

Get all your fundraiser information, fundraising ideas and more! This season chocolate fundraisers are hot and an easy sell!

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One thousand dollars may not seem like a lot of money to some nonprofits, but to small organizations, it can be a large sum of money. Here are 7 great ideas to quickly raise $1,000.

1. Do an “Easy Thousand.” Get 10 Board members, volunteers, or donors to each ask 10 people for $10 each. You can change this to $15,625 by changing the numbers to 25 people asking 25 people for $25 each. This can also give you a bunch of new donors!

2. Hold a house party. Ask Board members, volunteers, and donors to have a dinner in their home and invite their friends. Have a staff person do a short presentation on your organization followed by a testimonial from the evening’s host. Then, give the guests the chance to make a gift. Make sure to get names and addresses so you can properly thank guests and get them on your list.

3. Have a large Yard Sale. Ask Board members, volunteers, and friends to donate their unwanted items and hold a big yard sale. Publicize it beforehand to let the community know what you’re doing and that you are trying to raise $1,000. Donate any leftovers to a local thrift store.

4. Hold a “Non Event” (Example: “No Ball at All”). Create a fictitious event and send out invitations asking people to buy “tickets” to this event that won’t take place. It’s a great theme for a mailing and usually works well.

5. Ask for donations to your organization in honor of your birthday. Most of us have more than we need anyway, so ask friends and family to make a gift in honor of your special day. Facebook has a way to easily ask online friends to make a gift and you can set a goal so that others know how much you are trying to raise.

6. Launch a viral email campaign. Write a short, compelling email and send to everyone you have email addresses for. Be sure to say that you are trying to raise $1,000. Include a link to your “Donate Now” button online. Then ask the reader to forward the email on to others who might be interested.

7. Upgrade an existing donor. Look through your current donor list and find someone who has given $500 in the past year or so. Invite them for a tour of your facility and ask them to make a $1,000 gift.

(c) Sandy Rees, CFRE

Sandy Rees is a nonprofit fundraising coach, consultant, trainer, and author. She shows small nonprofit organizations how to raise more money, gain more supporters, and strengthen their Boards. Get more great fundraising ideas and free fundraising tips in her e-zine “Bright Ideas for Fundraising.” Sign up on her website at http://www.getfullyfunded.com

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Getting and staying organized is very important to successful fundraising. If you promise donors that they’ll receive a regular newsletter or update from your organization, you’ve got to put systems in place to make sure that happens. If not, your donors may start to lose faith in you.

At the beginning of each month, it’s a good idea to review your fundraising program to see what needs to be done. I recommend you make yourself a monthly checklist to help you remember all the things you need to do.

Here are some things you SHOULD be doing at the beginning of every month:

• Change up your Thank You letter. Don’t send the same old stale letter. Change it monthly to let your donors know you’re on the ball.
• Check your grant schedule. What proposal deadlines are approaching? Are there follow-up reports that need to go out this month?
• Review your website for updates. What changes need to be made on your website? If you don’t keep information fresh and current, people will stop visiting. And if the information on it is really out of date, visitors won’t take you seriously.
• Catch up your filing. Make sure that everything is put away where it belongs. This will help minimize or eliminate the clutter in your office and also make it easy to locate things later.

If you have a monthly giving program, you should check to see if all of your monthly givers are current. You might need to send a gently reminder to those who have fallen behind.

By using a checklist, you’ll get all the reminders out of your head and onto paper. Then all you have to remember is to print out a checklist and go through it at the beginning of each month.

I invite you to learn more successful fundraising ideas by visiting http://www.getfullyfunded.com and signing up for “Bright Ideas for Fundraising,” an e-newsletter distributed twice-monthly to staff and volunteers of small nonprofits.

Sandy Rees is a nonprofit fundraising coach and speaker who shows small nonprofit organizations how to raise more money, gain more supporters, and strengthen their Boards.

(c) Sandy Rees, CFRE

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We are in difficult economic times and fundraising is becoming increasingly more difficult. Schools are taking a hard look at the fundraisers they are offering, being more creative with their choices, and understanding what the return expectations are of the school families and community.

Parent volunteers are seeking to bring some of their fundraising back into the schools, rather than rely in-full on outside vendors. From advertising, promotion, and fun games to motivate the students, right down to the administrative details, they are doing their homework and succeeding!

This past Fall, one Massachusetts school decided they wanted to try something new for a change. That something new was a PTO Ideas’ Spelling Challenge. The result for their creative effort was that this 200-student, public school raised just over $13,000 in just about 2 weeks.

How did they do this? Students collected pledges for each correctly-spelled word on a spelling test. A simple concept with a dramatic outcome!

A fundraising committee of ten parent volunteers armed with the PTO Ideas’ eBook titled Budget Bashes: The Ultimate Educational Challenge were the keys to this fundraising success story. PTO Ideas is a web-based Massachusetts company dedicated to helping schools build a better parent-teacher organization.

Like many schools, who run a gift wrap, cookie, or candy fundraiser every Fall, this school wanted to try something different. Something that allowed them to hold onto the majority of the money donated by their sponsors.

This PTO Ideas’ Educational Challenge fundraiser was an enormous success because it involved the students, was academically based, was fun for the kids, offered a tax-deducton benefit to the sponsors, and had minimal expenses. Expenses were only about $285. That meant that 98% of the money collected went directly to the school.

In addition to the more than 600 individual sponsors secured by 170 students, fifteen local business stepped forward and sponsored the classrooms. The key to obtaining so many individual sponsors was understanding how to motivate and excite the students to drive the event. And, the key to gaining corporate support was that the school only asked for very small dollar amounts of $30 and $60.

Products offered by outside fundraising companies offer a quick and easy profit and are still recommended; but when combined with a creative, educational fundraiser like this Educational Challenge that’s planned in-house, the total package can make for a much more successful fundraising plan and many more satisfied parents!

V. Blaze is the Editor and Publisher of PTO Ideas, the website were schools share profitable fundraising ideas and learn how to build a better parent-teacher organization. For more information, visit PTO Ideas at http://www.ptoideas.com

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The section on putting together a street fair is very thorough and will give you a million ideas for starting or improving your own event. This section is worth the price of the book alone. I’m going to use their grab bag idea and implement it for another organization that I fundraise for.

Other great ideas that come out of this book include: the flea market, sports equipment exchange, and ways to get corporate America involved. Even if you’re not fundraising for a school, you’ll find ideas that will work for other community group fundraising.

Halloween costumes are traditionally an item you buy and use once. Unless they’re a double duty item like pajamas or a dress-up outfit your child can play in, they’re worn one day a year then disposed of, hopefully to Goodwill.

But costumes can be expensive, so before you run out to buy one, I suggest you check out Green Halloween’s National Costume Swap Day. Here you can find a swap in your area or set up one in your neighborhood so you can exchange costumes instead of buying new ones. Save money and the environment.

The swap day is October 9, so you need to sign up now if you want to host a swap. This would be a great activity to run through a school or a kid’s sports club. Turn it into a fundraiser by asking everyone to donate 5 dollars along with each costume. That’s still cheaper than buying new and it can be a fun pre-Halloween party for everyone involved.

Click here to visit the National Costume Swap Day website.

Unhealthy Fundraisers Are Out

For decades now groups that needed to raise money would turn to two tried and true options that had been sold countless times before and were a sure crowd pleaser: cookie dough and candy.

Cookie dough has grown from a bake sale item to now include both frozen and dry dough, and buckets and preformed portions. A number of companies manufacture and distribute these dough’s in flavors as mundane as sugar cookie to the ones with ingredient lists too long for this article.

Candy fundraisers are the other sure-fire way to raise money. Groups only need to buy a big box of candy and then start selling it. Hershey’s and M&M’s, with their various lines, are the big players in this market. However, recent spikes in the input costs for chocolate manufacturers is making it harder and harder for candy fundraising companies to continue offering their products at the standard $1 price point.

The problem with both cookie dough fundraisers and candy fundraisers is that they are both inherently very unhealthy. Loaded with processed sugars and trans-fats, school boards, health officials, and parents are mandating a change in the fundraising world. They want new ways to raise money that don’t endanger the health of their customers.

New Fundraising Ideas

These health concerns, the desire for something new, and the recent surge in “going green” has led to a new fundraising idea; Green Fundraising. Green fundraisers allow groups to sell items that either help the environment, help themselves, or both.

Examples of green fundraising items include organic foods, reusable shopping bags, and trees and flowers. All of them are designed to improve health or to improve the environment. They are also intentionally different from anything seen in fundraising before. People have grown weary of buying the same fundraising products year after year and green fundraisers offer them something new. Healthy fundraisers and green fundraisers look to be very much the future of fundraising.

What Green Fundraisers Mean for You

This idea of something new in fundraising is proving to be very successful for the groups willing to try it. Customers have responded incredibly well to the notion that buying something from a fundraising catalogue doesn’t mean a donation with a cheesy gift anymore but can actually mean they get something they want, can use, and often times need. This approach to fundraising makes the job of the seller much easier as the products almost sell themselves.

Jordan Gottlieb
http://www.go-green-fundraising.com
Learn more about Green Fundraising
Learn more about Healthy Fundraising

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Rec.fm allows you to recommend products to your friends via your social networks in three easy steps.

First, search for the product you want to recommend on their website.

Next, explain in 140 characters or less why you’re recommending it.

After completing the prompt to log in via Facebook or Twitter, you’ll then be given a shortened rec.fm URL to share information about the product via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and nearly a dozen other social networking platforms.

If someone makes a purchase via your recommendation, the charity of your choice will receive the majority of Rec.fm’s revenue from the sale. Read more about this creative fundraising idea at Mashable.com.

How to Hold a Bachelor/Bachelorette Raffle Fundraiser