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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Raising funds for any organization can be a daunting task. Setting solid and useful goals for your event is a critical step toward a hugely successful outcome. Here are some great tips on setting your goals and getting you started on your way to a profitable and fun fundraising event. Don’t settle for less. Check out these simple tips!

Use the SMART goals technique to make sure your goals are useful and will have an impact on your bottom line. All of your goals should meet the SMART criteria.

Specific. Decide how much money you need to raise and how the money will be used. If you connect the use of the money to the interests and emotions of your volunteers, your team will be much more engaged and energized. For example, if your goal for the fundraiser is “to raise as much as possible, as soon as possible, for use sometime on a project,” it will be difficult for your volunteers to connect and engage with the goal. Instead try a goal like, “we will raise $3000 within 3 weeks and the money will be used to buy new uniforms for our team.” Team members will now know how their fundraising work will affect them. If you’re raising funds for a charitable organization, the same idea applies. You goal could be something like, “we need to raise $1500 by October 20th to help Mary with cancer treatment expenses.” See how much more powerful your specific goals are?

Measurable. Making your goals measurable goes right along with making them specific. Measurable goals allow you to know if you fundraising event is a success. These goals will also allow you to check your progress part way through your event. Best of all, if you have a measurable goal, and your team meets the goal, you have a superb reason to celebrate your success at the end of your event!

Agreed-upon. Be sure you are communicating with your team and that each member understands and supports the fundraising goals. Ongoing communication is critical to a successful event. Regularly communicate progress and check-in with individuals who may need assistance.

Realistic. Set goals for your team that are realistic and attainable. There is nothing more de-motivating than having a goal imposed that you don’t think you can reach. Remember to consider the natural gifts that each of your team members brings to the table. Use those on the team with natural sales personalities to do the selling. Have members who aren’t as comfortable selling handle organization and paperwork. Play to the strengths of your team!

Time-framed. The time frame is a very important component to a successful fundraising event. 3 weeks creates a sense of urgency and fosters enthusiasm. Volunteers can participate and not be overwhelmed by a long event that requires too much of their time. Product is delivered quickly so the customers can have their product in a timely manner. Profits are created quickly should there be a mission critical need.

If you use this SMART technique for setting your fundraising goals, you’ll be off to a solid start toward a profitable fundraising event.

With over 25 years of Fortune 500 corporate financial and management experience, I’m here to help you make your fundraising event the best ever!

All the Best!
Laurie Dunnavant
http://www.FundraisingUtah.com

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• Make sure your location is big enough to allow people to build their creations.
• Go with the Lego theme and have block shaped appetizers and desserts. Serve drinks that sport the bright Lego colors.
• Hold a building competition – the tallest tower, the best vehicle design, the best holiday display, etc.
• Run a raffle for some Lego prizes. The LEGO Store carries a lot more than just Legos. Think t-shirts, keychains, and clocks in addition to the building sets.
• If you want to create a more specific theme, host a Lego Star Wars or Lego Pirates event.
• Provide plenty of Legos for folks to have fun with. This might involve an investment upfront, but the Legos can be used over and over again if you host other Lego events.
• Charge a ticket price that covers the cost of food, beverages, and supplies, plus leaves 25-50% for profit. Remember, you will also be making money on the raffle.

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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FUNdraising: 50 Proven Strategies for Successful School Fundraisers by Frank Sennett lives up to the claim on it’s back cover – ” Creative new approaches and clever twists on classic fundraising events!”

The Internet is the perfect way to connect charities, fundraisers and donors under a common cause. Find out how to use the Internet to start fundraising online.

Social Fundraising

Friends and family are the best sources for fundraising support, and social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter make it easy to reach out to your entire social circle.

Use social networking websites to tell people about your fundraising efforts. You can create a separate account so friends can follow your fundraising experience, or post messages to your personal account. Be careful not to spam your friends, but they shouldn’t mind you telling them what you’re up to.

Use Free Fundraising Websites and Resources

Websites like JustGiving make it easy to fundraise online. You can set up a fundraising page in minutes and track your fundraising goal. You can also collect credit card donations via fundraising websites, which is really convenient for your donors.

Make Your Online Fundraising Memorable

Don’t just ask your friends for money – turn your fundraising into an experience everyone will want to follow.

Free blog services like WordPress make it possible to start a website even if you don’t know how to write code. Then, blog, tweet and post about your fundraising experience leading up to your fundraising goal. This will give your readers more of a connection to what you’re doing. You can also use your website to link to more information about your charity.

Online Fundraising the Easy Way

The Internet is an instant way to reach an audience of friends, family and even strangers. Sometimes it isn’t the perfect substitute for a face-to-face fundraising appeal (you may still need to phone your grandmother and tell her what you’re doing) but you can still accomplish a lot of fundraising online with the help of free websites like JustGiving, WordPress and Twitter.

Use the Internet to your advantage and spread the word about your next fundraising cause!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sharon is the co-founder of 100 Fundraising Ideas (UK), a community for finding and sharing fundraising ideas, charity events and experiences. In her free time, Sharon enjoys writing, web design and – of course – fundraising!

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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.

Please share your ideas for raising money for these important causes.

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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