Do you have a cause for which you need to raise funds? While some solicit donations, have auctions, or sell goods to raise funds, one excellent and popular way to do this is to sell chocolate. There are companies who sell chocolate specifically prepared for these kinds of sales. Sometimes you can even have special wrappers printed up advertising your cause which will remind the customer or donor of the good deed they’ve done by donating. If you think about it, selling chocolate is perhaps one of the easiest ways of raising money and for obvious reasons. Without further adieu, here are some steps for fundraising with chocolate:
1. Seek out a company that sells chocolate for fundraising. Try searching online or asking around, especially people who work in schools or other not for profit institutions should have experience with fundraising and possibly selling chocolate.
2. Figure out what amount of time is needed to raise a set amount of funds. Order a logical amount, say 500 chocolate bars to sell in one month for example.
3. First, ask your family and friends to buy chocolate from you, this is almost always a source for quick and easy sales.
4. Research if it is legal to sell items such as chocolate for fundraising in public places in your location. Being fined for breaking any such law will only hurt your fundraising.
5. Research and look for good public locations with lots of foot or stopped car traffic in which you can sell large amounts of the chocolate. There is always power in numbers!
6. Also check with local store owners to see if they will let you sell in front of their shops because these are high traffic areas.
7. Always tell customers or donors that you highly appreciate their support and to tell their family and friends about your cause. This could mean more sales!
8. After your family and friends have finished their first chocolate bars, ask them to buy more!
9. Keep careful track of how much money you are raising and in what timeframe.
10. Providing you have sold most or all of the chocolate within the time frame of when you need to raise funds, consider your efforts successful and your customers happy not only for donating to your cause, but also for having bought enjoyable chocolate!
By all means conceivable, the beautiful thing about chocolate is that it is a popular treat and people buy it all the time. If they know they can buy chocolate while supporting a worthwhile cause, this not only diverts them from purchasing store bought chocolate but may also make them feel more generous and wind up buying more chocolate from you than they normally would. Also, chocolate is quickly eaten and this is a perfect scenario for you to sell to repeat customers, often more than twice in some cases. If you follow the above steps and plan carefully, successful fundraising by selling chocolate is almost always attainable. There are rarely any reasons not to employ this method of fundraising.
I can think of two reasons not to employ this method:
1. Childhood (and adult) obesity
2. 50% of the money raised goes to the cost of goods — not an effective use of time or money.
@HelenS
1) It’s all about moderation. Chocolate is excellent IN moderation! In my opinion it’s the parent’s job to regulate their children’s diet.
2) Every day new fundraisers are born. Some better than others. But regardless of the costs I’ve yet to hear of an organization that has lost money on a chocolate bar fundraiser.