FastTrack Fundraising Tips and Articles

Online fundraising offers nonprofits the opportunity to reach new audiences while building stronger relationships with existing constituents who are spending more time on the Internet. For organizations used to communicating via direct mail and telemarketing, embarking on a digital strategy presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. Here, Pamela Barden, VP and group director, Russ Reid; Debbi Barber, president, Grizzard Communications Group; Vinay Bhagat, chief strategy officer, Convio; and Angie C. Moore, SVP and GM, fundraising services group at Merkle offer their Dos and Don’ts when it comes to online fundraising.

Pamela Barden, VP and group director, Russ Reid

Do: Think about the entire online experience

Begin with the subject line. It won’t “close the deal,” but it could stop further action if done incorrectly. On mobile devices, recipients see about 20 characters of your subject, so make every one count. Test your links. If you say “click here,” make sure “here” goes someplace that moves the reader closer to giving. Immediately send a short, warm acknowledgment for every donation, telling how the gift is being used.

Don’t: Don’t forget the small details

Don’t make the online donation form too complicated; it’s about getting the donation, not collecting every bit of information you’ll ever want. Don’t forget to include your mission statement on your Web site. Also, don’t assume a potential donor will stumble across your Web site and decide to give; be proactive online and offline in driving potential donors there.

Debbi Barber, president, Grizzard Communications Group

Do: Create seamless integration across channels

Direct mail pieces should have a unique URL landing page that supports the campaign and tracks direct mail visitors to the Web site. E-mail blasts to overlapping direct mail and online constituents should be coordinated and timed for maximum impact. Highlight critical campaigns featured in direct mail and e-mail within the online donation form. Integrate special campaign offers within paid search creative. Don’t just create a campaign and then add on a digital component.

Don’t: If raising funds is your goal, do not have all of your efforts pushed to the main Web site.

There is typically too much happening on the homepage for a fundraising message to stand out and be clear. Instead, create landing pages that focus on the reasons to give and drive potential donors to these pages.

Vinay Bhagat, chief strategy officer, Convio

Do: Empower constituents to act for you

Online tools provide great vehicles to harness supporters’ passion for fundraising, recruitment and evangelism. This can be accomplished by writing messages that inspire donors and reflect their interests. Also be sure to make giving opportunities tangible and explain how gift levels impact your cause.

Don’t: Stop building your prospect and e-mail files

Instead, use online and creativity to reach new people and provide donors who are giving less with meaningful ways to engage. Don’t rely on the structure, skills and approaches of the past. Try to evaluate and reallocate resources from declining, slower growing areas to those that are more efficient and effective at reaching people.

Angie C. Moore, SVP and GM, Merkle’s fundraising services group

Do: Recognize that retention is a metric, not a strategy

Take the time to understand what matters to your constituents and then create online messages around those interests. Being relevant is king when it comes to having mass market conversations with your donors. Relevance drives satisfaction, and satisfaction affects retention. Loyalty equals more support for your mission.

Don’t: Never underestimate the value of non-donor behavior

Every action — dialing a 1-800 number, changing an address, volunteering, requesting information, and more — is an indication of interest and a critical ingredient in the relationship value recipe. Don’t be afraid to model these interactions and understand the true value of the full relationship, not just the donations part.

Source: http://www.dmnews.com/dos-and-donts-of-online-fundraising/article/146504/

A candle fundraiser is a great way for school clubs, cheer squads, or scout groups to raise funds because the unit price is high and most sales are for multiple units. Here’s how you can maximize your candle fundraising profits.

Provide samples
Believe it or not, using sample candles doubles the sales volume. Why? Because people can see, touch, and most importantly, smell the candles.

The fragrance is what sells the product and that doesn’t come through on the brochures. Not until they start providing scratch & sniff versions anyway!

Order at least two sample candles for each seller. Get a variety of all the popular fragrances in the main styles. Your fundraising company can easily tell you which ones those are and you can use the samples to fill orders, so you’re not wasting any money.

Use a sales script
I’m a big believer in kids actually getting out there and doing their own selling, so you need to teach them how to sell. Surprisingly, it’s not that hard to do.

As the kids say, here’s the thing. You must do these three things:

Smile and introduce yourself while making eye contact, then state why you are raising funds.
Ask for their help and use the word “because” to justify it.
Recommend a favorite and place the sample in their hands.
“Hi, I’m Jimmie Jones and we’re raising funds because we need new computers at school. Can you help us out by buying a candle? This French Vanilla one smells great!”

And that’s when you hand over a sample candle and an order brochure. After that, you keep quiet until they ask a question or agree to place an order.

Sell a second product
Another great way to maximize profits is by offering something completely different. If the customer doesn’t like the candles, you can quickly pitch your alternative.

Or, if they buy, you can upsell them with the same offer. Same number of sales calls, double the profits.

One product that works especially well is a fundraising card offering two-for-one discounts on pizza or similar products from fast food chains. These retail for $10 and cost $2, so there’s plenty of extra profit built in.

Plus, they appeal to families because they provide real value for the price. They get their money back the first time they use the card, so it’s a great deal for them.

Offer sales incentives
Motivation is a wonderful tool because people always act in their own best interest. By offering sellers prizes for every sales level they exceed, you motivate even the worst ones to reach the first bonus level.

Plus, your top sellers will keep cranking out the sales to achieve the really good prizes for selling hundreds of dollars worth of candles. Your supplier will provide certain prize packages, but I recommend supplementing those with extras like a free discount card or items donated by local businesses.

You can even spend some of the profits on really great prizes like a videogame console, the newest games, or an iTunes gift card. Just make sure you inform your sellers about all the great prizes available.

When you start, have them state their sales goals by prize level in front of their peer group. Why? Because fear of failure and peer pressure are truly powerful motivators!

Reach a bigger audience
Another way to increase sales is to expand your sales targets beyond family, friends, and neighbors. Set up sales tables at local events or even at high-traffic shopping center locations.

Use big signs to spell out why you’re raising funds. That helps pre-sell people as they approach. For many of these sales, you might need to fill them immediately from your sample inventory. Still, it’s an excellent way to make hundreds more sales!

Candle Fundraiser Summary

Boost your candle fundraiser profits by providing samples, teaching your sellers a simple sales script, selling an alternate product, and offering sales incentives. In addition, you can sell even more candles by expanding your marketing efforts beyond just family friends, and neighbors.

Take some time to develop the right candle fundraising program, select a good supplier, and watch your profits soar to new heights!

These days we all use digital cameras and reproduce our cherished memories via a printer. While the fascinating art of operating manual cameras appears to be in decline, people only become more interested in displaying their favorite photographs at home and in the office.

Because everybody wants to protect valuable photographs while proudly putting them on view, magnetic fridge frames are a unique and increasingly popular fundraiser that will help our organization make great profits. The frames can be fixed on refrigerators, filing cabinets, office walls and other flat surfaces. They come in different colors and sizes, holding between 3 and 13 photographs in creative and energetic styles. There are even special designs for lovers of cats and dogs!

From your organization’s point of view, magnetic fridge frames are the perfect fundraiser because it makes your job hassle-free. All the necessary sales and promotional materials are provided, and all your organization needs to do is to take the orders and distribute the products. Specifically, the full-color brochures and order forms can be either mailed to your organization or quickly downloaded from the Internet. Then the magnetic fridge frames will be sent to you in 5 to 7 business days.

Research shows that an average supporter of your organization will spend about 70 dollars on this fundraiser, or 4.5 frames. Obviously, the more magnetic fridge frames you are able to sell, the more money can be raised for your organization. In general, there is a 40-percent profit from the sale of 20 or less magnetic fridge frames, each of which costs between 7 and 20 dollars. For sales of more than 150 frames, your organization will be able to make 55 percent of profit. Best of all, this fundraiser is new and easy to manage, and can be started right away!

We all love dining out, whether it is for special occasions such as Mother’s Day (which is coming soon!) and birthdays, or just for some fun and relaxation. Even the most talented and devoted family cook would like to get some rest and enjoy having delicious meals brought to his or her table.

This is why restaurant gift cards are an ideal fundraiser for businesses that are keen to become involved in their local communities. Not only can fundraising supporters save up to 60 percent on their restaurant meals, but participating restaurants also receive free advertising opportunities and create good sales.

More importantly, this is a fundraiser that is easy to organize. All you need to do is to order at least ten $50 gift cards at the price of only $10 each, specify your contact details, and then the cards will be delivered to your door in two to four business days. There is no deadline before which the gift cards have to be sold, and all cards unsold (which are rare) may be returned. Better still, by selling each gift card at the price of $20, your business is making $10 profit.

Finally, be sure to inform your supporters that they can redeem their gift cards at Restaurant.com (http://www.fundraising.restaurant.com/). Whether their favorite meal is vegetarian, seafood, Italian, Mexican or Chinese, there are thousands of participating restaurants proudly displaying their contact details in this website. All one need to do is to enter his or her gift card code numbers online. Then they will be able to search for restaurants using either their zip codes and preferred search radius (such as within one mile from their residences) or regions of their states (such as New York, Long Island & Vicinity, Queens, Jamaica, near the John F. Kennedy International Airport).

Package your sunflowers into a Sunflower gram for extra value! Mothers will love that personal touch.

Things You’ll Need:

• Vase (optional)
• Mother’s day card or note
• 3-4 sunflowers for a bouquet, 1 sunflower for a single gram

Instructions

Step 1:

After ordering and receiving your sunflower fundraiser, select sunflowers that are able to hold their heads up with ease. Sunflowers have very heavy blooms, and older flowers will begin to droop on the stalk. You want to find those that stand tall and firm on their stems.

Step 2:

For  a single gram, take one flower and tie with a ribbon near the head of the flower, to create an impressive and cheery Mother’s Day gift.

For a bouquet, simply use three or four flowers.

Step 3 (optional):

Choose a tall, slim vase in which to package your gift of sunflowers if you would rather not sell them in a hand-held bouquet. Sunflowers are very top heavy, so make sure any vases you buy can hold the flowers steady (the water in the vase will help to stabilize it somewhat).

Step 4:

Attach a card that mentions the sunfloewrs with a ribbon to the stem on the bottom of the bouquet or the flower head. You can create a variety of card messages that supporters can choose from.  Sell each sunflower gram for $4.00 or a bouquet for $10.00.

Keeping kids from sweets is a goal that is nearly impossible to achieve. We all know that sweets are one of the most successful products in fundraising events. However, we are also acutely aware that childhood obesity is a serous problem.

Exactly how can these two conflicting views be reconciled? As usual, balance is the key. Letting kids have free access to sweets will lead to disaster. However, we don’t need to be parents to realize that the more we try to keep kids from something, the more they will want to try it out.

For those fundraisers who need to use chocolates and other confectionaries in their initiatives, but who want to help teachers and parents protect children from health problems such as obesity and tooth decay, here are some useful tips:

• Emphasize the fact that your fundraising efforts, including through the sale of sweets, will benefit the whole community. Demonstrate that yours is a sensible and responsible organization working for the neighborhood.
• Respect the wishes of families to not participate in your organization’s fundraising event. Inform them that instead of purchasing sweets, they can show their support by donating a small amount of money.
• Work with teachers and parents to promote the values of nutritional education and lifestyle programs. Use your fundraising event as an opportunity to educate kids about “sometimes” foods and moderate consumption of sweets.
• Ensure that part of the money raised is used to support an activity-based initiative, such as a fun run or walkathon. Dynamically advocate for this activity in your community as you sell the sweets.

In short, there is nothing more important than our children’s well-being. While trying to raise funds, we should also endeavor to balance between consumption of sweets and pursuit of active and healthy lifestyles.

The best type of fund raiser would be a party. Everyone loves a party. It is a way to unwind and have fun with friends. So for this, the organizers should choose a theme. After deciding on one theme, they should decide on a certain group of people they would want at that party as these people would want to be with other people whom they have something in common with. An example would be a party just for employees of a certain company. Another example would be a party just for bloggers. Only certified bloggers would be allowed to participate. This would ensure that the people would more or less know each other hence bringing together more people as it targets a certain audience.

The next thing would be to get a location for this party. It could be at an open air venue or a big function room. It would depend on the number of people the organizers are expecting to attend. After which they must find sponsors to be able to pay for the location and other expenses that might occur while planning this event. The sponsors will also pay for the costs of the sound systems and lighting systems as it is important that a party have a good lighting and music. Also check if you will be able to get disc jockeys or DJs to mix music for your party because that would add pizzazz to the whole event. If not ensure that you would have a good sound system that would produce good sounding music for the people.

As it is a party, it should be decided as to whether food and drinks will be free. If food and drinks will be free, it will definitely bring people flocking in. Freebies and raffles are also highly recommended to entice people to come. An example would be a free case of Coke for those who bring two more friends along. This would urge people to bring their friends along. It could also be done that free flowing drinks will be given instead of food and drinks. But do check out the age range of the crowd that you would want attending your party. If you do have a party with free flowing drinks, it might be advisable that this party be for people of a certain age only. You can also opt to have a limited amount of food and drinks to be able to cater to both needs of the group. Just make sure you take into consideration the type of group you would want at your fundraiser.

The costs of the tickets should just be at a minimum level in order to make people want to go. If it were too pricey, they will opt to not go instead of spending such a big amount. This sort of event could be advertised through flyers. It is highly advisable to get volunteers to go around selling tickets to different people. Also send out mass electronic mails (emails) to friends to urge them to attend and bring other friends.

The best way to learn more about another culture and another country is by eating their cuisine. Their food would give you an idea of how their country is and what type of food they like. The type of food they like says something about how they are as a race and as people that are a part of this world.

A good and innovative fundraiser is a food sale. But this is not just any food sale but rather an international food sale. One can advertise this to be an educational and worthwhile experience. While one is learning about different cultures, one is also helping a certain cause.

For this sort of fundraiser, the organizers would need to decide on a venue. A school with an open field would be good. One reason would be because students do need to eat and the food sale would be something new for them. Rather than eating at the cafeteria, they can be tasting something new.

The second thing the organizers need to decide on a time and the duration of the food sale. A good duration would be five days. This will give the organizers time to raise enough money and give them a chance to rotate the menu as to ensure that people will keep coming back for more educational and gastronomical experiences.

Organizers should also decide on the type of food that would be served. One day could be all South east Asian food. They can sell sinigang from the Philippines, satay from Malaysia and curry form Singapore. Another day could be devoted to Asian cuisine. This would include food from other parts of Asia. Another day would be solely about Mediterranean cuisine. They could serve kebabs among others. The fourth day could be the rich Western food. They can serve Italian, French and Spanish food. The last day could be a mixture of the bestsellers from the past four days. The organizers should also find out and get an estimate of the possible population they would get in order for them to choose how many types of foods to sell. They should also have desserts apart from the usual savory dishes.

For sponsors, they could talk to different restaurant owners and culinary schools because this is more along their line of business. These sponsors could advertise themselves and have booths along with the food sellers so the buyers would have an idea. In turn these sponsors could also help the organizers by advertising the food sale in their establishments or schools.

In promoting this fundraiser, it is important to stress out that this food sale does not only give back something to a cause but it also allows the participant and buyers to have a peek of different cultures. Make it sound like an enjoyable learning experience so that people would go and check out what it is all about. Just make sure that the prices are reasonable enough to make sure that people would indeed buy the food being sold there.

One of the traditional fund raisers is to conduct a bake sale. During bake sales, people would come together with their baked goodies and sell them off to people for a certain cause. For this sort of fundraiser, one would need about a month to organize this event. One would need to find a location that is accessible to many people. If it is to be held at a public park or open space, the organizers would need to talk to people in charge of those areas to discuss possible charges and how they can go about.

There should be different people who would be assigned to make certain baked goodies that would cater to the market that they are selling to. It would be a good choice to make sure that the consumer would have different choices. It would not be advisable that three women be asked to bake apple pies. So discuss in advance what the types of baked goodies would be made to ensure that everything will be finished and nothing will go to waste. Create a budget for the bakers to follow so that you would be able to minimize the cost and make maximum use of the profit which would just go straight to the cause.

Get sponsors for this bake sale. Find companies and individuals that are willing to support your cause. These sponsors would shoulder any possible cost that might come about while preparing this bake sale. The sponsor and the organizer should come up with a scheme as how they would be able to repay the sponsor for shouldering the costs. An example would be by placing tarpaulins up around the area advertising the company or individual who sponsored the bake sale. Call up companies which are known to sponsor causes so that you will have an easier time convincing them about your cause.

Make sure that the bake sale is advertised. Make flyers and pass it around to people who might be interested. If you are holding it in a residential area, pass it around to all the houses to ensure that you will get some people to come over. If you are holding it in a public area, pass the word to people whom you would see around the area. It would also be good to hold this bake sale in a school because one could be sure of a crowd due to the number of students. But always put up tarpaulins or give away flyers to give the people in that area an idea that a bake sale will be taking place.

It would be good to have a bake sale during a weekend to make sure that everyone will be rather free to attend and check out the goodies. Also have a day end sale to ensure that all the baked goodies will be disposed of. About two hours before the bake sale ends, cut everything by 20 to 50 percent to ensure that people will buy these.

SB12 Fundraiser

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Over the past three decades the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and it has more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years (Source: U.S. Department of Health). For years, children have been school fundraising with chocolate, cheesecake, frozen pizzas … and more chocolate. Even with the alarming statistics on childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes, parent-teacher organizations and coaches had few alternatives to the constant “obesity fundraising.” That is, until FastTrack Fundraising came along.

FastTrack Fundraising, an online provider of fundraising ideas and solutions, offers a variety of alternatives to selling fat-laden chocolate and cheesecake. Among them are the recently launched “CalPak Healthy Snacks Fundraiser,” which contains popular treats such as Chex Mix and Pepperidge Farms Goldfish. Each snack contains less than 30% fat, less than 35% sugar, less than 10% saturated fat, and less than 250 calories. One master case contains 66 treats and raises $264. The CalPak fundraiser is guaranteed to meet all SB12 laws and nutrition regulations, so fundraising leaders can ease their policy worries.

“Now school groups are free to choose from a wide array of fundraising options. With the California SB12 regulation in effect, and many other states following suit, groups need fundraising alternatives more than ever,” says Harold Y. Tan, CEO of FastTrack Fundraising. “We’re glad to work with huge brand names to provide a healthy selection of fundraising ideas to the fundraising leaders.”

School fundraising is critical to funding education in schools nationwide, and has traditionally been dominated by the same fundraising products year after year. Almost every parent has experienced their child coming home with several candy bars or brochures featuring high-priced cheesecake. Now kids and parents can finally take a break from selling obesity and choose a fundraiser that won’t result in unnecessary health concerns.