When you want to make a difference by supporting a good cause, you may have considered many different ways that you can raise money. Most people have found that going with a fundraising event is the fastest and easiest way to reaching your goals, and with a few fundraising suggestions from us, you will be well on your way to making the best fundraiser that your friends and colleagues have ever seen.

Of course, before you even get started in planning your event, you will want to decide on the particular group that you want to help support.

Relay For Life is doing great things for cancer research, and it is no wonder that so many Americans are getting involved with Relay For Life fundraising ideas. If you’ve decided that you want to participate in Relay For Life and help to raise money for cancer research, that’s great. But you will need to consider a few things before getting started in order to maximize your profits.

The best way to pull off effective Relay For Life fundraising ideas is to gather friends, family and colleagues to participate with you. After all, you are going to be running a relay event, so the more people you can rally together the better. Most participants work as part of a team with between eight to fifteen members.

A big part of participating in Relay For Life events is gathering sponsors to donate money to your cause. But if you really want to boost your targets you could decide to sell some of our fundraising products as well.

We have a huge range of products to suit your individual needs, and these could be sold either prior to or just after your Relay For Life fundraising ideas are executed. Simply visit our product pages to find out more.

It is a fact of life that schools are fighting an uphill battle in terms of funding. There are so many costs that a school has to deal with, and most of these pop up time and time again, from the cost of general school maintenance and repair, to paying for important upgrades to school equipment like books and computer hardware.

There is also the cost of large-scale projects like completely refurbishing the school gym, or paying for regular excursions for the students to take part in. Simply put, the schools are in a bit of a tough place, and are going to need your help in order to pay for some of these things.

Volleyball fundraising is a great way to bring some extra funding to the school, while also encouraging students to get involved in helping a good cause. If your school volleyball team needs some extra money for things like gear and uniforms, then you may find that volleyball fundraising is a quick and affordable solution to your problems.

You could go for an overblown event with lots of decorations and attractions, but what really counts is giving the students something simple and fun that everybody can be a part of. Coming up with volleyball fundraising ideas that are simple should be easy enough. You could go with a traditional bake sale or pizza stall in the school cafeteria, or sell products from one of our affordable fundraising product packages.

In fact, deciding on just one idea to run with may prove challenging, since the list of ideas you have to work with is nearly endless. The best way to decide on your idea is to gather a group of organizers from around the school. You should have no trouble finding help from students once they hear about the good cause they will be supporting.

When you want to make a positive difference in the world, you may decide that holding a fundraiser is the best option. After all, fundraisers help to raise money fast and encourage people to work together in the name of a good cause.

But sometimes deciding on which cause needs your efforts the most can be a daunting decision, since there are now thousands of non-profit groups around the planet that are helping to make the world a better place.

Whichever organization you decide to support, choosing the best non profit fundraising ideas is paramount to success. The best non profit fundraising ideas are the ones that reflect the values that your chosen charity supports, while offering something fun and exciting for everybody involved. The idea you decide to go with may depend on a number of different factors, such as when and where your event will be taking place, to the number of people you have to help implement your ideas, to how much money you have to begin with.

You will want to look at these restrictions before getting started and make a realistic plan of action to pull off the best non profit fundraising ideas. Some organizers of past events have found that in order to pull off a monumental event that everybody loved being a part of they decided to use one of our product fundraising packages to help them reach their goals.

You might like to try out our Earth Candle Fundraising package in support of your chosen non-profit organization, or you might like to try something tasty with our Hershey $2 Fundraising Candy.

For more information on these products and to check out our other great fundraising products, feel free to visit our product pages to help you get started. Your next non profit fundraiser is only a few clicks away!

When you want to do something positive to help a good cause, you may have decided that mission trip fundraising ideas are the way to go. With mission trip fundraising, you will be helping Christian volunteers improve the lives of others who may have a lower quality of life.

Your efforts will go toward funding these trips and pay for expenses like travel, accommodation, and resources to make the lives of those in need better. So how do you get started with your mission trip fundraising ideas? Planning a fundraising event can be a daunting activity, especially if you haven’t had much experience in planning these kinds of events in the past.

The best way to plan out your mission trip fundraising ideas is to recruit the help of other people in your community. This could be from neighbors or family members, or you may find the most help by seeking out supporters from your local church group. These people should have no problem giving their best effort to helping your cause once they hear about all the good they will be a part of.

If you think you have a good team of participants you might like to hold an initial meeting, where everybody involved can pass around fundraising ideas. This will go a long way to making your fundraising event a huge success that will bring in the maximum amount of funding.

There are some great Christian products that you may like to sell at your event, and all of these are very easy to set up. Faith Lollipop Fundraising packages are great for children and adults alike, or you might like to go with Journey of Faith Candle Fundraisers instead. This program can be found on a few of the top fundraising websites. These candles are quite beautiful and have to be seen to be believed. They also come with a Bible verse, which will send a positive message to your customers.

Black Friday – Cyber Monday Sale

I’d like to welcome back Kirsten Bullock to Step By Step Fundraising.  Kirsten is a CFRE consultant, trainer and coach who works with leaders of non-profit organizations and ministries to bring professionalism, excellence and effectiveness to their board and fundraising efforts.

She earned her designation as a Certified Fund Raising Executive in 2002. Kirsten is currently serving as president elect of the Association for Fundraising Professionals Greater Louisville Chapter. She is an AFP Master Trainer, compiles ‘Kirsten’s Fundraising Headlines’ Blog, authors the ‘Growing Your Donors’ blog and is a contributor for SOFII (The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration).

Kirsten holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work and a Master’s of Business Administration. When not working to equip and empower people in the nonprofit sector, Kirsten sculpts, is attempting to learn to speak Danish and enjoys living in the Highlands in Louisville, Kentucky.

Building a ‘Level Four’ Vision

Once again, I’d like to welcome back Maureen Carruthers (pictured at left).  Maureen is a non-profit consultant, and the force behind the excellent blog “Low Hanging Fruit Communication” which covers many topics including social media for non-profits.

Maureen’s goal is to help nonprofit leaders reach their right people more quickly so their organizations have a greater impact,  She has over ten years experience working in and around nonprofit organizations, most recently as the Workforce Development Program Manager for the Dayton Tooling and Manufacturing Association, where she managed a robot competition based on theBattleBots television series. Previously, she managed the Orchestra Forum program for theInstitute for Cultural Policy and Practice and served as House Manager for the Delaware Theatre Company.

I have spent some time on Maureen’s blog, and I highly recommend you check her site out.  I learned a lot!  You can even sign up for Maureen’s free e-class and newsletter.

Want Better Meetings? Know when NOT to meet

Many readers at StepByStepFundraising enjoy this monthly peek at articles from our sister site TopSchoolFundraisers.com.

Even if you don’t have anything to do with school fundraising specifically, there is sure to be something interesting for you to check out.  Here is a list of article links to October’s posts.  I’ve included a short excerpt from a few of the posts, as well.

As always, if you are looking for easy to manage and highly popular fundraising ideas, I urge you to check out FastTrackFundraising, the great sponsor of both this site and TopSchoolFundraisers.  They have an outstanding selection of product fundraisers with extensive reviews from satisfied customers.

See you in November!

If You Could Pick Only Three Fundraisers to Have this Year, Which Would You Choose? Part I

If You Could Pick Only Three Fundraisers to Have this Year, Which Would You Choose? Part II

Would You Like to Make More Money at Your Next School Carnival?

Raise Thousands of Dollars through Recycling with FactoryFunding.com

If you would like to raise money for your child’s school, but you know you have to be careful not to ask too much from the other parents in the community, this is a great idea for you.

FactoryFunding.com is an established business that can help you raise significant revenue without asking parents to keep chipping in. They do this through an effective recycling program that includes ink jet cartridges, laser toner cartridges, cell phones, MP3 players and all sorts of personal electronics. A complete list of the qualifying items can be seen here.

Here is how FactoryFunding works:

When you recycle your used ink cartridges, cell phones, laptops, and small electronics with FundingFactory, your recyclables convert to cash and rewards that can get your school or nonprofit organization the things you need — for free.

School Fliers for only $5!

A Conversation with a Frustrated Fundraising Mom

Today I would like to share parts of a conversation I had just a couple of days ago with the mother of two children in a local public school system. Her daughter is in high school, and she also has a son who is in third grade. So, she’s seen the whole gamut of school fundraising in her time as a parent.

She did not know that I write a blog on this topic of raising money for schools, and I wanted her to speak freely, so I did not mention it.

We got on to this topic while our kids were at swim practice, so we had plenty of time to talk in detail. She mentioned that her daughter’s high school was doing a “test drive a car” fundraiser, very much like what I wrote about yesterday. She said that she really liked this kind of a fundraising event, because it was a very low-level commitment, both time and money-wise.

I should say that this is a very involved mother, who does regularly participate in school events, including fundraisers. Therefore, I took what she had to say with a great deal of seriousness.

Here are some of her opinions on the state of modern fundraising in our schools. See if you share any of these beliefs. My guess is that you probably do.

The Drive One 4 UR School Fundraiser by Ford Motor Company

Fundraising Bracelets Very Popular with Students

Is There a Zombie in the House?

Chocolate Fundraiser is Out, Beer & Wine Fundraiser is In!

 Back in March of this year, I wrote a blog post here that talked about the dangers of including alcohol for adults at a school fundraiser. I wrote that alcohol can add an unpredictable element to your event, which could possibly spoil what you and your team worked so hard to create.

It’s not that I’m against alcohol in any way personally, it’s just that some people get carried away with drinking, and these few individuals can ruin the event for the rest of the audience. That can negatively impact your school’s reputation as a fundraising entity and make your job much harder.

As evidence, I included in my blog an excerpt from a news article that reported on a school auction that included alcohol sales, and some parents got drunk and started to swear loudly at each other, and they came to blows.

Do You Approach Fundraising Like an Entrepreneur Would?

Recently, Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki teamed up to write a book on the subject of entrepreneurship called “The Midas Touch”.

In this book, they list five attributes that separate successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones. These characteristics are:

1. Character
2. Focus
3. Brand
4. Relationships
5. The Little Things

No matter what you think of Donald Trump, he has had a long and storied career as an entrepreneur, so it’s worth at least considering what he has to say on this matter.

I’ve stated many times before that I believe that school fundraising is a total sales job. You are trying to convince people to spend their money to buy a better product, namely a better school experience for their children. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an auction for your school, or a carnival, or a walk-a-thon. It could also be a product sale or a direct mail appeal. Whatever form your fundraiser takes, you are engaged in the art of sales.

There’s a formula in the business world that somehow proves it is less expensive to sell to established or previous customers than it is to find and develop new customers.

I’m not much of a businessman, but that seems to make sense, right? After all, you already have your previous customers’ (or clients’) names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, and even information about what they bought from you, which indicates preferences and tastes.

You just don’t have that kind of information on people you haven’t dealt with yet. So, you have to work hard and spend lots of money to get new people to become part of your non-profit community.

Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t always be looking to grow your community, but what I am driving at is there are many reasons to put a significant effort into getting more out of the people already part of the group, alumni, if you will.
Here are three ways alumni can help your organization in very important ways. The final four examples will come in the second part of this article to be published soon.

1. Fundraising. It is much easier to make a compelling fundraising case to people who already have been touched in a positive way by your non-profit. In fact, it is possible that alumni would be extra-open to receive fundraising solicitation letters by mail, since you really don’t have to convince them to give. Letter drives are much cheaper to run for the non-profit, so the overhead costs normally associated with product sales or lage events are eliminated. You just have paper, printer ink, envelopes, address labels, and postage. Not bad.

2. Public Relations. If you keep in good touch with your alumni donors and/or clients, it’s not too much of a stretch to ask them to help you spread the good word about your organization in your city or town. This doesn’t have to be very formal, but they could use a coffee mug with your organization’s logo on it at work, they could just post on their Facebook page an event of yours that they are planning on attending, they could upload photos of their volunteer experience with your group to Flickr, they could tell their friend who works at the local newspaper what great work you’re doing on behalf of…. The ist goes on. Just ask your alumni to keep thinking of you and how more people could be turned on to the group. The rest will come on its own.

3. Board Members. Non-profits are always on the look-out for new board members. The alumni ranks is a great place to start the search. And this doesn’t have to be a rushed process. Usually, alumni that are invested in the organization aren’t going anywhere. This gives the director of the group, as well as the existing board members, time to get to know the person in question and vet their background to make sure he or she is a good fit. Love of the organization is so important when picking new board members. An actively involved alumnus or alumna comes with that built in.

4. In-Kind Donations. The fourth way that alumni can be used more effectively by non-profits is to solicit goods and services at greatly reduced prices, possibly even donated completely. If you have a gentleman who was once part of your organization, and he went on to become an architect and you need blueprints for a new building, he might be able to work with you on a great price. If there was a lady who used to be a client or customer of your organization, and she is now an attorney, you might get some pro bono work out of her. The same is true for craftsmen, like electricians, plumbers, and landscapers.

I strongly suggest that you start finding out what your alumni members do for a living, and then start becoming friends with them, if you aren’t already. In a time when new income is hard to generate, reduced expenses are a great method for helping your bottom line.

5. Recruitment. The fifth way alumni members can be helpful to an organization is to help recruit new customers for you. Why spend lots of money on marketing, when we all know that word of mouth advertising works best. A strong recommendation from a friend is much more effective than a print ad or radio spot. Therefore, you should look at your alumni as walking billboards. Perhaps you can create some talking points for your alumni, so they are current on what your group offers, but really count on their passion and enthusiasm for your cause to convince others to try you out.

6. Volunteer. A sixth way that alumni can lend a hand to your organization is to volunteer. This may seem like a no-brainer, but with everybody having a busy schedule, volunteerism is often forgotten. If you can create a volunteer experience that is well-planned, rewarding, and appreciated, you’ll have your alumni clamoring to sign up.
I have often found it is also a little easier asking alumni to volunteer for things because at one point in their lives, they benefited from volunteer help. So, I’m simply asking them to pay it back a little.

7. Historical Development. The seventh suggestion I have for non-profits to use their alumni more effectively is to find a few interested people to undertake historical projects. This might include sorting through and labeling old photos, slides, and movies. Or, it could be writing histories of specific events or periods in your group’s past. It could also mean trying to collect pictures of mementos from previous eras. I think you could also get some volunteers to create attractive historical displays that could be hung in your group’s facility.

People love remembering and honoring the past, especially if they were part of it. You should capitalize on this human inclination and get as many alumni involved in preserving your organization’s history as you can. A non-profit that knows and can share its past has a much better chance to have a long and prosperous future.

Photo by: J.harwood

Last year, a 2010 Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle was stolen. The bike was painted pink and signed by a number of country music stars, such as Dolly Parton, Tim McGraw, and Taylor Swift.

Here’s the kicker: It had been donated to be sold in a benefit auction to benefit the Lexington affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The bike had been stored inside a trailer secured by chains in the organization’s parking lot. When employees returned to the office after the weekend, they noticed it was gone.

Sad.

The bike sounds irreplaceable, but I hope at least they had some insurance.

From my event management days, here are some types of event-specific insurance you can consider as you plan your benefit auction.

Property Damage Insurance

Covers the damage or loss of the property of the policy owner. For instance, if you have your auction set-up the night before and a thief slips in during the night and steals a registration laptop and some items, the typical Property Damage Insurance policy would cover those items.

Commercial General Liability (CGL) or Comprehensive General Liability

This is a basic business policy and covers major risks, including property damage and injury to people. Usually higher-risk activities (serving alcohol comes to mind) require an additional policy or rider.

Fire Legal Liability

I once worked at a benefit auction where a centerpiece started to burn. Thankfully, it was only starting to smoke when it was extinguished by the startled guests! A fire legal liability insurance policy is for such instances. Assume your auction volunteers accidentally bump a table and cause a can of sterno to ignite nearby curtains and burn down the venue. This is the policy to have on hand.

Event Cancellation

If you are holding a benefit auction outdoors and fear bad weather might cause the cancellation of the event, this policy protects against unforeseen circumstances such as that. It may also cover labor disputes or damage to the event facility or venue. (Imagine if you’d scheduled to hold your benefit auction in the Opryland Hotel in Nashville in late May 2010. The flood waters of May 3 would have prohibited you from holding the gala.)

About the Author
Benefit auctioneer Sherry Truhlar’s entertaining stories and advice is often picked up by publications (e.g. Town & Country, The Washington Post Magazine, AUCTIONEER, The Eleusis, The Virginia Auctioneer) and television (e.g. E! Style, TLC) where she inspires and teaches volunteers how to hit new fundraising records in their auction galas. Enjoy her FREE Auction Item Guide(listing the 100 best-selling items to sell in your benefit auction) at http://www.RedAppleAuctions.com