Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

When you are developing an investment portfolio, it is wise to diversify. It’s good to have a little of this and a little of that, so that if one industry falls down, your entire portfolio won’t be negatively affected.

I think that you should approach your school fundraisers in a similar fashion. You’ll have one or two major events that are time intensive, like a golf outing or auction, but you’ll also have the comparatively less intensive ones, like selling cookie dough or chocolate.

I want to draw your attention, however, to one fundraiser that is so easy, all you have to do is tell people about it and then deposit the checks.

eFundraising, which is a division of Readers Digest, has an amazing program for magazine sales. The concept is very simple.

The first thing you have to do is sign up for your own online magazine shop. The “wizard” on the eFundraising site helps you with this very simple process.

The next thing you do is email all of the people in your community with the link to the online magazine store. There are over 700 magazines available, with many of the most famous periodicals available today. Prices are up to 85% off the cover prices, so your families will get a great deal on something they would have bought on their own anyway.

And that’s it! Once the families purchase the magazines, your school will get a check for 40% of the subscription price.

In the past, I’ve written that non-profits should strive for at least 50% of the profits from a product sale, but I will make this exception, because the process is so simple and automatic. The requirement of time and effort on your part is so minimal that 40% is actually incredibly generous.

The other advantage to this magazine sale is that it can run all year long! You aren’t confined to a two week sale, for instance. You can start this magazine fundraiser at the beginning of the year, and it can run all the way until June. Whenever a family orders a subscription, you get a check. Not a bad set up, huh?

And, it gets better. eFundraising is giving away incredible incentive prizes for top sellers each month. For the months of July to December of 2008, they are giving away an Apple iPhone ($400 cash equivalent) to the person who sells the most subscriptions of all participating groups! Click here to learn how to enter the contests.

Having been the principal of an elementary school, I know how exhausting fundraising can be. The amount of labor that can go into raising money is astronomical. Therefore, I absolutely love any method of fundraising that requires so little from me, yet the money keeps rolling in. I strongly urge you to take a closer look at the magazine program through eFundraising. It is well worth your time and effort!

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Last week I wrote about three fundraising advantages that public schools have over private schools. Today I’d like to investigate the ways that private schools are in a better fundraising position than public schools.

Self-Reliance
I once had lunch with the administrator from another private elementary school. This man was new to his job, but had over 20 years experience in the public school system. He knew all the ins and outs of standardized testing, of meeting state educational requirements, and he even knew quite a bit about staff management.

However, he asked me to lunch to pick my brain on the topic of fundraising. For this man’s entire professional career, the vast majority of the funding need to run his school came from the state. He was never forced to hold an auction or a golf outing. Sure, the PTO had some bake sales, and kids sold cookie dough from time to time, but for all the important stuff, like payroll, building maintenance, and certain supplies, the state just doled out the cash when necessary.

Now however, this man found himself in a situation where parents had to pay tuition, there was no state money, and they had to meet any budget shortfalls with increases in fundraising. He was pretty nervous about such a tall order.

Having spent my entire adult life working for non-profit agencies, I was quite used to this notion of paying for everything ourselves. So, I see this as a distinct advantage for private schools. At the end of the day, we don’t have anyone to bail us out of financial difficulty. If a donor steps up and helps us out, it was only because we developed a relationship over time, so he felt comfortable making such a gift. (more…)

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Here is a very interesting article from the blog The Vegas Sculptor. First, the author is a parent of a graduating senior who has now been released of school fundraising responsibilities. (Yea!) Second, the article talks about a very controversial type of fundraising event. Definitely worth a read.

We’ve all heard about fundraising stories in which the poor teacher or principal gets coerced into shaving off or dying his hair a strange color. Here’s the latest entry into the genre… (From the Hass Foundation Blog.)

Here’s a blog entry that thinks big. Imagine prom kings and queens all over the country making a difference. Dance on!

Here is a fundraiser that I haven’t heard of before! It’s a “Great Chefs Dinner” in New York City. Very unique! Too bad the best cuisine where I live can be found at Quiznos!

This is a nifty little reminder on how to build up your volunteer corps. Good to keep on hand.

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Every once in a while, we here at Top School Fundraisers have the chance to tell our readers about fantastic opportunities that come along for their schools. Today is one of these great days.

The good folks over at eFundraising.com have just announced they will be reprising one of their most popular contests. It’s called “Win your Fundraiser!”

In order to be eligible to win this contest, your school has to first participate in one of the eFundraising product fundraisers. This could mean selling the World’s Finest Chocolate, Chippery Cookie Dough, or Gourmet Lollipops.

Even without the incentive of this contest, however, we think that if your school is going to have a product sale, you should seriously consider the eFundraising line of products due to their great prices and excellent quality.

Whatever the dollar amount of product you order, this will be the grand prize, if you win. If you ordered $2,000 worth of chocolate bars, or $5,000 of cookie dough, or $1,000 of lollipops, eFundraising would give your school back your investment! How cool is that?!

Entering the contest is easy. Once you’ve placed your order, send them an email, letter or video answering the following questions by December 31st, 2008:

1. Why should you win this contest?
2. If you win, what will your group do with the winnings?
3. What did you like best about your fundraising experience with us?

They’ll make their decision and announce the winner on January 31, 2009.

Please visit the eFundraising site to learn much more about their terrific fundraising products and get official contest rules and details.

What a fantastic opportunity to dramatically increase the amount you earn from an already very successful fundraising plan.  I strongly urge you and your school to jump right in and get involved!

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For the past seven months, I have been writing very regularly on the best ways to raise money for your school. I’ve offered advice on how to connect with your community, so that you can have the most productive fundraisers possible. I’ve written thousands of words on this subject. So, I think it would be fair to say that I have fundraising on the brain.

Therefore, it is not surprising that I had as strong a reaction as I did last night when I found myself, as an innocent bystander, in a real-life fundraising disaster.

(For the sake of not hurting anyone’s feelings, I will not divulge any of the details about this organization.)

Recently, I signed my four year old daughter and my five year old daughter up for a sports-related activity. They had never pursued this kind of activity before, and they were quite excited. Last night was the fourth meeting of this group. (more…)

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As with many people in this country, I have become very interested in the current presidential election coverage. I love the words that have crept into our vocabulary in recent months: “optics”, “3am phone call”, “crowdfunding”, and “Obamacans” to name just a few.

One term that has particularly caught my attention just recently is “data mining”. I get this image of a coal miner type of guy with a lantern attached to his hard hat and he’s digging feverishly through a mountain of zeros and ones.

Actually, this term has come up a few times when the media has talked about how Senator Barack Obama effectively uses his large gatherings as a chance to primarily collect email addresses from those in attendance. Later on, he is able to send messages to these folks and ask for money.
I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing there are other types of demographic information that is recorded during a data mining operation. Perhaps they are able to find out which societal issues are most important to each individual. Having this kind of knowledge gives them a valuable insight into their supporters, and they can individualize messages sent to people based on their particular interests or concerns.

I think it is important that we, as school fundraisers, remember to data mine our gatherings. Every time that parents come into the school for an event, we should be recording the names of those in attendance, requesting their email addresses, asking for their best phone numbers, and marking down the areas they like to volunteer in, etc. These events can be school carnivals, conferences, plays, auctions, field days, science fairs, field trips, etc.

There should also be a person placed in charge of your school’s data mining operation- both for setting it up and then for putting the results into a useable format. If you don’t have a point person take charge of this, it will, like most things, fall by the wayside. And the information that you could gather in this effort is too valuable to waste.

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When I was the administrator of a private elementary school, I did not have any experience working in a school setting. However, at the time I was hired, the school needed a person who had more knowledge in the areas of marketing, public relations, and non-profit management. I fit that description, so I was hired.

Therefore, I had to learn a lot about the specific realities of schools in a very short time. Having zero background in the field, I also had no prejudices in the public versus private school debate. I didn’t know enough to have an informed opinion.

In retrospect, I’m actually glad I started with a blank slate. It allowed my questions to be free from a bias in any one direction. I was interested in finding the best solution to the situation at hand.

Over the course of my time at the school, I came to see that both private and public schools had certain distinct advantages over one another. I actually ended up working closely with the administrators in our public school district and partnered with them on a few important projects.

From a financial perspective, here are a few of the advantages that I found the public schools to have over the private institutions. (more…)

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