The program success is directly related to two factors. The first was time and effort spend planning and soliciting motivational items which served as incentives for the children. The second was a reliable group of volunteers to handle the administrative aspect associated with the weekly recording of students’ individual level of sales and their prize distributions.

The approach and view was this was a program to benefit the community: businesses were asked to make donations. Donations were as varied as the businesses. These donations were packaged into individual gift for the each student in accordance with his weekly sales.

Historically, the sales activity level peaked during the first two and last two weeks of the program. In reviewing the activity level of previous years’ sales that the report showed sales doubling during the time that the vendor offered a double incentive. Hence the conclusion to keep the incentive for the duration of the program.

For every six items sold the student received a prize (all prizes were donated). Initially, we used the small trinket items ( such as a school supply item) and as the program progressed we began using the higher value donations (such as a complimentary large pizza or a menu meal from a local restaurant, or movie tickets). There were no limit on how many prizes a student could earn.

Additionally, there were special rewards and large ticket item prizes at the end of the program for top children in elementary, middle, and upper school. For the duration of the program the sales level remained at a consistently high level.

It was a great way to solicit the businesses support and participation while teaching the children a number of life and business skills. Simple but working as a team it was very effective.

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. Word of Mouth. 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 Projects. 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.

The goal of this book is to scientifically explain some of the reasons why and how much people give to charities.

As a person who has working in the non-profit industry for many years, this topic was very interesting to me.

I had not heard of this book before, and when I heard the report I was driving, so I couldn’t jot down a lot of notes, but a few things jumped out at me right away, and I wanted to share them with you. I will be searching this book out in the near future, however, as it sounds fascinating.

The first thing that caught my attention is that the author reported that people are more likely to give to a single person or small group of people as opposed to a larger group with many members. This makes sense to me. It seems that donors feel like they are more able to impact one person’s life in a positive manner, as opposed to an entire population.

What does that mean in relation to the school fundraising world?

Well, it tells me that it might be smarter for a school to frame their fundraiser in a way that highlights the impact on individual children, as opposed to the benefits the whole school may experience.

So, if I were running a school carnival, for instance, (or any other important school fundraiser) I would write my promotional material in a way that showed parents how their individual child would suffer and/or benefit depending on how much money the carnival was able to raise. I’d actually list out specific items that would impact each student.

Of course, the impact would be felt by the entire student body, but by bringing it down to a student-by-student basis, you’re speaking more directly to parents. It’s just how you deliver the message.

Think about it. If you were the parent who was being asked to donate time or money, wouldn’t you be more motivated if you knew exactly what was at stake for your own son or daughter?

Go ahead, give this strategy a try.

Photo by: Rennett Stowe

I recently came across a great article that talks about various strategies to keep that initial momentum going and not suffer from the emotion drop off that can really hurt your overall success.  The following is an excerpt from the article. To read the entire piece, please click here.

How to Keep Your School Fundraiser from Dragging

by Clay Boggess

A primary goal for your school fundraiser should be to reach your money goal in as short a period of time as feasible. The idea that the longer you give your students to sell the more money you will make is not necessarily true. In fact, this philosophy can also work against you. The longer your fundraiser lasts, the lower the sense of urgency that your sellers will have and the more they will tend to procrastinate. Most actual selling takes place during the first 3-4 days of the sale so a two week selling period is usually optimal. Here are some things that you can do to ensure that your fundraiser doesn’t turn into a longer drawn-out experience.

Define and promote your end date

Make sure that your end date is set in everyone’s minds before your fundraiser ever starts. This includes reinforcing the date with you school staff and parents. You will also want to announce it to your students at your fundraiser kickoff as well as promote it throughout your sale. Put your end date in your parent letter as well as publicize it on Facebook. We provide our customers with a school fundraising guidebook which includes pre-made form notices that you can send home reminding parents about your fundraiser end date. The point is, make a big deal about when order forms and money are due by announcing it as often as possible and in as many ways as you can.

Have consequences for late orders and enforce them

You are bound to have stragglers so be ready for them. If you plan to accept order forms after the end date for your fundraiser, let people know that they only have a certain time period to turn them in. We ask our sponsors to mail their order forms to us for processing about a week after their end date. This allows time for them to collect and process late orders. Any late orders that come in after that time can still be faxed in; however, we encourage them to set an additional 2 day deadline date for faxed orders as well. Any orders that come in after that are not guaranteed to ship with the original order but rather will arrive in a separate late shipment.

Follow up with late money as quickly as possible

TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE, PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ORIGINAL

Photo by: ben.ramirez

If you are the person or if you are on the team of people that decides which fundraisers your school will be running during the year and you haven’t developed a complete plan by now (late October), you are doing a great disservice to your school.

I say this, because for the most part, parents don’t like having fundraisers just thrown at them without notice. If you are guilty of this, you should know that this kind of a haphazard plan doesn’t inspire much confidence in the minds of the people you are asking to give.

Therefore, you should be planning your fundraising strategy well ahead of when you will spring anything on your community.

But that means making some decisions about what you are going to do months from now.

So, what will they be? You can only pick three.

Click here to enroll in Jim Berigan’s FREE year-long school fundraising e-Course!

(Why only three? Well, in addition to not liking fundraising surprises, parents also don’t like one fundraiser after another after another after another. If you ask them to donate more than three times in a nine month school year, you are going to risk alienating your audience.)

Well, let’s see. How should we pick ‘em?

• Popularity is a good criteria. After all, we want people to like what we’re asking them to do, so we can raise the most money.
• Keeping a high percentage of the profits for the school is also an important factor. We don’t want to send all our revenue off to some company somewhere, right?
• Value is also critical. Whatever we try to sell or provide to parents has to be a worth their money, right?
• What about volunteers? We can’t keep asking people to give time they don’t have, so we have to be smart in how many times we ask people to volunteer.
• I also think that variety should be considered, as well. We don’t want to do three product sales or three “-thons” or three golf outings. That would be really annoying.

So, here are some possible combinations:

To Read the conclusion of this article, please check back soon!

Photo by: striatic

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:

Click here to enroll in Jim Berigan’s FREE year-long school fundraising e-Course!

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.

Getting Business Supporters for your recycling program makes raising funds even easier. Schools and nonprofits with supporting organizations in their communities report more than 3 times the cash and rewards earned than organizations without Business Supporters.

We inspect every item we receive to determine whether it can be recycled or remanufactured — two states that account for 98% of the materials we process.

Collectively, FundingFactory participants have stopped 21 million pounds of waste from being landfilled.

Here are a few success stories from schools that have signed up for and have used FactoryFunding.com:

This video is from the West Boylston school district in Massachusetts.  They have raised $40,686 from FundingFactory.com

This second video is from Elk County Catholic school system.  They have raised $24,210 from FactoryFunding.com.

A numbered or bulleted list is much better at communicating its message than a long, flowing letter is. People love to scan, because they don’t have time to get bogged down in never-ending paragraphs.

So, I’m wondering if you might consider using such a tool the next time you want to communicate with your school families.

For instance, instead of writing a regular old letter to parents about collecting soup labels or box tops, you could create a list and make an attractive flyer out of it- “5 Easy Ways to Remember to Clip Your Box Tops.” or “10 Ways You Can Help your Child’s School This Year” or “The 3 Best Strategies to Ask Friends and Family to Buy Cookie Dough”

Whatever message you have to send out, craft it in a way that people are going to read, understand, and act upon. In this day and age, that means, short, sweet, and to the point. Give it a splashy (and hopefully catchy headline) in a list format, and you’ll increase the number of people who read your letters and get involved.

Photo by: drcorneilus

Quick, can you name the principal at an elementary school your kids don’t attend? Ok, how about the name of their PTO or PTA chair?

Perhaps you are an amazing social creature and could identify these people, but I’m guessing the chances of that are pretty slim. Even in small towns, we tend to focus only on what is right in front of us. This generally makes sense, as we only have so much time to give, we have to prioritize and take care of the items most immediately important. An elementary school just six blocks away might as well be as far away as the moon.

However, as you prepare for this upcoming school year, I want to suggest that you change your way of thinking about this situation.

Here are eight questions I think you should ask about the other schools in your district. The answers you find could very well add new life and bring greater success to your own efforts in your kids’ school.

1. Who are the people involved on the other schools’ fundraising teams?
2. How long have these fundraising leaders been involved with raising money for their school?
3. Do the other schools have many parents involved or do they struggle to find volunteers for their fundraising events? If they are successful, what are they doing that you might not be to attract busy families?
4. What is each school’s biggest (most successful) fundraising event or sale?
5. If another school has the same kind of fundraising event or sale as your school does, are they more or less successful? Why or why not?
6. Do the other schools stick with one or two annual events for years or are they always looking to implement new approaches and novel ideas?
7. How diverse is their fundraising schedule? (How well do they mix up large events with small events, sales vs. events, passive vs. active strategies, etc?)
8. What is the key piece of advice another school could share with you that explains their success in fundraising?

I wrote that there are different ways a principal can be hostile toward fundraising. For instance he or she can feel guilty about asking parents for money. Or, it could be the principal could see fundraising as a “demeaning” activity and below his or her station, so he puts it off on others (subordinates or volunteers) and refuses to get involved. Or, the principal might just settle on one particular fundraising event and never deviate from it again. (The case of the same candy bar sale for 25 years.)

So, here are a few suggestions on how to bring one of these types of principals around to a more productive way of thinking.

Social Proof- If there is a particular fundraiser, like a school carnival, that you would like to add to your school’s fundraising schedule and your principal doesn’t seem interested, you need to go out and find some hard evidence that the activity or sale you like actually works. This can be done by gathering written quotes from other principals who have run that kind of event. However, I would recommend that the proof you get come from other principals or superintendants. Stay away from arguments made by people in a “lower” position than the principal. Also, make sure your proof addresses doubts your principal may have or objections he may raise.

Statistics- Many principals love to read reports. If you can’t back up your hunches or dreams with facts, you’re going to get nowhere with them. Therefore, if you think that one of the fundraisers you’ve been running for years has lost steam and isn’t as effective as other sales or events could be, figure out a way to prove that. Dig through all your revenue records for previous years and make a chart. It doesn’t have to be fancy, even a hand-drawn graph will do, as long as you can show the downward trend.

A collection of news articles about other fun fundraisers- set up a Google Alert to your email that searches for news articles and blog posts about school fundraising. Each day, you’ll get at least ten different articles on this topic. There are usually a few stories in each daily batch about creative fundraisers you might not have though about before. Print these articles out and start a collection of the best of them. Pretty soon, you’ll have a nice selection of unique and profitable fundraising events and sales that might be a great fit for your school. Organize this collection well, make some notes, sketch out a plan, and share it with your principal. Once he or she sees that fundraising doesn’t have to be the “same old, same old” every year, you might start getting somewhere with him or her.

Photo by: falcon1961

Since I have four school age children myself, I know who tough this can be. We juggle several balls at once, just like everybody else. So, even though it’s sad to admit, if something isn’t mandatory, there is a lot less pressure for me to show up at something. It’s just the way it is.

There are a couple of elementary schools in San Diego, California, that have recognized this situation, and they have taken a very bold step against it.

According to a report in The La Jolla Light,

The La Jolla Elementary School PTO and the Bird Rock Foundation have announced the dates for their Back to School sign-up days for the many programs and required forms for the forthcoming school year.

This marks the first year that Bird Rock Elementary School will host a sign up event.

The sign-up days are mandatory for all new and returning families, and will include information and/or registration for the following activities and events:

• Completing mandatory district and school requirements
• Purchasing products like yearbooks and logo wear
• Signing up for volunteer opportunities and after school programs
• Donating to the Annual Giving Campaign.
• Joining the PTO/Parent Foundation

“We want to provide parents with a convenient, one-stop approach to organize their child’s coming school year,” said Julie MacDonald, La Jolla Elementary PTO President. “By offering forms and information for everything needed to begin and progress through the school year, we free both parents and school staff to focus solely on the start of classes when September 6th arrives.”

Wow! What a novel idea! Make the parents attend by making the sign up event mandatory.

Does your school do this? If so, how has it gone over? Does every family show up? Do the families who do sign up actually follow through on what they commit to? Is there visible resentment from some parents at being forced to attend a school function?

I ask these questions, because this approach is new to me.  I’m fascinated to learn how common this very smart approach is.

In the near future, I will attempt to contact these two elementary schools and see how things have gone for them and what advice they have for other schools considering such a move.

Photo by: Libelul