Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

School groups can be some of the most challenging fundraising teams to work with, but they can also be the most fun. Depending on the age of the kids, many of them will not have had a significant fundraising experience before, so you’ll have to teach them everything from the ground up. But their enthusiasm is infectious, and when you choose something fun like cookie dough school fundraising, you can guarantee everyone will be fully on board with an idea like that.

Cookie dough fundraising is an easy and fun idea that can yield you some decent profits, and best of all, your supporters and your fundraising team will both love the product you’ve chosen. The best way to get started with cookie dough school fundraising is to sit down with the other adults and have an organizational meeting.

The more people you can get to help with this, the better, but clear delegation is important. There are two types of people who show up to fundraising meetings: those who really don’t want to be there and don’t want to volunteer for anything, and those who think they know best about everything having to do with fundraising, and want to control everything.

As the person in charge, it’s up to you to put the enthusiastic people in clear roles with clear boundaries, so that nobody steps on anybody’s toes and every requirement is taken care of. Once you have the adults sorting out, cookie dough school fundraising begins to take on a life of its own.

The enthusiasm of children is remarkable, and this will come across to your supporters, who love cookie dough anyway, but will especially love buying it to help the kids out. For younger children, make sure they have someone to accompany them when they go out fundraising, as they will be collecting and walking around with money as they go.

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Greetings!  I hope you and your families are having a great holiday season so far.

I also hope you’ve enjoyed the selection of articles on TopSchoolFundraisers. com this month.  There have been some very interesting fundraising-related news items in the last few weeks that I’ve written about.  I’d love to read your comments, so please feel free to drop us a line!

As always, if you are looking for fundraising ideas or great products to raise money for your school, please head on over to FastTrackFundraising.com!  They have an amazing selection of products with proven results.

As I’m sure you know by now, we also have a sister blog, StepByStepFundraising.com.  That site has a broader non-profit focus, but there are some terrific articles that would be helpful to anyone looking to learn more about raising money.  Below, I have posted some links to articles that appreared on StepByStepFundraising this month.  I hope you take a few minutes to check them out!

Thanks, and we’ll see you right back here in December!

From StepByStepFundraising.com:

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Revenue in Your Product Sale Fundraiser

Black Friday – Cyber Monday Sale, by Marc A. Pitman

Getting your Charity Auction Volunteers to Buy-in and Work, by Sherry Truhlar

Got problems getting event volunteers energized to do what is needed to be done?

Volunteers will remain engaged if they believe the solution you are sharing is 1) fun and 2) will solve the problem. When it’s fun to solve the problem, your volunteers will do it…

The Main Difference Between Facebook and Twitter, by John Haydon

How Simple Development Systems Will Create Sustainable Funding, by Pamela Grow

Building a ‘Level Four’ Vision, by Kirsten Bullock

Blogs vs. Facebook for Nonprofits, by Gayle Thorsen

Over the past few months, I’ve helped a couple nonprofit clients who are ready to move into social media decide whether to go with a blog or Facebook. (I’ll talk about Twitter strategies in a future post. It’s kind of a different animal.)

Most approach it as an either/or decision because of their limited staff resources. That’s a real concern. If you truly don’t have the staff time to blog at least once a week or make a Facebook update twice a week, you shouldn’t be considering either medium.

If you do have adequate staff resources, go back to your strategic communications plan to make this decision. You have to start there—with what you want to happen as a result of your communications efforts. (If you need help with strategic communications planning, here’s the first part of my four-part DIY series.)

Want Better Meetings? Know when NOT to meet, by Maureen Carruthers

How Often Should a Board Meet? by Gayle Gifford

The Grant Writing Hall of Shame by Betsy Baker

4 Rock-Solid Ways to Raise More Year-End Money, by Amy Eisenstein

1. Make a list of your top 10 to 50 donors.

Determine whether or not they have given yet this year and at what level.

2. Call them.

If they have not given yet this year, ask for a meeting. In a real time crunch, skip the meeting and talk to them by phone. Thank them for their prior support and tell them how their money was used. Remind them they haven’t given yet this year and ask for a gift in excess of what they gave last year. Have materials to justify your ask, such as you’re serving more clients or you want to start a new program, etc.

If they have already given this year, at prior years’ levels or higher, call and thank them. Let them know how their donation was used. If appropriate (which it sometimes is), ask for more.

Six Critical Things to Look For in a Foundation’s 990 For Successful Grant Funding, by Pamela Grow

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There is an interesting debate that has been percolating in more than just a few school districts lately.

Basically, there are some school districts in this country, with vastly different levels of family income within its boundaries. Some schools within a particular district may receive Title I funds from the federal government to help with low-income families, while other schools in the same district may have a much higher level of income among its families.

The problem is that schools with wealthier families are typically able to raise more money than schools with less well-to-do families. Therefore, the students in these schools can go on more field trips, have newer text books, have more interesting assemblies, and have newer technology.  (The richer schools have more parents who will buy tubs of cookie dough, tickets to an auction, make pledges for a walk-a-thon, etc.)

Well, there have been complaints that the educational experience of the students in the poorer school is less complete than the students in the richer schools, and this is not fair in a public school district.

Therefore, some districts are creating plans to take the money raised by all their schools, put it in a common pot, and re-distribute it equally amongst all schools, regardless of how much each school kicked in. This way, all students will get the same opportunities.

This proposal is not sitting well with many people. In fact, here is an excerpt from a letter to the editor in The Santa Monica (California) Mirror:

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Fundraising Efforts: Letter To The School Board

Dear School Board,

I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I am with your recent decision to combine the fundraising efforts for the schools into one system. I understand that there is an achievement gap in our schools; I believe that is why some of them receive Title 1 funds. I also understand that many of those funds have been cut, but not all. Will those resources also be allocated equally among all schools in the district?

I work hard to support my school, sacrificing valuable time and resources. And I’m not ashamed to admit that this is primarily because I have two children in the Santa Monica school system. I want to support them as much as humanly possible, which is easy to do when I get to see how my efforts affect their lives on a daily basis.

Would I work just as hard knowing that my time and money might go to other schools in the district? I’m honestly not sure. But the fact that I’m even asking myself the question just goes to show how wrong-headed your decision is.

While I believe that combining some of the resources from the wealthier schools could help, creating a system that equally distributes funds to all schools will only result in an overall decrease in the number of donations. On the surface, it would seem your plan is plausible — a simple and fair redistribution of funds — but this assumes that you’ll receive the same amount of money. Sadly, this is not the case.

The first rule of fundraising is to appeal to the donor’s sense of social responsibility and community. Put simply, people give more to causes that are personal or “hit close to home.” By broadening the spectrum of how school funds will be distributed, the board will have effectively narrowed its fundraising target and legislated a major disincentive to donations, especially with regard to your top-tier donors. Just imagine what would happen if college alumni associations were forced to distributed their donations to all universities instead of the college of their choice.

It’s just that simple.

My friends and neighbors have all expressed that they will not continue to monitarily support the schools in the same manner. We have not only discussed this in the hallways of our schools, but also with incoming parents. In fact I spoke to a friend on Monday about this new effort on the part of the school board. She was planning to move her family to Santa Monica, and has now decided to stay in Brentwood. So I know I’m not alone. Luckily, I am the treasurer of my child’s class, so next year I plan on asking for more money upfront to support our teacher rather than fundraising for the district.

So, how do you feel about this debate? Do you agree that all schools within one district should be able to give all its students that same opportunities, or is it ok for there to be a large gap between rich and poor schools?

I’d love to know what your thoughts are. Please share them with us in our forum!

Thanks!

Photo by: WebWallpapers

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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. (more…)

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Yesterday, I heard a report on NPR about a new book called The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity, written by Daniel M. Oppenheimer and Christopher Y. Olivola.

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

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