Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

I think it is always wise to learn how the best in the business operate. While we are focused on raising money for our schools, there are folks who are hard at work raising millions of dollars for hospitals, national monuments, political campaigns, and universities.

And while our financial goals may be miles and miles apart, our methods aren’t. Of course, someone charged with raising a million dollars for a hospital probably won’t be selling the World’s Finest Chocolate, but they do, just like us, work on developing relationships with our potential donors.

The way they go about building these relationships is what is so fascinating to me. Below, I have provided links to two very large campaigns now ongoing in the United States: the $16.5 million drive for the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota and the $1.25 billion capital campaign for the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Enjoy and learn!

Crazy Horse Monument

Crazy Horse Memorial to launch fund-raiser
Billionaire donates $5 million to Crazy Horse Memorial

Cleveland Clinic

Carol L. Moss Appointed Chairman, Institutional Relations and Development
Giving to Cleveland Clinic

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In the first part of this series on Chris Matthews’ book “Life’s a Campaign”, I wrote about how President Kennedy was masterful at developing an army of volunteers who helped in very small, but useful ways.

With this post, I am still in the chapter called “Ask!”, which gives insights into how large-scale campaigns raise so much money. This time however, I want to focus on Matthews’ story about how Republican fundraiser Ed Gillespie goes about this task.

“I always try to get people to buy into the vision, how what we’re doing with the money is important to the country”. He then gives his potential donor the inside perspective. “We need another two million to get up with television in Ohio. I’d like you to help there,“ he’ll say. Revealing such a shortfall or weak spot is a bonding tactic.

“You’ve got to give them something tangible, show them that you’re not going to piss it away somewhere,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ll lay out a program for direct mail and say how it will get turnout up two percent – but we’ve got to pay for it! A lot of people have the money to give. They’re successful people. But they want to see results.”

We’ve all had that one big donor who is very special to us. He or she is the one who has not only given us the most money, but has also mentored us. At least in my case, that relationship became very important to me in a personal way. (more…)

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Recently, I have been reading a book called “Life’s a Campaign” by Chris Matthews, who is the host of MSNBC’s program Hardball. The subtitle of this book is “What Politics has Taught Me about Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success”.

In this book, Matthews shares the lessons he’s learned from working with and covering successful politicians.

I was particularly struck by a chapter he wrote that was called “Ask!” In this chapter, he gives many examples of how successful politicians raise the millions of dollars needed to run a congressional or presidential campaign.

Many of the lessons he draws upon can easily be applied to raising money for your school. Over the next few posts here at Top School Fundraisers, I will share with you some of these ideas that I have found to be particularly interesting.

One of the thoughts that made a lot sense to me involved enlisting the help of small donors and thus creating a large army of people dedicated to your cause.

Matthews uses President John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign as a prime example. Since this book was published early in the current election cycle, he does not mention the immense grassroots campaign that Senator Barack Obama has built. (more…)

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When you are involved with a non-profit, it seems that every conversation starts and ends with the need to raise money. You’re either discussing how much you need to raise, how much you are currently raising, or how much was raised in the past.

When the board of a non-profit organization sits down at the beginning of the year to create an operating budget, it does its best to balance the needs of the group with the opportunities to generate revenue. Hopefully, much thought and discussion has gone into setting these priorities.

Once the budget it set, the director does his or her best to get the entire community moving in the same direction. In order to achieve real success, a non-profit needs everyone to be pulling in the same direction.

Or, at least that is what I thought was supposed to happen. (more…)

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Over the course of the next week, I will be working on an investigation of golf outings as a fundraising tool. I will be writing from my own experience, as well as interviewing folks from the golf outing industry.

To get the ball rolling, here are three interesting articles I have come across recently about this kind of fundraising event. I hope you enjoy these links, as well as the upcoming installments of this series.

Thanks!

First of all, I discovered a useful article entitled “Great Golf Gift Ideas for This Year’s Golf Tournament” over at the About.com page called “Rob’s Event Planning Blog”.

If you’ve ever participated in a golf outing before, this article might make you laugh. There are a few PG-13 remarks in the text, but it is funny if you’ve been through the experience. The name of the blog is “Grateful Blue” and the title of the post is “Golf Outings for Dummies”.

This last article talks about an alternative to the traditional golf outing called the “Downtown Petoskey/Bay Harbor Shopping Scramble”. While there is no actual golf involved, the rules and the concepts are taken directly from this fundraising approach. Ingenious idea. There are two links to this idea. Check them both out for a complete picture.

From the Petoskey Chamber of Commerce Site

From the Northern Express

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In the fall of this year, I will begin homeschooling my son, who will be going into the first grade. Since I work out of my house and my schedule is very flexible, I’m confident that I can commit the time necessary to provide him the attention he will need.

Through my experience working as the principal of a private elementary school, I learned a great deal about curriculum. I have, however, read over sites like HomeSchoolReviews.com, which is a terrific resource to learn about the very wide world of home school based texts.

I have also joined a local home school support group, which meets weekly during the school year and will provide a great social outlet for the students, as well as an opportunity for me to glean some ideas on how to save/raise money on all the materials I need for my son.

So, this new experience will give me an interesting perspective on the whole idea of how to save and raise money for a home school. I have to admit that right now, I’m a rookie in this particular niche, but I am motivated to learn.

I did write a post back a couple of months ago called, “6 Suggestions to Keep Uncle Sam Happy With Your Home school” that covered some of the taxation issues when raising money to support your at-home educational endeavors. There’s some good advice and links in that article, so if you missed it the first time around, be sure to check it out.

Right now, I’d like to ask for your help. If there are any Top School Fundraises readers out there who do home school, I would love your advice on how to either save money on homeschooling expenses or on how you’ve managed to raise funds to cover these costs. I promise to share this information with all of you.

In the meantime, I will be actively seeking clever ways to underwrite my own personal homeschooling expenses, and I’ll share everything I learn. Thanks!

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As I sit here writing this, my two boys are home on the first day of summer vacation. Already, they’re bouncing off the walls. They’re not bored yet, but I know it’s coming. I’ve got a bunch of activities planned for the three long months they’re out of school, but I’m also looking for some fresh ideas.
Here’s what I found.

Summer Learning Programs
This is an excellent audio interview from NPR about summer learning programs that help children retain what they’ve learned over the summer. I was surprised to hear how much information children can actually lose while they are out of an academic environment.

Family Traditions
Here is a neat article about how to start a family tradition, by the folks over at the Not Quite Crunchy Parent blog, which I’ve just started checking out. I really like their style and content.

Summer Reading Programs
Summer reading programs are available at almost every library. The Vermont public school librarians have published an outstanding list for students in grades K through 12. Check it out.

Educational Software Recommendation
Just recently, I purchased an educational software program for my kids. It’s called Jump Start World: First Grade. I promise, this is not a paid review for the product, but I was blown away by how much my kids instantly loved it and how much they were learning. The really cool part is that when you register the product, you can sign up (and pay $8 per month) to get downloadable add-ons to the game. The company monitors your child’s progress and when it sees that a certain set of concepts is mastered, it automatically updates the game with new learning adventures. The Houston Chronicle wrote a great review of the product here. I think my kids will be in great shape for the fall by keeping up with their Jump Start World programs.

Minor League Baseball Games
One of the things we will be doing a few times this summer is attending Minor League Baseball games for our local team, the Traverse City Beach Bums. We’ve never gone to a minor league game before, but I’ve heard wonderful things about how family friendly they are. Minor league stadiums are much smaller than ballparks in the majors, so you get better seats and the prices are lower. Our team has fireworks every Friday evening of a home game, and there are lots of fun contests.

In fact, I heard about a 60 year-old woman at a Grand Prairie (Texas) AirHogs game who won a free funeral service for herself!  Yikes!  She has 30 years to cash in on it. 

Also, if you are interested, here’s a great article about the fun that can be found at minor league games.

Disc Golf
I recently learned that a local ski resort, just 10 miles from my house, has a very cool Disc Golf course that’s open to the public during the summer. The 18 hole course is situated on top of the mountains, and is very beautiful, I hear.. It’s free to play, but you can rent the special disc golf Frisbees and if you want the chair lift to take you up, it costs a few bucks. But if you buy the discs and are willing to hike, it’s a very economical family activity that we will be doing a lot of this summer.

If you are interested in learning more about how to play a golf-style game with Frisbees, check out this link. It has a directory of disc golf courses all over the United States.

Geocaching
I am also considering purchasing a portable GPS unit this summer, so my boys and I can go geocaching. This is basically like treasure hunting with a one of those global positioning satellite devices. I checked out the main geocaching website this morning, and they listed that as of this day, there are 591,790 active caches worldwide. In just the last seven days, there have been 412,438 new logs written by 57,696 account holders. The entire page is very useful and easy to read. Check it out.

Renaissance Festival
For a great mix of both recreational and educational fun, I will be taking my boys to at least a couple of renaissance festivals this summer. In fact, the first one we’re going to is tomorrow (June 7) in Charlevoix, Michigan. Believe it or not, there is an actual castle there, so it should be very cool. There are jousting tournaments, Celtic musical groups, jugglers, and all sorts of old-fashioned entertainment.

To get my boys excited about going, I found that the Texas Renaissance Festival has a great promotional video on their website, which you can see here. Already, my boys have become very intrigued by the history they’re going to encounter live.

As you can see, I’ll be trying to squeeze in a lot this summer. Please write us if you have any interesting summer vacation ideas that you’ve found to be of great value to your kids. I’d love to share them with our readers.

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