Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

Greetings! My name is Jim Berigan, and I will be your new host, here at Top School Fundraisers. I am thrilled to meet you all and am very grateful to Sandra Sims for her willingness to give me this opportunity to share with all her readers everything I know about fundraising- school and otherwise.

I have spent the past three weeks digging through the archives of TSF and have been very impressed with what I have read. There is an absolutely amazing collection of free advice about how to raise money for your school. My goal over the coming months is to help you turn this valuable information into real cash.

A little background on me: I live just outside of Gaylord, Michigan, which is in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. We’re just about an hour south of the Mackinac Bridge and the Upper Peninsula. It’s a beautiful location, with plenty of family activities for all seasons. I am married and have four children, ranging in age from 3 to 9. With this brood, we definitely have a busy household.

I have worked my entire adult life in the non-profit sector. For years, I helped to run a summer camp for boys and was intimately involved with the various drives to raise money to keep us afloat. Most recently, I served as the principal of a Christian elementary school, which definitely relied on fundraising to keep the doors open.

More…I’ve seen dozens of fundraising strategies, many of which were terrific, while others not so much. I’ve worked the phones to get volunteers behind our drives, and I’ve licked hundreds of envelopes at midnight, trying to get that pesky fundraising letter out on schedule. In other words, “I feel your pain!”

My number one goal for TSF in 2008 is to get this community talking. I’ve seen the stats on this site, and they’re impressive. From January to October of 2007, this blog was averaging just shy of 1,000 unique visitors per month! That’s quite a gathering! I’m guessing there is a vast amount of wisdom out there, just waiting to be tapped. I’ll do my best to provide you with content that is not only beneficial to you and your organization, but will also inspire you to comment on this site, to share what you’ve learned- pro or con- and open it up for a lively conversation. I’m very excited by this possibility.

I plan to use this week of posts to lay out how this blog will operate over the coming year. I’m a big fan of consistency, so you’ll be able to expect certain things on certain days. If you haven’t done this already, I strongly urge you to subscribe to this site in your favorite RSS reader. Let us do the work for you!

I want to tell you all once again, how happy I am to re-launch this site and provide you with the very best information we can. Here’s to a wonderful relationship!

-Jim Berigan

No Comments »

Trackback URI | Comments RSS