Fundraising ideas/suggestions

[rafala]

Last year I did fundraising for a non-profit organization. I raised the funds I needed mostly from donations of friends and family. I am looking at doing another fundraising program and I need some ideas of what to do. I don't want to contact the same people who donated last time, although I may send them letters asking them to forward them on to friends that might be interested. I am thinking of doing a silent auction and a 50-50 raffle but I need to get items donated by local merchants. Has anyone done this before? any hints on the best way to go about doing it? I really hate asking for things and the idea excites me and nauseates me at the same time. any ideas or suggestions would be welcomed. what has worked and what hasnt worked. I am looking to start the beginning of April in asking for item donations with the hopes of doing a silent auction in august.

thanks in advance for your ideas:)

karen :cash:

[Jennifer M.]

I'm the Office Manager of a not-for-profit and am also on the fundraising committee. So far we've made a cookbook which we asked employees, families, and friends for recipes, then we printed and bound it ourselves. It turned out really nice and it's something that is always available to us to sell. We also did candles. A lady in our town made them for us and sold them at a cheaper rate then we could sell them for a higher price. We looked at the super saver cards for area restaurants but we ended up not doing that. We couldn't agree on what we wanted and that isn't a guarantee that who we did pick would participate. We've had the occasional bake sale, we had a pancake feed also and just accepted donations. Another thing we did was mail out to corporate companies with different levels of sponsorships and several companies responded to that as well.

The latest thing we are working on is another candle sale only this time we are going to do the Home & Garden Candles. You can do a search on the web for these candles and find several people who will sell them to you. I personally have some of their candles and they smell great and for the money are a great bargain.

If I think of anything else, I'll post it or if you have any questions, please PM me :)

[verwon]

I also included the link to your post in this weeks newsletter, maybe we can get more people in here with a few more ideas.

[rafala]

Thank you both. Jenn I will be PMing you with questions.

thanks

karen

[kells3]

Our school just had a rummage sale last week. They ended up making over $800 on something that didn't cost them anything to do.

[rafala]

i am hoping to do a silent auction but finding a place to host it is going to be the tough part. with the warm weather coming up i am going to do a yard sale also and get people to donate items to be sold. another friend did this a few years ago and she made $600.

thanks for the suggestion.

[aromangel]

The traditional Car Washes are always good. Also, the coupon books that usually include the Movie Theatres and 100's of resturants as well, Candle Fundraisers are always a hit. I do the Candle Fundraisers and know first hand... :) :) :)

[rafala]

where do you do the candle sales? just asking people or setting up a booth somewhere? I am afraid of getting tooo overzealous here and coming up with too many items to try to sell also.

thanks

[aromangel]

I have done them at several of the local preschools. It was very simple because I would just set up a basket with the two different size jar candles in them of 10 top selling scents. I also included a little basket filled with individual tea lights for the teachers and parents to sample. You sit out your fundraiser order form and it is that simple. The parents like it because there is no stress or mandatory participation and that the funds normally go towards new stuff for the preschool. The last one I did we raised funds for The Muscular Dystrophy. The same format, but since the school actively donates to MOD, they just donated their proceeds to MOD.... One other thing I might suggest too, is maybe create a check list for the preschool that gives them all the information they need to make their fundraiser successful...

[StephBax]

[SIZE="2"][COLOR="Blue"][/COLOR][/SIZE]
Hello! I am a National Fundraising Specialist with Home and Garden Party!
We have very high profit fundraisers-candles, artwork, accessories and much more- you can just opt to do the jar candles- you choose! Full color brochures are free to you! I have done many and would love to talk with you about how to make the most money possible (YOU pick your profit with our fundraisers) . We have lots of great ideas for terrific incentives for your group no matter the age!
Stephanie Baxter :cash: [URL="http://www.simplefundraisers.org"]http://www.simplefundraisers.org[/URL]

[mia bella]

These Candles do Sell!

Sell Candles for Fundraiser! Take a free tour!
These candles sell like hot cakes, see why.

All Natural Clean Burning Candles you can now sell as a fundraiser.

Imagine being able to show organizations in your area a fund-raiser using our healthy alternative gourmet candle. What a great story for the organization to tell and sell!

The process of setting up a fund-raiser is simple. All you have to do is present your gourmet candles to the fund-raising group and when they decide to sell them your work is just about finished! The organization already knows how to do a fund-raiser!

You simply provide them with the necessary papers (which we provide for you in the back office) and they go do the fund-raiser. When the group is ready for the candles you simply call in the order and we will either ship it directly to the fund-raising group or to you.

[url]http://superior.scent-team.com/fundraising.php[/url]