Fundraising
Is fundraising for you?
Did you know you can easily use your website to raise money for your school, church, athletic team, or any other group you would like to support? Not only is this a great way to make money for the group, but this is also an easy way to make money for yourself!
A large number of organizations depend on donations and Fundraising for the majority, if not all, of their operating expenses. These are usually non-profit organizations involved in community support and are constantly looking for ways to raise money for their organization. The general rule of them is that organizations generally expect to keep about 50% of the proceeds for sales.
Every year schools raise over $1.7 Billion selling merchandise to raise money selling Cookies, Gifts, Popcorn. The list goes on and on. With your website and product access, you can do the same. The sky is the limit when it comes to Fundraising!
As an example, a typical elementary school has 1000 students. Nearly all of them, on average, will sell at least one item. Generally to a parent, some kids will manage to sell an item or two to friends, neighbors, or other family members. Suppose every child in the school sells just one $30 product. That’s $30,000 in sales. Your return on average is around $15,000 in which you would split with the school. Now just imagine doing this with schools in your area, sometimes up to twice a year! Once for Spring and one or the Christmas Holidays!
Possible prospects
So, where do you start? Right in your own backyard! The first thing is to look at opportunities right around you and with people you may know. Most often, this is not hard to do. You would be surprised how many prospects you may know or have contacts with from schools, sports teams, churches; they are all looking for ways to raise funds to support their group. Keep in mind not only can you do Fundraising in your area, because you are online, you can create relationships anywhere in the continental US. Use your local phone directory and even the Chamber of Commerce to identify even more potential fundraising prospects.
- Churches and Synagogues
- Fraternal orginizations
- Lodges
- Youth Athletics
- Boy & Girl Scouts
- Teen Clubs
- School Bands
- Youth Outreach Programs
- Charities
- Student Stores
- Theatre Groups
- Crisis & Counseling Centers
How typical fundraising works - What sets you apart?
What does a typical fundraiser at a school look like? Most are focused around selling Popcorn, Pizzas, Cookie Dough, Gift Wrap, etc. In most cases, the kids are given a catalog to take home and are encouraged to approach Family, Friends, and Neighbors. They then collect the order and payment and bring that order back to their school. Orders are placed, and a few weeks later, Teachers or PTO members get together, sort out all of the orders, bag them and give the order to the kids to deliver the final product. That’s a lot of work, and most of the work is completed by volunteers and Teachers in their off time. There is a lot of work on the school’s part doing it the old-fashioned way!
Simplicity that’s what sets you apart from every other Fundraising method out there. You have the ability to take all the work out of the hands of kids, teachers, and volunteers. You make their lives easier! With your website, the fundraising group can direct people to your website, where they can easily place an order, pay, and have the product shipped directly to them without their staff ever having to sort products, take payments, or deliver an order. The simplicity you offer will save them hundreds of hours of work.
Creating your profit margin
Your typical profit margin when you sell a product is 50-60%. When doing a fundraiser, you will offer a portion of your profits back to the group. For some schools selling products, a fundraiser could deliver on the small end $2000 in orders, and larger schools could be $50,000 and more! What that means if your fundraiser created $2000 in orders, you would typically earn about $1000 if selling at MSRP. If you offered the school a 50/50 split in profits, you would keep $500 and then Donate $500 to their organization. On a larger scale of $50,000, that could generate $25,000 in profits with a 50/50 split, and you would keep $12,500 for yourself and give the same back to your organization!
For this reason, it will be important that you create the right profit margin for yourself as well as for the organization that you are attempting to work with. The great thing, since you are only splitting the profit, you are ensuring a specific percentage for your company and the organization. The percentage of the profit you offer back to the organization is entirely up to you!
Action to take
Your first step as we said earlier, is to look for schools, youth groups, bands, sports teams, and more that you feel are looking to raise money. Keep in mind if it’s a school, team, or group, almost all do some Fundraising. Budgets are tight, especially for schools and many organizations or clubs are entirely dependent on Fundraising or donations to function.
After identifying the organization, you will need to decide how you would like to contact the group. Email is an easy way to send information to a group. However, getting someone to contact you back may be few and far between. Our recommendation is to pick up the phone and give the group leader, Principal, Coach, or PTO a call to introduce yourself and let them know what you do. Don’t forget to use networking. If you know a family in an organization, you ask for an introduction or do some research for you. Word of mouth is undoubtedly some of the best ways to get your name out in a community.
For this reason, it will be important that you create the right profit margin for yourself as well as for the organization that you are attempting to work with. The great thing, since you are only splitting the profit, you are ensuring a specific percentage for your company and the organization. The percentage of the profit you offer back to the organization is entirely up to you!
Key points to discuss
You have a hands-free fundraising opportunity for their organization. They will not need to place orders, deliver products, or take payments. All orders will be placed directly on your website and shipped directly to the customer. Remember to stress that most orders placed, are shipped out within 24 business hours. Once you receive the tracking information, you can then send as well.
If there are any issues with an order, you will handle them. Our Tech Support team can always help and assist you with any order placed if a problem should arise. Your organization will not need to worry about anything.
You will want to set a timeframe for the fundraiser and let the Leader know that all orders placed during that time frame the percentage of the profits they will keep. Our suggestion is to split 50/50. However, for your first few, you may want to give more to gain a few clients. Keep in mind if your fundraiser goes well, word-of-mouth advertising will spread, and you may even have groups coming to you.
After identifying the organization, you will need to decide how you would like to contact the group. Email is an easy way to send information to a group. However, getting someone to contact you back may be few and far between. Our recommendation is to pick up the phone and give the group leader, Principal, Coach, or PTO a call to introduce yourself and let them know what you do. Don’t forget to use networking. If you know a family in an organization, you ask for an introduction or do some research for you. Word of mouth is undoubtedly some of the best ways to get your name out in a community.
Marketing your fundraiser
You will need to work with the Leader to decide how the fundraiser will be marketed, and the least expensive way will be email marketing. Below are a couple of options.
Email marketing
Most groups have a direct line of communication using email with people in their organization. For that reason, Email marketing is a great way to get the word out about the groups’ fundraiser. In this situation, you would provide email content to the organization, and the organization would send it to everyone in their school or organization. Because there is already a relationship with the group and accustomed to getting emails from that group, the odds of the email being read are incredibly high. The email should talk about the fundraiser dates, why the group is having a fundraiser, what they plan on doing with money received from the fundraiser, and, most importantly, how much money they are looking to raise.
A typical fundraiser will last two to three weeks. You will want to ask for at least two emails sent out weekly for every week it is running, and each email should have a separate subject and content in the email. After the first email, future emails can give updates on how much has been ordered, ideas of products your business offers, and keep everyone aware of how close the group is to accomplish their goal.
Flyers
Using flyers is a tried and true way to launch a fundraiser and can even be combined with email marketing
You can easily create flyers online using services such as Canva, Adobe or Microsoft Word to name a few. On your flyer, you will want to ensure you add logos of the organization for the fundraiser, your website name, and even a couple of images of products you offer that you can easily save to your computer and upload.
Be sure to include the dates of the fundraiser and the goal the organization is looking to accomplish.
Below are a couple examples you can use to prepare!
A typical fundraiser will last two to three weeks. You will want to ask for at least two emails sent out weekly for every week it is running, and each email should have a separate subject and content in the email. After the first email, future emails can give updates on how much has been ordered, ideas of products your business offers, and keep everyone aware of how close the group is to accomplish their goal.
Introduction - Contacting the group leader
Hello, is this (Contact Name)? Great, this is (Your Name) from (Your Company Name). I am calling local groups in the area to help start their next fundraiser opportunity for their organization. I understand you are the one that handles this for ( ENTER GROUP NAME). I am sure (Enter Organization Name) greatly appreciates you for doing this. I am sure you are like many of the groups I work with and have limited your fundraising opportunities over the last couple of years. Is that correct? Let me tell you about my company and how we approach your fundraising opportunities with the limited time needed from your group and all done in a touchless and safe environment.
With my company, we do things entirely differently, with everything being online. When you look at your ( group, organization, team), how much are you looking to raise in the next 3-6 months, and is there a specific project you are looking to raise funds for?
That’s great we can definitely help you. With our organization, we do everything online. Communication to your members can be done all through email that we would provide to you to send out, or we can create flyers specifically for your organization.
My company offers (Enter amount of Products and the type of products you sell online). These are everyday products that people purchase on a daily basis. Customers interested in making a purchase simply place the order on the website and pay at that time. Once the order is placed, our warehouse ships the product directly to them, with most orders being sent out the same business day. This is a great time saver for you as there is no need for any of your group to take payments, package products, or spend time handling the order’s shipment.
Once the product ships, tracking numbers will be sent directly to anyone who places an order to know their product is on the way. If there are any issues with orders or returns that need to happen, my company will handle all of that for you.
Typically, we set a two to three-week timeframe for the fundraiser, and any orders placed during that time (Organization Name) will receive 50% of all profits during the period. Your organization will receive a check directly to them within 10-14 days after the fundraising close date.
