Community Fundraising Part 5: Money Management Tips

January 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the most important things to remember when it comes to fundraising is being able to manage the money that you have collected. After all, the money is the reason that you are doing the fundraiser. Here are some of the good tips that you should use when you are managing the money that you have gotten from your fundraiser.

  • Use some envelopes for cash collection for each of your event teams or the individual that are collecting money.  Keep accurate records of the people who are collecting the money along with the amount of money they collected.
  • Set a date when you want to have all of the money turned in.
  • Assign one of your volunteers to act as the treasurer. The treasurer has to be experienced as well as comfortable with the handling of money. Both you and the treasurer need to be there when money is counted. Additionally the treasurer and yourself need to sign for all of the disbursements that are made.
  • Make sure that you are depositing the money on a regular basis. When you are in between your deposits, the money needs to be kept in a locked box to keep it safe.

Remember that you need to choose a volunteer that you know that you are able to trust to be the treasurer.   Money is something that is just too big of a temptation for someone that you don’t know. Handling a lot of money is a big responsibility and the success or failure of the fundraiser is going to be dependent upon whether or not you are able to manage the money wisely.

Keep an eye on the money that you have gathered from the fundraiser and make sure that you keep it in a safe place. Otherwise you may find that it has disappeared and you have a big problem.

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Community Fundraising Part 6: Ways to Get the Word Out

January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Once you have decided on which kind of fundraiser that you want to have, the next thing that you want to do is to get the word out about your fundraiser. Here are some of the ways that you can let everyone in the community know that you are having a fundraiser and when it will take place.

  • Get in contact with the local media about the fundraiser through press release, public service announcement, or phone call.  If there is a local television station, see if they would interview you about the fundraiser. If it’s for a good cause, they might be willing to do it.
  • Encourage the people who are a part of the fundraiser to tell their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family about the fundraiser.
  • Put up posters and flyers around the town about the fundraiser. Some of the good places to put them are:
  1. Grocery store, mall, and office bulletin boards
  2. Telephone poles around the neighborhood
  3. Taking the flyers to the neighbors
  4. Club and church newsletters
  5. Church bulletins
  6. If you have a decent sized budget, you can send out mass mailings
  • Post an advertisement in the newspaper in your community.

These are just a few of the things that you can do to make sure that people learn about your fundraiser and get excited about it.  The more people that know about the fundraiser, the better your chances will be of making the money that you need for your cause.  Look at the budget that you have for your fundraiser and see what you can afford to use for advertisement.   Remember to make sure that you are reaching out to the people who are really going to be interested in the fundraiser. For example, if it’s for a new playground, chances are that you want to reach out more to the people who have small children who will want to use it.

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Community Fundraising Part 5: Other Fundraising Event Suggestions

January 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Even though the carnival is very popular, there are other events that people can choose to do instead of a carnival. Here are some of the other events that people choose to do for fundraisers for their community which have been very successful for other groups.

  • Car Wash – This is an especially fun event in the summer when the weather is warm.  Talk to an owner of a carwash to donate their water and their soap and get a group together to wash cars.
  • Handymen – This is a great event for the fall and spring, when a lot of people need yard work done. The group can clean up yards, paint, wash windows, and other things for a fee that reflects the job.
  • Benefit – Another popular event is a benefit.  This can be done through a concert given by a local orchestra or band or it can be done at a local hotspot that donates a portion of the money that is taken in that night to the group.
  • Meals – Another event that anyone can do and attend is a meal. This can be something like a pancake breakfast, a spaghetti dinner or even a soup and sandwich lunch.
  • Ice Cream – Who doesn’t love ice cream? Why not have an ice cream social? Provide a lot of different types of ice cream and toppings and you will fill the hall up.

These are some of the events that people who are trying to raise money can hold in order to make the money that the group needs. Some of them are great for just about any time of year, while others work best during certain times of the year.  But all of them have been used for years to raise money successfully and to get groups the money that they need.

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Community Fundraising Part 4: Carnival Tips

January 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the most popular types of fundraiser is the carnival.  If you are thinking about having a carnival to raise money, here are some steps that you can take in order to get the ball rolling on your carnival.

  • Begin the fundraiser by getting in contact with the businesses in your area and asking if they’ll donate money to buy prizes or donate the prizes themselves.
  • Have games such as fish pond, dunk tank, tossing rings over bottles, and other things like that.
  • Have a contest for hula hooping and get the participants ask for pledges for how long they are able to keep the hula hoop going before it falls.
  • Have a booth for popping balloons
  • Fill a really big jar with something like jellybeans, counting them as you go and have a contest to guess the number.
  • Sell cans of soda and juice at the carnival. Remember, you can recycle the cans and get some money from that as well.
  • Have donation jars spread around the carnival for those who don’t want to play any games but still want to donate to the cause. You might also consider charging admission to the carnival.
  • Sell food at the carnival for people to buy – things like cookies and brownies and other things are easy and cheap to make and you can make a lot and then sell them to raise more money.

There are a lot of possibilities for a carnival – the only limits that you will have are your budget and your imagination. Carnivals draw a lot of people and they can be fun for everyone.  You can wrap a lot of things up in a fundraising carnival and that is why it’s one of the most popular kinds of fundraiser that people choose from when they need to raise money.

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Community Fundraising Part 3: Finding Volunteers

January 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

After you have decided on your fundraising goals and your fundraising type that you want to do, the net thing that you want to do is to find volunteers that you are going to use for your fundraising effort.  Here are some of the things that you can do in order to find the volunteers that you are going to need for your fundraiser.

  • Ask for a list of people that have volunteered in the past for fundraisers or who are currently serving on other committees.
  • Let the volunteers figure out the interests that they have and delegate the jobs accordingly. For example, if someone wants to write letters don’t assign them to do some baking.
  • Ask each of the recruits for people who are friends and family and might be interested in supporting the efforts of the fundraiser either through helping out or giving donations.
  • Be enthusiastic so that your team is motivated to be enthusiastic.
  • Motivate your team through prizes. For the larger fundraisers, you can reward the team that has contributed the most. For example, if you have more than one committee you can given a larger prize for the teams and smaller prizes for the efforts that individuals give.
  • Get those who benefit from the fundraiser involved. For example, if the fundraiser is for the marching band the members of the marching band need to be active participants.

When it’s a worthy cause, a lot of people should be willing to help in the fundraising effort. Sometimes it’s easy to find volunteers for a fundraiser and sometimes it’s difficult. But when you use the tips that are listed above to find your volunteers, you should not have that much trouble finding people who are ready and able to give of their time to help the cause.

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Community Fundraising Part 2: Choosing a Fundraiser Type

January 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The second part of community fundraising is to decide on a fundraiser type.  There are three different kinds of fundraisers that you can choose from in order to find the right fundraiser or fundraisers that you should choose.

  • Donations and Pledges – This first kind of fundraiser involves going to donors and asking them for support. Some of the possible donors could be:
  1. Industry and Business – Some of the businesses in the community may agree to match any of the funds that you are able to raise in the public sector, especially if your volunteers work for them.
  2. Family and friends
  3. Coworkers and Colleagues
  4. Solicitation from door to door

It’s a good idea to suggest a bare minimum amount and give people a range of options, such as $25, $50, $100, other.  There can also be categories like individual, family/household, or business.

  • Product Fundraisers – These can be held through solicitations that are gotten going door-to-door, as their own event, or as a part of a bigger event.  Some of the fundraisers could be:
  1. Purchased products from a supplier of reputable fundraiser products
  2. Products from local businesses that provide items for silent auctions and raffles
  3. Craft and bake sales
  4. Product donations which are resold to the businesses in the community in order to raise money, such as things that can be recycled.
  • Event Fundraisers – These can be car washes, walk-a-thons, dances, flea markets, and other things.

These are the three main types of fundraisers that you can choose from for your community fundraiser.  It really depends on your community and the resources available to help you to determine what kind of fundraiser you want to choose from. there are so many different kinds of community fundraisers to choose from that the possibilities are almost endless.

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Community Fundraising Part 1: Setting Goals

January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the things that a lot of communities are going to come together for is a common goal, such as a new community center or a playground. One of the things that people do to help raise the money for the goal is a fundraiser.

Here are some tips for setting your fundraising goal.

  • Know the amount of money you’re going to need and when it will be needed.  Be sure that you add the estimated goals to that fundraising goal.
  • Set the dates for the beginning and ending dates for your project.
  • Figure out what fundraiser types were successful in the past for your community. These are going to help you to choose the right kinds of fundraisers you should try again as well as which ones you should avoid.
  • If you’re planning a fundraiser that is large and is going to use a few sources for fundraising, figure out the funds that are going to needed from each of the activities.   It’s a good idea to use the figures from the past fundraisers to estimate what you can expect to get this time.
  • Use a goal chart for checking progress. One of the most popular types is the thermometer chart.
  • Examine the community calendar. This is going to:
  1. Keep the fundraising from conflicting with other activities in the community so that you have enough volunteers.
  2. Help you to coordinate your activity with other activities in the community.

When you are setting up fundraisers for your community, getting started is the first step to helping you to get the money that you need for your project.  Use these steps above to get the information that you need in regards to the money that you can expect to get from your fundraiser and which ones you should try. Therefore you will find that you’re able to get the money that you need for your community.

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Finding Charities with Canada 411

January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The vast majority of counselors recommend that their clients volunteer time at charities. Volunteering often improves a person’s

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mental health by helping them appreciate the little things in life. Most people also get a sense of satisfaction from helping others who are less fortunate.

Volunteering at a charity is a great idea for any person, even if you only have a couple spare hours during the week. The time that you invest improves your community and helps give you an improved sense of worth. If you don’t know what volunteer opportunities are in your area, then you can use Canada 411 to find charities that need your help.

Canada 411 is an excellent resource for volunteers looking for charity opportunities. The service provides much more than just the contact information of charities in your area. When you use Canada 411, you get information that includes the charity’s phone number, address and website address. You even get a short description of the charities to help you determine which ones match your interests.

If you find that several charities interest you, then you might want to make your decision based on location. Canada 411 not only gives you the addresses of the charities, but even includes a map that shows you exactly where they are located. This makes it easy for you to determine which ones are convenient for you. It will also help you find the charity’s location when you decide to visit them for more information or training.

Canada 411 makes it easy for you to take that first step into volunteerism. Most people find that volunteering significantly enriches their lives by helping them give back to the community and helping those who need it most. With the wide variety of charities based in Canada, you have plenty of opportunities available to you.

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Where There Is A Need There Is A way

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The strength in any community is its people. A strong community is often driven by volunteer efforts. Supporting local volunteers is an integral part of any community. That all sounds nice, but how do we implement a successful volunteer project? How do we take what is little more than good intentions and turn them into useful projects that benefit members of a community that are in need?

Volunteerism must start with the desire to help or to aid. The need can be anything from homeless women to illiterate adults, but recognizing the need is often the spark that determines the form a volunteer effort will take. Once a need has been recognized, one must next determine how to best meet that need. Is it better to set up shelters for the homeless as a temporary measure or are volunteer efforts better suited at helped homeless people become productive members of that society? Meeting the need will help to determine who can best help meet that need?

Finding volunteers is often the most difficult part of any volunteer effort. By first determining how to meet a particular need, you may find it easier to locate specific community volunteers to help meet that need. “Advertising” your need for volunteers may sound crass and expensive, but remember that advertising can be viewed as a volunteer effort as well, so ask local businesses, churches and newspapers to donate advertising to your cause.

Volunteer efforts are one of the most effective ways to develop a strong sense of community. Helping those less fortunate, filling a need or cultivating our youth are honorable efforts and should be applauded. The most amazing thing is that most volunteers don’t want to applause or the press, they simply want to help.

If you are interested in developing a volunteer project for your community start by finding what is needed, how to best fill that need will soon follow.

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Collective Volunteers

December 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Developing an all encompassing volunteer plan is a big undertaking. Many communities opt to tackle problems one by one, but some are turning to a large format volunteer program to better assist their residents. A great example of this is volunteering for literacy.

Almost all cities and communities across the nation tackle literacy in their own way. Some offer adult tutoring, others focus their efforts on English as a Second Language and others focus on early childhood development. While all of these efforts can play a role in increasing literacy, perhaps a better method is to create a community wide literacy volunteer program to better serve the needs of the community as a whole.

Such a program would naturally be made of distinct volunteer efforts, each aimed at assisting a particular need or group of people. Adults would still have access to assistance with learning to read and very young children would still have story time, only the manner in which the effort is focused would be changed.

A book drive is a wonderful thing, but when held in conjunction with other literacy efforts, it becomes even more powerful. Developing an all inclusive plan for volunteers may be the most effective way to manage volunteer efforts.

The example above, literacy, represents a large problem across our country and makes a good example of how to combine efforts. This concept can easily be used to fill almost any community need. Homelessness, poverty, immunizations, senior support, health and wellness drives almost any need that requires a volunteer force can benefit from a plan that focuses on the entire problem not simply a system.

Volunteering offers everyone a benefit. Communities, volunteers and those they help all get a little something out of the bargain. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more people would simply pitch in and help out in their community?

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