If you are a parent you can definitely relate to feeling bombarded with so many fundraisers. If it’s not enough that your own children are busy selling for their own fundraising groups, you also have to contend with the neighborhood children that knock on your door as well. Perhaps you feel obligated to support other kids because their parents also support yours. It seems like there’s a never-ending stream of fundraisers going on. Why is that?
Better Rewards, Bigger Results
Fundraising Ideas - Elementary, Middle & High School Fundraisers
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Over the years of working with various fundraising groups we have a pretty good idea of what makes fundraisers successful. What follows are 3 basic misconceptions that people often think will help make their sale a success when selecting a fundraiser but in the end don’t make much of a difference.
1. The Higher the Fundraising Profit Percentage the More Money We Raise
Has your fundraiser company informed you of what essential updates you should be receiving throughout your sale? If you ask most people what the two most important things are about the entire fundraising process, they will probably tell you:
Believe it or not but good fundraising sponsors are hard to find. Strong sponsors who are effective leaders understand that fundraisers are hard work and success requires maximum effort from beginning to end. They realize that they only have so much time to fundraise and want to get as much out of what they put in as possible. Fundraising groups that end up reaching their sales goals do so because the sponsor expects effort and results from their group members.
When considering what’s most important to fundraiser success, many people will say it’s the fundraising brochure and how well supporters will embrace what’s being offered. Others will say it depends on the type of community they live in or how motivated the students are by the prize program.
We feel that our primary purpose is to help fundraising sponsors achieve their sales goals. At the very least sponsors should be combining a good prize program with their fundraiser brochure to help motivate their students to sell. However, we also attempt to get our customers to think outside the box and do even more to help maximize their students selling efforts.
Most school fundraising sponsors don’t really think about their delivery until they get closer to the end of their sale. After all, if the company does its job and there are no mistakes with everything arriving safely, isn’t that all you should be concerned about? Good fundraising companies take pride in making sure that every student’s brochure order is filled and packed correctly.
For years the focus of brochure fundraising has been on making sales from a catalog that requires students to sell face to face. The thought has traditionally been that to be effective you need to make the effort to approach people, physically show them what you were selling and then persuade them to make a purchase. Approaching people takes both time and work. Some enjoy it and are good at it while others are not.
School fundraising is hard work but to truly be successful you should have an effective game plan.
We just received an email from a sponsor the other day informing us that their fundraiser didn’t go as well as she had hoped. She discovered that the parents didn’t want to fundraise this late in the season and therefore decided that the best time for them to fundraise was going to be in June at the beginning of their season.
As we help various fundraising groups prepare for their sale we focus on helping them: