How to Prepare for a Discount Card Fundraiser Kickoff

Your primary goal is to sell off your discount cards as quickly as possible. You must therefore persuade your sellers to sell and that’s why you should do a kickoff presentation. The main purpose of the kickoff is to generate as much enthusiasm as possible for your fundraiser. In order to ensure that you meet your fundraising objectives, make sure that you do the following:

1. Plan to communicate your purpose:
The first thing is communicate your purpose at the beginning of your kickoff. Why are you doing the fundraiser in the first place? Where will the money be spent? How will you convince your sellers that your purpose is important to them directly? A well communicated purpose will motivate everyone to work harder.

2. Set a Student Sales Goal:

• If, for example, you ordered 500 cards and you have 100 sellers then you will probably issue 5 cards to every seller (You may not want to distribute the same number of cards to everyone)
• You will want to make sure that you have your sellers put their name on your Discount Card Sales Tracking Sheet
  
  • If you are issuing 5 cards then you will want to put a ‘5’ in the ‘OUT’ column just to the right of where the seller placed their name
  • Once a student returns the initial $50.00 for the 5 discount cards you can determine if you want to issue them additional cards or not (If it is still early in the sale and/or you need to get rid of additional cards then you will probably want to issue additional cards to sellers who return money for their first set of cards in a timely manner)

3. Before you issue your cards make sure that everyone understands the process:

• Discuss who you want them to sell to. Make sure they only talk to people they know and encourage them to have their family members take the cards to work to sell to their work friends
• Review the businesses that are on the back of the card with your sellers. You should familiarize yourself with the offers prior to the kickoff so that you can more effectively present them. Your sellers will be more successful if they are familiar with what they are selling
• It is strongly encouraged that you provide envelopes for collecting money. Have the students put their name and group information on the outside (If you are accepting checks make sure that you tell them that checks are made payable to your group and that their money envelopes are due back by the turn-in day)
• Set a money turn-in deadline date and remind your sellers about it daily. In most cases, one week should be more than sufficient

4. Maintain a high level of enthusiasm throughout your fundraiser by:

• Checking on the progress of your sellers whenever you see them
• Reminding them regularly about the deadline date for turning in their money
• Creating competition between your sellers by offering fun yet rewarding incentives or special privileges throughout your sale

5. Incorporate additional incentives:

• Reward the person who successfully returns their money for the most cards sold
• Grand Prize Drawing (Sell 5 to get your name in one time. Then for every additional 5 cards sold you get your name in additional times)
• Use the Money Game or Mystery Person Game