Fundraising Ideas Archive

source: diegorb

Or maybe you have. Here are three creative and intuitive ideas to help your organization raise funds:

1. Eat out together. Team up with local restaurants to see if they would be willing to give you a percentage of sales for every person you bring to their location on a certain night. Send out fliers to everyone one of your supporters and have them pass it out to their friends, and have them bring it to the restaurant the night of the fundraiser. For example, Chili’s has a “give back night” where they donate 10% for every check that comes in with the nonprofit’s flier (that they actually provide). Although the program is Chili’s, any organization with an appropriate Tax ID can receive these benefits.
2. Babysitting events. Parents have a hard time finding time for themselves after they have children. Have your team set aside a night, say a Friday evening, where you have a temporary “day care” and target parents. Send the message that not only will they be supporting a local charity, but they will be doing themselves a favor to have time for themselves. A fair warning, you might want to team up with a lawyer to produce waivers for the parents to sign, to reduce your liability.
3. Tailgate buffets. Why not take advantage of the sporting events in your area? Set up a hot dog stand with some drinks around a major sporting event (where tailgating is allowed), and since it’s not possible in most areas for you to charge the consumer, ask for a donation instead. Not only does this relieve you of needing to get a business license and pay taxes, but you might actually end up gaining more than you anticipated. Remember Panera’s charity cafes? It was a huge success, primarily because 60% of the donors actually gave more than the suggested fundraising amount.

Do you have any creative ideas for fundraising?

So I am sitting here inputting all of our upcoming events for our partnered non-profits into all the major online event calendars available for Orange County events, and I saw that there aren’t a lot of fundraising events posted on these calendars.

Or maybe Orange County doesn’t have a lot of fundraising events, period?

No, that cannot be true.

So why are there not many nonprofits utilizing this tool?

Maybe for the most part a lot of these groups just simply do not know that this tool exists. Here are some of the major event calendars for OC where you can submit your own event for their calendar, for free:

OC Register
OC Weekly
OC Metro
OC Standard
Easy OC
OC Craigslist

Do people even look through these calendars?

That was definitely a question I received from one of our clients. They think that just because they don’t actively find events to attend on the online calendars, that no one else does. Well, I can’t say that is entirely untrue, but I can tell you that these things probably would not exist if no one used them to find things to do locally.

So even if you maybe gathered a few extra strangers to your fundraising events, is the cost of my time submitting these events worth it, even if the tool is free?

There is definitely a different benefit to submitting events

source: sachyn

For the most part, these calendars offer the ability for you to insert the website link to the event. That’s major! Why? SEO! Search engine optimization. Don’t know what that is? You can read about it here from SEOmoz.

In short, SEO is the art of making your website and content more visible online. Although it sounds easy, it actually kind of is, but it’s back-breaking work. But you submitting your event to these calendars definitely help with this process.

A big portion of your site ranking well on search engines includes how many links you have coming into your website. Meaning, how many websites that aren’t yours out there link to your website? In a way, it’s a vote of confidence online, saying “Yeah, Google. I trust this is a real site with real information.”

Another important factor is how important the site containing your link is. Obviously, sites like OC Register and OC Metro are huge news sites for us here in OC, and obviously they are pretty important.

Wait, so the more links to my site that are out there, the better it is?

Yep! And like I said, fortunately, these event calendars let you input your web link in them. Once they are published, that’s more “link juice” (lingo) for you.

Now keep in mind that these are posts that will perish after your event, so you will lose those links again. But that doesn’t matter, because you have more events coming up anyway, right?

Has it ever crossed your mind why a stuffed animal bear is called a teddy bear? Probably not. You have heard it your whole entire life and it just becomes a part of our everyday vocabulary.

Well, today is National Teddy Bear Day (not to be confused with another day in November which was created by a teddy bear company) and I wanted to take the time to educate the masses on how the name came about. Because, we all need more knowledge in our lives, right?

But before I start, I did a lot of research to see if this is a pseudo-valid holiday, and have found other dates that websites have touted as “National Teddy Bear Day.” The sites that note that, though, seem to be from teddy bear manufacturers, so it seems as though that it could be a marketing ploy of said companies. I have found several sites though that have marked September 9 as National Teddy Bear Day.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt went on a bear-hunting excursion in Mississippi. It was actually a hunting competition, and by the end of the day, Pres. Roosevelt had not shot a bear. His team had tied a baby bear down and encouraged the President to shoot at it, but he had refused, stating that it was unsportsmanlike.

Somehow, the topic caught media wind, and it became the headline of a political cartoon. Morris Michtom saw this and invented a stuffed bear, labeled it “Teddy’s Bear” and put it in his shop window. Realizing its increasing popularity and worried he might get in trouble for using that name, he sent the original bear to the White House as a gift and asked to use the name officially. After getting the greenlight, the bear spiked in popularity and thus the birth of the teddy bear.

Now if only every toy ever made had an endearing story like this behind it. *ahem* Nintendo DS.

So as a nonprofit, how can you utilize this holiday to raise either awareness about your own charity or raise funds? There have been several organizations that host Teddy Bear drives, collecting stuffed bears from people and donating them to the local children’s hospital. That will raise your brand awareness. There are a few companies out there that develop special teddy bears based around a cause or organization, and whatever you sell, you receive a portion of the sales for your charity. Try having a teddy bear sale on the week of this holiday next year, and use this story to help promote sales and awareness.

source: dewitcs

Or maybe you have thought of these. Regardless, here are some creative and intuitive fundraising ideas that we’ve come across that we’d like to share with our charities.

1. Prime parking spot raffle. This is best if you’re at a school or if you team up with a large corporation with highly coveted parking spaces. Essentially, participants buy a raffle ticket and one (or however many spots you have to raffle off) lucky winner will get that highly primed spot for a month, or however you choose your term to be. What’s also great is that there’s very little money involved.
2. White elephant auction. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Ask your staff, donors, and supporters to donate one item that they do not want. Then host a silent auction, with a low minimum bid. There are no upfront costs other than marketing the auction and setting it up.
3. Craft shop on Etsy.com. Etsy provides an easy and inexpensive store-front to anyone who has inventory of hand-made and creative items. Hold craft sessions, ask for craft donations, and put them up on the store for sale. You could even offer your artist to pay the materials back once the item is sold as incentive.