| by Howard Gottlieb, President, Easy
Fundraising Ideas
Event Fundraising: Beyond Car Washes and Raffles
Part Eight
Quick, what do you think of when someone asks you to imagine a
fundraising event?
Most people envision the good old fashioned spaghetti dinner,
car wash, or raffle. Generally, groups that tend to take
advantage of product type fundraisers also try their hands
at these types of events. The problem is that although many
groups raise lots of money with some of these campaigns,
many others exhaust their volunteer man-hours through the
tedious planning and implementation stages.
As any fundraising group will tell you, it is critical to
keep your volunteer base excited, refreshed, and ready to
help. Having your volunteers spend twelve months planning
a school carnival might not be the best way to utilize them
as resources.
The main hurdle for both event and product-based fundraising
is geographic limitation. You can only invite people who
are close enough to attend your event, and you can only sell
products to someone within easy delivery range. In many cases,
geography limits your target support market to neighbors
and family who live close. These people are probably happy
to help now and then, but wouldn't it be beneficial if you
could hold a fundraiser free from geographic boundaries?
How About Selling Online?
Most people in the United States have Internet access and,
on occasion, they use that connectivity to shop online. As
broadband access becomes more readily available, the growth
in online retail has far outpaced brick and mortar retail.
Now there is a way to earn the money your group needs by
capitalizing on this growing market.
Visit Our Mall offers
free online shopping malls with hundreds of stores that will
pay cash back to your group for any purchases in your mall.
In addition, they offer promotional tools for your volunteer
base to use to advertise your mall. They can promote your
mall nationwide in just a few hours. Consider launching a
mall late in the fall and promoting your new online fundraising
mall as a holiday fundraiser. The great thing about this
type of fundraising event is that it continues to earn residual
income for your group for years.
Promotional tools include the development and storage of
a database containing potential shoppers and their email
addresses. Invitations are initially sent to every name you
input. You can and should invite anyone living anywhere in
the United States . Then, periodically, those people are
sent virtual flyers like the ones in the Sunday newspaper
telling them about great seasonally-appropriate merchants
and sales. These flyers keep people coming back to your mall.
Other Online Fundraising Resources
Communications through the Internet and email have certainly
increased the size of the potential supporter universe. Smart
groups maintain email lists that can be used to send mass
emails keeping supporters abreast of their group's activities.
The more supporters know about you, your fundraising group,
and why it needs to raise money, the more likely they are
to help when asked.
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