Does Your Non Profit Have The Fundraising Blues?

Don’t allow the campaign season to dig into non-profit revenue.

 U.S. Charitable Giving was up 8.1% in the first quarter of 2011.  But, according to Rob Mitchell, former Chief Development Officer with The American Cancer Society, charities can find their fundraising efforts hamstrung as individuals divert money earmarked for their favorite charities, making a choice to support political candidates instead.

 “Historically, election campaign fundraising has a negative impact on the charitable giving economy. With the U.S. economy growing at glacial speed, much of the giving momentum gain produced so far this year will be eroded as election campaigns divert funds that would have gone to nonprofits. The impact will become more pronounced as electioneering activity increases—especially if the economy is not growing fast enough to blunt much of the blow.”

 For those non-profits looking to compete for the limited funds available innovation and non-traditional means of raising money are key.  Online fundraising platforms allow non-profits to create turnkey solutions, reaching scores of potential donors with a few clicks of the mouse: At zero cost.

 The social media revolution has increased interconnectedness exponentially.  With friends, followers, communities and the ability to reach people with common interests the potential to raise money and awareness is limitless.

 Online fundraising platforms integrate social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even SMS texting.  With the click of a button you can reach an unlimited number of potential donors through any device the tech world can throw into the market. 

 Beyond spreading your message far and wide the online fundraising platform can accelerate more traditional means of raising money like charity events.  Tickets can be sold online and the money can be processed securely just like donations.

 An online fundraising campaign can be established in just minutes with a simple sign-up process.  It can be configured to meet your non-profits’ needs, whether you require the ease of a simple hosted online form or the complexity of full integration into your website and brand.

 The ease with which to create an online fundraising campaign frees up resources and time for staff to concentrate on more important details like creating successful programs that can benefit your cause for years to come.

 Donor pools will decrease with the coming political season in the face of increased demand for the same funds.  Online fundraising provides the non-profit with the ability to reach more donors, quickly with less effort, increasing your potential for raising money even in these difficult times.

College Fundraising For A Social Cause

One of the best ways of doing your part for the betterment of society is to organize college fundraising events. You can plan for some interesting way to organize a fundraiser in your college to raise funds for a good cause.  Colleges and schools are the best places for a fundraising event as you can find many students actively taking part in bringing a change in the society. School and college students are usually easy to convince for these activities as they truly believe in bringing a change in society. People of this age group are open to new ideas and creativity.

You can pool students and discuss the cause of the event. Organizing an event is not an easy task. You need to have a sharp sense of planning and leadership skills. You should be able to plan strategically so that your event turns successful and you achieve your goal.

Setting the right goal is the foundation of college fundraising event. If you have chosen the right goal you can plan various methods of achieving it. Each and every step should be carefully designed so that you can attract the right group of people. Choose your team carefully. Pick the right student for each job and assign him the task along with details about the date of completion. You need to plan the event in such a way that all the tasks end in the right time and you don’t have to rush to get things done at the last minute. This depends on the delegation of work and choosing the manpower.

Apart from delegation of work you should also focus in creating awareness for your fundraiser and attracting large groups of people. One of the best ways of getting in touch with people especially the young school and college going crowd is through social media. Make sure you design beautiful and catchy invitations; and create an event on Facebook and distribute the message via Twitter. This would help in attracting a huge crowd and that too without spending much money on it. You can also create an online forum asking for creative suggestions with a special award section for those who give the best suggestions.In this way, you can create enthusiasm amongst the students and also use those creative inputs in making your college fundraising event successful.

Another interesting way of gathering people for the social cause is by inviting a popular celebrity or public figure. If you are able to rope in a popular figure from a rock band, a football player or an actor you can pull huge crowds for the event. The entire amount that you gather in tickets can be donated to the social cause.Celebrities love to be a part of such college fundraising events because they can reach their fans directly, contribute to social betterment and be an active part in bringing a difference in the lives of the needy.

It is essential to create banners and logos as a part of branding. You can associate a unique color and code for the event as a symbol for the college fundraising event. Create a dress code or print t-shirts, caps and bands of a particular color so that you can stand out amidst the crowd.

Most of time, you can find popular brands actively taking part in the college fundraising activities. They offer discounts on their products to all those who attend the event or sponsor the entire event as a part of their philanthropic duty. Choose the right brand while you are looking for sponsor is important. Do not opt for the brand whose values and product do not reflect the event that you are supporting. If you are organizing a college fundraising event for orphaned kids then choose a brand that can reflect this event. You can opt for food, milk or health product brands that help in improving children’s health. It is easy for people to relate the brand with the cause therefore, choosing the right brand plays a vital role. These are some good college fundraising ideas that can be used when hosting a college fundraising event. Use these fundraising techniques the next time you are planning to gather people for a good cause.

Church Fundraising Events To Raise Money For Spiritual Causes

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Churches need funds for construction projects, provide aid forpeople, extend support to conduct various activities, mission trips and much more. So it is required to raise money to fulfil the financial needs. Raising funds require church fundraisers and different fundraising ideas. Organizers can find an array of ideas to raise the required amount of money. However, choosing the appropriate method is highly important. The amount of money that needs to be raised, resources available in the Church, location of church fundraisers and volunteers, etc. all influence the selection of the appropriate method or church fundraising.

Fundraising at the church is one of the easiest fundraising options. The church gets a regular attendance on Sundays and it is common for church-goers to offer their assistance by means of donation and any other possible way.

It’s important to assemble a team of volunteers who will spearhead the fundraiser. Some of the fundraising events that interest you may involve selling a range of products for a specific period of time, or it may happen on any specific day. Some of the ideas require detailed planning and might be hard to organise, while some fundraising ideas can be implemented very easily.

The very simplest church fundraising idea to raise funds is by placing fundraising collection boxes in the Church. Churches can find few companies that offer religious products to sell through the church fundraisers. From the overall profits earned by the fundraisers, a specific percentage of amounts will be offered to the fundraisers. Selling candles with great quotes and inspirational messages, t-shirts, religious books and magazines, etc contributes great towards earning funds. Regular worshippers of Church, their family members and friends will buy the products sold through fundraising events.

Church fundraising ideas can include several events. For instance, it can include an auction, car wash fundraiser, race/walkathon, dinner, or even a game. In addition events can also include selling baked goods, hot food, crafts, etc. Silent auctions in churches have proven to be successful in collectingdonations for a spiritual cause. However, planning is required to make any kind of event successful.

Another option as church fundraising idea is publishing a cookbook. It is a time consuming fundraising event which requires more effort and hard work. Fortunately, its results are great and worth the effort and hard work. You can ask the church members contribute their favourite recipes and compile all the recipes to publish a cookbook. This type of church fundraiser is ideal during festive seasons such as Christmas and Easter and often will attract a lot of people who will want to buy a copy of the cookbook as a sign of support to the church or out of their own culinary interest.

Similarly, you can choose to host a dinner as your church fundraising event. You need to sell the tickets in advance to collect money as well as to know the quantity of food that needs to be cooked. Often, the congregation donates the food for the church fundraiser and allows church to utilize the entire amount collected on ticket sales.

Fundraising requires a lot of planning ahead but church fundraisers can be a successful way to attract more donors and to raise funds for causes that are supported by the church.

Christian Fundraising Ideas For Schools and Other Christian Causes

Fundraising is not only meant for selling products or conducting a yard sale of items pertaining to Christianity. Christian organizations looking to organize Christian fundraising need to have good experience, creative thoughts and ideas to raise funds. There are few fundraising events and procedures include just writing a letter detailing the purpose and need of the funds and how the funds would be used.

There are several schools maintained by Christian organizations. They require funds to run their schools and conduct other events and programs. Implementation of Christian fundraising ideas for  events can generate extra income to run the show. Many such organizations prefer to conduct few traditional fundraisers such as candy bar sales, etc. however, it is not mandatory that church fundraisers should be traditional events. There are few other fundraisers that represent the core value of your educational institutions for consideration.

Faith of Christianity has been built and developed on the foundation of offering prayers. You can encourage and motivate the lifestyle of the prayers by sale of prayer candles. Prayer candles can be produced in different sizes, colors, shapes and fragrances. It is a great idea to include some inspirational quotes in the candles. Christian fundraisers can consider sale of prayer candles with motivational and inspirational quotes for their school fundraising. In the United States, about nine out of ten households purchase around 30 candles a month.

Most of the students would love to wear the t-shirt with the name of their school imprinted. It is a better idea to raise funds through selling T-shirts. Selling such T-shirts not only helps in raising funds to run the school, but also acts as a marketing tool and promotes the school to others. Such promotions result towards increasing enrollment in schools.

When compared with other fundraisers, Christian fundraisers generate more funds. The simplest Christian fundraising idea is placing a fundraising box in the church. Many people have the intention to make a donation at Church for a fundraiser and you can easily collect money for your school.

There may be few organizations with lack of finance to buy products to conduct Christian fundraising events. Those institutions can opt for order forms or order takers. It costs zero to organize such fundraising event. You just need to collect the upfront money and put the orders later. This option not only saves money and time, but also ensures to earn more funds in a simple way.

Organizing youth camps and mission trips involving youth and students to do some odd jobs to raise funds is a good school fundraising idea. For instance, they can be involved in some activities like painting, gardening, car washes, moving furniture, baby sitting, etc. It is important to include responsible youth in your group who are interested to do such jobs. It is also useful to educate those youth about necessity of funds.

Christian fundraising ideas for schools can be very effective as a school fundraiser. It will help schools raise money and create awareness among church groups. With the right mix of fundraising ideas and events, along with a good selection of products to sell, church fundraisers can bea very attractive concept for schools.

Political Fundraising – Viral Fever: 2012 elections will take the Internet by storm!

Ever since Obama set the trend by using social media for his online fundraising campaign in 2008 there has been a surge of politicians using the Internet for fundraising. The 2012 elections is about to take the internet by storm. President Obama “announced” is re-election bid via digital video that reached 13 million of his supporters and tied up with none other than Facebook to hold a town hall meeting to answer questions from both in person and “online attendees”.

Having learned their lesson since 2008, rivals and contenders have hopped on to the social media wagon. The benefits of taking your political fundraising campaign online stare at you in the face; you can reach a wider audience in a cost effective way, engage more discussions and field more questions than possible with in-person meetings and political rally’s. Yet, most importantly, fundraise for your campaign online and monitor progress by tracking the number of followers online. Politicians now understand that rallying support to get them elected is not just visiting small towns in middle America for fundraising but also becoming savvy with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that has most of the country’s young and old hooked! 

An article in the Associated Press by Beth Fouhy is calling this “Welcome to the Social Network, the presidential campaign edition”. While this is great news for politicians and supporters alike, taking your political fundraising campaign online also makes you vulnerable to an uncomfortable level of transparency. Get ready to be inundated with more rhetoric as the presidential elections gain momentum online.

 I bet no one thought that limiting your message to only 140 characters would actually be sought after by politicians, huh? With little or no control over messages that are distributed via social media, the slightest slip-up could work against the campaign. And with the world of politics being murky as it is, there will be a lot of controversy and mudslinging to watch out for with very few avenues for damage control.

Also, the next presidential election campaign will see those that have used online fundraising tools before get more sophisticated as they use new tools and innovative online fundraising ideas for political fundraising; and there will be a many new and first-time online fundraising users who will leverage social media to get their message out to voters. With the presidential elections just around the corner, there will be many more political fundraisers to watch out for.It seems like ‘Viral Fever’ will be inevitable this upcoming presidential election!

Online Fundraising – Successful Non-Profit Fundraising Ideas

Fundraising for your non-profit is now just a click away with so many great online tools that makes donating money to your favorite charity easy and convenient. Often, non-profits set up their online profile and donation pages and wonder why they are not getting the large amounts of traffic or donations that everyone’s talking about. That’s mostly because just creating a profile and sending a few emails is not enough. Your non-profits online presence needs to be monitored constantly to make sure you are connecting with all the right people!

Here are a few useful non-profit fundraising ideas that every non-profit organization should think about while setting up their fundraiser online:

Baby Steps: Set small and achievable goals to make donors and volunteers feel like they can help make a difference with their time or money. Smaller goals can be achieved quickly; giving everyone involved a sense of accomplishment, and a boost in morale. Setting huge goals can be intimidating especially to people who can’t donate large amounts of money and may force them to back out.

Reviews: Your donors will do your marketing for you! Get your donors to review your non-profit or fundraiser and tell the world about all the good work you do. New and potential donors always feel comfortable about making a donation after they learn about other donors’ positive experiences.

Stay on the message: This is key. Often, non-profits emotionally blackmail their audience into donating. This usually works the first time but you want your donors to keep coming back! Your message should be consistent and should talk about the non-profits commitment towards the cause, talk about the great work and progress already achieved and the amount of work left to be done. Too much of any one message will most often falls on deaf ears.

Get Help: With social media tools expanding, often non-profits fail to stay up to date with new techniques that are freely available on the Internet. It always helps to get help from great companies like Piryx that are committed to helping non-profits meet their fundraising goals by helping them set-up their online fundraising pages and giving them the essential training and skills required to run those pages successfully!

Connect: It’s most important to constantly connect with new and old users. Make sure to send them progress updates, promote your charity with new messages and every time you reach a fundraising milestone, thank them for their contribution- be it time volunteered or money donated.

A mix of these above steps in setting up and managing your charity’s online presence is sure to get your fundraiser on its way to success!

 

Non-Profit Fundraising – Using the Web for Non-Profit Fundraisers

Non-profit fundraising is a necessity for keeping a non-profit organization in business. Without any profits flowing in, a company has no capital to invest in its efforts. It needs the help of donors to get anything done. If you have a non-profit organization you need to raise money for, you may think about taking your efforts to the web. The internet provides an array of opportunities for your non-profit fundraisers, and it is not hard to work with. Take a moment to read on so you can see just what the internet may be able to do for you.

If you conduct your non-profit fundraisers online, you can actually see how much money you are earning at a given time. The web gives you a real time look at who has made donations to your group and what the amount of those donations are. You can keep track of where you are with your non-profit fundraising goals and then make adjustments as needed to possibly earn more money. When you reach your fundraising goal, you can stop the fundraiser or leave it to keep building more money for you to use with your group. That is up to you.

Non-profit fundraising online is easy to do because you basically let the web do the work for you. You can market your non-profit fundraisers through the web, and you can allow someone to make a donation for you at any time. Most live fundraisers are limited in their abilities because people are not around to collect money at all times in the night. Online, the website you work through will be able to collect payments for you any time someone wants to donate. This makes the process much more profitable in the end.

If you have not explored your options with non-profit fundraising online, you may want to hop on the web right away. The sooner you begin your non-profit fundraisers online, the sooner you can bring in money from the thousands of potential donors on the web. Everything is easy to manage and easy to change, and you can have all of your money stored in an online account until you are ready to take it out. You will be able to bypass hefty overhead costs associated with common fundraisers so you have more money in your pocket. Your non-profit will be booming in no time.

For free fundraising tools that will help you effectively raise money online for your non-profit fundraisers, you can create, manage, and track the success of an unlimited amount of non-profit fundraising campaigns today by using a robust online fundraising platform. Fundraise with ease for your non-profit fundraiser now by using these free and easy to use, non-profit fundraising tools.

Group Fundraising – What Do We Do?

Group fundraising is hard if you do not have a plan in place, and coming up with that plan can be hard too. The fact is that there are tons of different group fundraisers you could test out, but not all of them will pay off for you in the end. If you have never fully explored your fundraising options, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to earn money for your group. Here is a look at what you can possibly do to raise money so you can determine what option will be best for you.

A standard bake sale is one of the most common forms of group fundraising around. To do this, you need to find a location to do the bake sale, and you need to find a way to gather all the materials for it. This can cost money, but in some cases you may be able to get people to donate the food and supplies for the baking. Just like with other group fundraisers, bake sales are not always successful. If the weather is bad, your products could melt or harden when you do not want them to. If there are not enough people at the location that day, you may not get any customers at all. Nevertheless, this is one of many group fundraising ideas.

Some people rely on catalog sales for group fundraising, where group members take catalogs of products to sell to other people for profit. The problem with those group fundraisers is that the catalog people may ask for 50% of the profits or more from the fundraising efforts. That makes sense because they need to make a profit too, but that eats away at the potential money you could be earning. You could try different kind of food sale, like popcorn or candy sale, but that could be just as much of a hit or miss as any other efforts you make.

There are no guaranteed group fundraisers out there, but having a fundraiser online should be successful for you. In that case, you can raise awareness for your cause and your group fundraising right on the web. You can also manage the money you make online as you campaign. Other people will be willing to donate because they can do so on their computers, so you are more likely to hit your goals in the end. Online fundraising is the best way to go for a convenient way to earn money.

For free fundraising tools that will help you effectively raise money online for your group fundraisers, you can create, manage, and track the success of an unlimited amount of group fundraising campaigns today by using a robust online fundraising platform. Fundraise with ease for your group fundraiser now by using these free and easy to use, group fundraising tools.

Sports Fundraising – Making the Most for Your Team

Sports fundraising is a necessary part of having a sports team. The team needs money for uniforms, equipment, training coaches and more, and as a result, people have to do sports fundraisers to earn some extra money. Sports fundraising is usually more successful than other fundraising efforts because of the general passion people have for sports in this country. That does not make this any easier though. There are still struggles that come along with this like any other fundraisers. Here is a look at some ways you can earn the most possible money from your fundraisers.

You need to campaign for money at local games and other places where a large crowd of potential donors would be. If you promote your sports fundraisers in a good location, you are more likely to get money from people who actually care about your team and the sport you play. If you can make an announcement about your sports fundraising at a pep rally or awards banquet for the sport, that would work too. In some cases, you may even make an announcement about the fundraiser through a school intercom, assuming the team is part of a school. Just try to reach people as much as you can.

You can take your sports fundraising to a whole new level if you bring it to the web. That is because online sports fundraisers are so convenient to control and get money through. When people know about a fundraiser online, all they have to do is go to a website and load money for the team. Their efforts are minimized, and so are your efforts on the management side. All you have to do is withdraw money from your online account when the time comes to do that and you are all set.

Make sure that the sports fundraising that you do actually matches the team. For instance, you would not want to run a men’s basketball campaign where you sell women’s lingerie. There needs to be a neutral feel to the sports fundraisers you organize. If you think about having a food fundraiser, work with something like candy that is most likely to appeal to a large group of people. Do not go into anything too specialized. In the end, a bit of planning can go a long way. Figure out what your goals are as a team and then pick the fundraising effort that will best work for you.

For free fundraising tools that will help you effectively raise money online for your sports fundraisers, you can create, manage, and track the success of an unlimited amount of sports fundraising campaigns today by using a robust online fundraising platform. Fundraise with ease for your sports fundraiser now by using these free and easy to use, sports fundraising tools.

School Fundraising – School Fundraisers Can Be Easy

Kids love being a part of school fundraisers because they get to win fun prizes or they get to help their school. The only problem is that some school fundraising efforts do not make as much money as they should. It is hard to raise a decent amount of funding when you have to work with a catalog that takes 50% or more of your profits away from you. There are smarter ways to fundraise, and they can lead you to all the money you need and more. Here are a few school fundraising ideas that can guide you through your fundraising efforts.

One of the first things you need to realize is that successful school fundraising comes from reaching a large group of people. While you can do that with children taking their school fundraisers to their parent’s workplaces, you are still limited in your audience that way. Think about how kids spend their time and you should find a much easier way to spread the work about your cause. That’s right – it’s the internet. If you use the web to market your fundraising efforts, you can reach a ton of people through the student’s social networking pages alone. Then you can earn more money from your campaigns.

It is also possible to hold school fundraisers online, which may be a good idea if you want to earn a lot of money. People like convenience, and they are much more likely to donate money to a cause when you bring the school fundraising to them. If they can stay at home and make a quick transaction through the computer, they are far more likely to make a donation. This turns out to be a more convenient option for you too, so you can manage everything you need to right from your computer. You won’t even have to go anywhere to earn money for your school.

Even though school fundraising can be tedious, it is well worth your efforts in the end. Online school fundraisers are much easier to work with than standard school fundraisers, and they are more successful in the end. Stop wasting your money on back sales and candle catalogs and switch to something that you can do without much effort at all. That way you can spend the bulk of your time making sure that your students are able to have a good time in school.

For free fundraising tools that will help you effectively raise money online for your school fundraisers, you can create, manage, and track the success of an unlimited amount of school fundraising campaigns today by using a robust online fundraising platform. Fundraise with ease for your school fundraiser now by using these free and easy to use, school fundraising tools.