Obama Donations Style Fundraising Help Guide
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
School budgets are short. Cities even need help. On top of that, there are all sorts of organizations that are looking to make some extra money to help fund them. Fundraising is the perfect thing to do just that. If you are looking for some remarkable method of fundraising to turn your school or organization around, there are plenty to choose from, but they may not all be remarkable. In fact, sometimes the simplest of plans works the best.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
In fundraising, you need to consider two things. First, you need to understand what the percentage of sales you will receive through the fundraiser. This information should be in writing and put right in front of you before you start with the company. Simply, how much are you going to make off of each sale that is made?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Secondly, you’ll need to insure that the products that are being sold as a fundraising tool are worth it. Perhaps they are marked up some to help you get your profits, but they still have to be some type of product that people need if you want them to purchase it. For example, you may want to have a fundraiser that provides Christmas purchases at that time of year. Or, in the middle of winter, a fundraiser could be hot chocolate, candies and candles. When the product is something that the individuals will want, they will be more than likely to make a purchase.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
How you present the information is important as well. Make sure to tell your prospective customers that you are raising money for the Boy Scouts or you are helping to afford the school a new computer. When they know what the money is going towards, people are more generous as well.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
By taking the time to plan well for your fundraiser, it can be more successful than you realize. If you plan to do fundraising, do it with your best foot forward every time.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Successful fundraising requires following certain fundamental steps. Here are two things you have to do with every fundraiser:
1) Increase community awareness of your need
2) Increase community awareness of your offering
Everybody reading this instantly thinks, “Yep, we’ve got that covered. Everybody in our group knows what we’re doing.”
Let’s take a closer look and see, shall we?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Creating Awareness Of Your Fundraising Need:
1) Can your need be expressed in a single sentence?
2) Has everyone in your group memorized that sentence?
3) Is expressing your need a part of your approach to all supporters?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Test your group from top to bottom.
Randomly ask individuals to tell you why your group is raising money.
I absolutely guarantee you that you’ll be surprised at how weak the various answers are.
In many groups, more than 50% of those involved with the fundraiser will not be able to tell you in a single sentence the specific reasons why they are raising money.
What about outside your group?
Can you honestly say that you’ve exhausted every possible approach in getting the word out to the community about your fundraiser?
Does everybody know why you need money?
Have you done each of these?
Flyers
Posters
Press release
Roadside signs
Newspaper coverage
Public service radio announcements
Pre-kickoff letter, postcard, or email campaigns
Or, are you assuming that all you have to do is tell someone that you’re doing a fundraiser and that they’ll be glad to help?
Two problems with that approach. One is that most of your group can’t effectively communicate your need.
The second is that you are already assuming that your group has more than enough prospective supporters to meet your goal.
Both these problems limit your potential results.
Consider these three points:
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
One, if your need isn’t communicated clearly and concisely, it will not be understood and internalized as a deserving cause by your prospective supporters.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Two, if your sellers don’t really understand your group’s need, then they won’t push as hard to meet that need.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Three, if your need isn’t general knowledge in your community, then your fundraising job will be that much harder.
Think of “getting the word out” as being similar to softening up the beachhead during the Normandy invasion. If you don’t do the advance prep work, you’re much more likely to meet a hostile response.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Creating Awareness Of Your Fundraising Offering
The second fundraising fundamental goes hand-in-hand with creating an awareness of your need.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Creating an awareness of your offering is just as important as telling people why your group needs money.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Your fundraising need and your fundraising offering should be closely linked in all your communications.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
At the same time you are getting the word out, you need to make sure the message gets through on exactly what your group is doing to raise funds.
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Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
ust as with expressing your need, everyone in your group should be able to sum up your fundraising offering in a single sentence.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
That sentence should also reinforce the emotional foundation that is derived from recognition of your need.
So what in the heck does all that mean?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Put simply, if someone believes your need is real and agrees with the value proposition of your offering, they will help you.
And what’s your fundraising value proposition?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
It’s a summation of your offering, combined with a reminder of your need, that’s expressed in a way that informs each prospective supporter of what’s in it for them.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
In other words, your prospect needs to:
1 – Be aware of your need
2 – Be linked to it on an emotional level
3 – Be in agreement that your offer has real value in it for them
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Getting your need and your offering across to as many potential supporters as possible is the essence of fundraising.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Take the time to develop single sentence statements for your fundraiser covering both of these fundraising fundamentals.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Teach everyone in your group how to communicate these basic value statements when they talk to prospective supporters.
Here are four keys to better nonprofit fundraising results.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Question
Non-profit fundraising is all about multiple streams of income, so how do you make more money for your organization?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Simple. When you put together your annual plan, you need to include as many ways to raise money as possible.So, you’re probably thinking: ‘That’s easy for you to say, but how exactly do I go about it?’ Easy! You just have to be “smart” about it, with a well thought-out plan that doesn’t make too many demands on any one facet of your organization.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Every fundraiser that you conduct places various demands on your volunteers, your supporters, and your leadership. Those demands can be time consuming, expensive, and stressful.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
The more large-scale fundraisers you conduct in one year’s time, the greater the load you place on the people you depend on.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
You need to be ‘smart’ in how you go about your fundraising.
Four Keys to Non-Profit Fundraising:
Think Smart
Plan Smart
Work Smart
Be Smart
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Non-Profit Fundraising – THINK SMART
Thinking smart means taking the time to review past results and strategizing about how to do better this year.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
If you don’t spend some time brainstorming some new and creative ideas to increase your bottom line, how are you going to rise above last year’s results?
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Define your three best income streams. Now, daydream a little about what changes or enhancements you can make that will add additional volume to those streams.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Non-profit fund-raising is all about reaching more people with a compelling message that inspires them to take immediate action to assist your organization.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
How can you reach more people? By exploiting two things – personal networks and personal motivators.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Your non-profit fund-raising has to be structured to achieve maximum leverage of everyone’s self interest by providing sufficient incentives for giving time or money to your cause.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
How can you make your message more compelling? By giving it ‘story-like’ visual imagery that speaks to your supporters emotions.
Decisions are made on an emotional level, not a logical one. A ‘story’ allows people to visualize their contribution having a positive impact on what they’ve visualized.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
How can you inspire a higher percentage to immediate action? By combining your story with a call to action.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
A call to action leverages the immediacy of the emotional reaction to your story with a request to help now BECAUSE their contribution will have a positive impact.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Everyone wants to help. They just have to be properly coached about your situation and motivated to act now.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Non-Profit Fundraising – PLAN SMART
Planning smart means taking concrete action to put your ideas into an annual business plan. Yes, I did say ‘business plan.’
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
No self-respecting, non-profit fund-raising organization should be without a written business plan to guide their fundraising efforts.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Your plan should spell out roles and goals along with detailed instructions on how you’ll get there. It should be grounded in the past and targeted at the future.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Each non-profit fund-raising activity should be broken down into the necessary action steps that will produce the highest level of results with the most cost-effective effort.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Everyone should know exactly what’s expected of them. A well-organized team where everyone understands their role is able to execute their mission flawlessly.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Everyone should know and be able to state your group’s value proposition.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
If they can’t articulate, in two sentences or less, a convincing reason why you are raising funds, then you need a plan that helps communicate your message more effectively.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Fundraising – WORK SMART. Working smart means taking your plan and putting it into action with an eye towards getting the most bottom line results from every facet of your organization.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
You’ll get the best long-term results if you stay focused on not overburdening your volunteers, your supporters, and your leadership. Overworking volunteers will ensure that many will not be around to help next year.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Too many demands for small donations will alienate your group’s supporters. Structure your non-profit fund-raising requests to two or three campaigns in a year’s time, no more.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Size those non-profit fund-raising campaigns to get the most from each time your supporters are asked to make a contribution.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Continuous fundraising will wear out your leadership as well. Your key personnel will be spending most of their time on organizing and conducting campaigns.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
You want to keep everyone fresh and motivated. Do that by having a well thought out plan that maximizes the value of everyone’s time, energy, and contributions.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Non-Profit Fundraising – BE SMART
Being smart means taking the time NOW to begin a ‘Get Smart’ effort about your non-profit fund-raising efforts.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Start the brainstorming process now.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Get a small journal and start recording any and all ideas you have, day or night, about improving your fundraising. Some of them will be duds, but others will be gems.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Sure, the gems will be rough and will need polishing, but you won’t have any gems at all if you don’t let your creative juices run wild.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Just write them down as they occur to you and keep adding to the ones that make the most sense in the light of day.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Hey, if it worked for Edison and Einstein, it can work for you.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Start writing down all the ways that you can think of to create multiple streams of income for your organization.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Get your non-profit fund-raising planned and organized, then watch the money flow in.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
When your youth group is doing a fundraiser, it is imperative to make sure that the proper safety precautions are followed.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Never allow door-to-door sales without direct adult supervision. Period.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
In a sad case, an 11-year-old boy selling candy for a PTA fundraiser came to the door of a 15-year-old boy who was home alone at the time. The youngster was invited inside, sexually molested, and then murdered.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
This is not an urban legend. The murder happened in Freehold, New Jersey on September 27, 1997 and it raised the fundraising safety issue to national prominence.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
I’m not usually an alarmist, but I included the example above to heighten awareness of the safety topic.
I am by nature a trusting person, but not when it comes to my children! Nothing is worth such devastating consequences.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Develop An Appropriate Safety Focus
So, how do you build the appropriate safety focus into your program?
You start by stressing safety from the top of your organization to the bottom. You have to make sure that safety is a focal point in all your communications.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
1) Use written selling guidelines
Put it into writing that all selling should be supervised. Your organization needs this as a protective measure and so do the children. If an adult cannot commit to accompanying a child, the child must not perform that type of sales activity.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Make sure that each child’s parents are aware of these guidelines. Get the message to them that their children are not being encouraged to sell outside their comfort zone by your group.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Tell them that they should focus on their core contacts – family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers of parents. In other words, e safe by selling only to individuals who know your parents.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
2) Repeat the message
Put up fundraising safety posters at convenient locations to remind young sellers. Make them friendly, but firm.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Example: “What’s the last thing you do in a fundraiser? Sell without an adult present.”
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Print a safety message on all of your sales literature. Look for this from a quality supplier. Put the “Keep It Safe” message on all communications.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Repeat the safety message at every opportunity. Cover it in your kickoff meeting, during sales brochure distribution, in the take home package, etc.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
If your fundraiser is school-based, have teachers reinforce the safety message in the classrooms.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
3) Put safety into practice
Don’t encourage inappropriate behavior such as risk taking, unsupervised sales, shopping center sales activity without prior approval and adult supervision.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Your group’s policies and procedures may vary from this approach.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
The important thing is to develop a written policy and make sure those guidelines are followed.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
The key to continued fundraising success is to follow-up afterwards: Supporters and participants need to be thanked.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Merchant contributors need to be debriefed on their results from participating. Records need to be gathered, copied, and stored.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Communicate the results to everyone involved.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Informing everyone who took part in your most recent fundraising is of utmost importance. Nothing charges up your organization for the future better than a group celebration.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Give recognition to your volunteers.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Enjoy the sound of “We did it!”
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Conduct a post-mortem analysis of the fundraiser just completed.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Gather information and record impressions while everything is still fresh. Make notes about supplier relationships, any process problems, and what aspects need fine-tuning for the next time around. Gather those recommendations for future fundraisers.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Brainstorm with your team and write down all the possible ways to improve. Circulate a written evaluation form to gather multiple viewpoints for the permanent file. Make plans while everyone is still excited from this success.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Strategize how to increase the number of volunteers. Plan to promote those who excelled this time around to positions with more authority.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Ask your merchant supporters what you could do better.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
In the long run, it’s important to help them even more. Now is a good time to ask them for increased participation during your next big drive. Review all records for completeness.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Work up the statistical analysis covered in the section on Goal Setting (in my book Fundraising Success!). That will save time in the future when you want to set your benchmarks.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Post the results on your website.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Let everyone see how ell you did along with multiple pictures of your team in action. When describing your success, be a shameless namedropper. Everyone likes to be thanked publicly.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Most importantly, put the funds you’ve raised to good use.
Obama Donations Style Fundraising Tips
Your fundraising follow-up is the foundation for your future success. Don’t give this area short shrift. Pave the way for even better results next time.
Summary
The best way to avoid an unsafe situation is by not going there. Many other youth programs also carry a strong safety message. Make sure yours does too.
