Everyone wants to raise a lot of money when it comes to their school fundraiser. The problem is that most people don’t really know how to effectively measure their success. Almost every fundraising coordinator only looks at the end result. In other words, if they raised $20,000 then they may or may not be pleased with that number. They may like it merely because it is a big number to them or because they were able to reach or beat last year’s mark.
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School fundraising shouldn’t just be about the money. It’s also important to consider how you carry it out, especially if you want to have long term success. Even if you raise a lot of money with your first fundraiser, if you don’t abide by proper fundraising ethics, your initial success may end up being short-lived.
Whenever we receive a phone call from a prospective customer it doesn’t take long before we can tell a successful school fundraising coordinator from one that may be in need of some tips on how to take their school fundraiser to the next level. What follows are 7 specific things that we have discovered over the years that successful coordinators do:
We used to hear a lot about the nightmare horror stories from schools that would sometimes collect $40,000 worth of orders during their fall school fundraiser only to find that they were still trying to collect the actual money from people in April and May. Back in the day, school fundraising companies were successful in convincing schools to collect the money for their fundraisers after the product arrived.
You plan to have a high school fundraiser kickoff where you will talk to your group about your fundraiser goals and expectations, introduce and discuss the sales brochure and why potential supporters will love it, as well as why your students should be motivated to sell because of their prize program. What else is there to do?
Any school fundraising company worth their weight in salt will be passionate about providing tools to their customers to help make their school fundraiser both more productive and easy to run. Some companies provide more resources than others so make sure you do your research ahead of time. This will take asking lots of questions within your group to help uncover your motivations and needs.
Most people will say that if their school fundraiser reaches its sales goal, then it’s a success. That may be true for the most part but accomplishing that is often easier said than done. In fact it’s probably safe to say that, more often than not, schools end up not reaching their desired financial objectives. Why is that? This is a hard question to answer because the reasons will vary; however there are some basic things that you can do to help ensure that you get the most out of your fundraiser.
Most people think that elementary school students are easier to motivate than high school students when it comes to fundraising. Just look at how excited they get at the kickoff once they see the prizes they can win. There’s no doubt that the enthusiasm and excitement of elementary school students can help drive the success of a fundraiser; however there are ways to make high school fundraisers successful as well.
Everybody wants their school fundraiser to go well but few are willing to put the work into making their success happen. There is more to fundraising than finding the perfect brochure that everyone will love or choosing the right prize program that will somehow motivate your students to go out and sell. Some groups might even define success by what profit percent they are able to get.
It used to be that the only way to make a sale when participating in a school fundraiser was to approach people directly and ask them to buy. Approaching neighbors, family and friends is still an effective approach, while more motivated sellers have successfully incorporated family members to take their sales brochure to work to ask work colleagues to buy as well.