Chairing a fundraiser can be a daunting task. There is so much going on that at times it might seem like utter chaos. Fundraising can be demanding on our time as well as our patience.

Here is a simple set of rules to follow that will make your fundraising experience pleasant and enjoyable. Put these fundraising ideas to work and you will be amazed at how much simpler the whole process of planning a school fundraising event can be.

Goal Setting

When you start to plan your event you will need to crunch some numbers. The first thing to figure out is what the goal is for your cause. Maybe the ski club wants to go to Aspen, or the Band has been invited to attend a parade. Factor in supplies, advertising and any other expenses that are related to your cause. This is your base goal.

Don’t put that calculator away just yet though. You are not finished. Now that you have your goal set, you need to determine how much it is going to cost to reach that it. Add up the costs involved. This could include sales material and prizes. If you have to have money up front in order to start your fundraiser, it should be taken into account. Once you are done you then have your total expenses.

Add the two totals together to determine your final goal. Now add 10 percent. That will cover any unforeseen expenses. You don?t want any surprises popping that you cannot pay for and sill reach your financial goal.

Timeline

Determine how long you think it will take to reach your goal. Set a specific starting and ending date and stick to them. You can also foster a sense of accomplishment by breaking you goal up into mini goals. This will convey a sense of accomplishment to your volunteers.

Organization

Release a complete fundraising schedule early in the year. In the case of educational institutions this might be in the middle of the summer but will cover the entire school year. Your fundraising events should be created in 4 to 6 week blocks with enough dead time between them for your sales people to recover. You don’t want to over do it. Usually 3 to 4 weeks is normal.

Contact Database

Start a database that contains contact information. Include your sales people or volunteers as well as any local business that donated items for prizes. Keep track of your cash donors as well. This database will make planning another fundraiser that much easier.

Rewards

Rewarding your sales force for a job well done should be factored in when setting your goal. It can be something very simple and uncomplicated, but it will make your sales force feel more like participating in your school fundraiser.

Following these simple points will do a great deal to ensure that you and your fundraiser are a success.

There are many good fundraising ideas floating around out there, but not all of them would be the right thing for your group. Go to the Aim Fundraising website to learn how to set up the right fundraising program for your group.

I got this question yesterday from one of our new salesreps and thought that I’d put the answer out for all to see as this will affect any and every group that does prizes with their school fundraising program. And it really doesn’t matter if they are using Aim Fundraising or not, it will still affect them. Here’s the question:

“This morning I met with the president of Wethersfield Football. His main concern was how the prizes are distributed. Are these sent separately by U.P.S.? If so, are they sent in bulk or are they broken down at all.”

Prizes are shipped to arrive before the cookie dough (or any other school fundraising product). They do not come on the refrigerated truck. We can ship them in bulk (my favorite way because they are easier to hand out without error) or we can pack them by level. (Note: some prizes are so big that they aren’t packed with other prizes by level. So you still have to put some of the “large” prizes with the “package” of small prizes.) That is why I prefer to get them in bulk because you can pass them out just like the cookie dough and it takes seconds if laid out by level…. A, B, C etc.

Hope that helps. Forward this to him if you like. But basically, prizes are very easy. They get “hard” when they are not there on delivery day. That’s why we do everything we can to make sure they arrive well ahead of time (via UPS to the address of their choice).

The only thing that we cannot control on prizes is if we do not receive the prize list for a week or two after the order is placed. This happens sometimes when a group comes up with their own totals for the cookie dough and faxes or sends their totals in and “forget” to tally what they need for prizes. This is not a problem if we get the prize tally within a day or two of their cookie dough order. Since we stock our prizes in our own warehouse this still gives us at least 7 work days to pack, ship and transit time to customer and beats the cookie dough to the school.

So for your groups that end up coming up with their own totals, please make sure that they turn in their tally for prizes ASAP if it is not done at the time of making their order!

AIM Fundraising is looking to find experienced independent fundraising representatives to carry one or more of our cookie dough or other fundraising lines. Experience is prefered but a highly motivated person may apply for a sales location as well.

This position is commission only. So only fundraising professionals or those who would not have to rely on income solely from fundraising to start should apply.

Who would make a good candidate

to represent AIM Fundraising in your area?

1. An independent fundraiser who would like to carry one or more name brand cookie dough products in their portfolio.

2. A PTA/PTO volunteer who has experience running the fundraiser for their child’s school. This person would know about the workings of a fundraising project from planning, booking, running and delivery because they have been doing it at their child’s school. In order to break into the fundraising market this person would not have to rely on income solely from fundraising to start. (That would be frustrating!)

3. Highly motivated individual to work part-time or full-time from home calling on schools in their area.

Fundraising is a very profitable business, but unless a person is already a professional fundraiser or is very good and works a consistent schedule calling on the right type of groups at the right time of the year, the first year will very likely not be a “boom year”. (That’s why there are few fundraising professionals around.) In other words, we can show you how, but we can’t hold your hand and make you do it correctly. That has to come from within.

If you would like to get started in the process to see if you and AIM are a good fit, please fill out the form below completely. Your answers will help us determine the following:

1. If the territory that you live in available.

2. An idea about your qualifications for an assigned territory.

The type of groups AIM Fundraising targets are:

* Public and Private Schools – Elem, Middle & High school

* Teams, Classes and Clubs in the Middle and High schools

* Preschools and Daycare

* Private Gymnatic & Cheer schools

* Leagues – Youth Baseball, Football, Soccer, Swim, Hockey etc.

If you want to be successful in fundraising, you need to be comfortable or be able to become comfortable with talking to principals, teachers, coaches, PTA/PTO and League Presidents and daycare and gymnastics school owners.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND a resume at this time. Simply click this link Sales Rep Wanted to go to our web site and complete the form.

Planning and managing a school fundraising event can make you want to pull your hair out or perhaps start banging your head on a table out of frustration. Here are seven helpful fundraising ideas that will help make your next school fundraiser a smooth and profitable success.

1.) Plan for Success

Efficient planning is integral to the success of not only your school fundraising campaign but any project you might think of. Without a well thought out plan of action chaos will reign and your project will suffer as a result no matter how good your fundraising ideas are. In fact, you should have a primary plan as well as a secondary and tertiary.

2.) There can be Only One!

There can only be one captain of a ship, one person “in charge.”  And the same holds true for your school fundraising program. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians is a recipe for failure as well as a bad idea. Pick a competent person to be in charge and then let them be in charge.

3.) Delegate Authority

Assign specific tasks to people in whom you have confidence and trust. In your planning create a list of tasks that must be accomplished and choose personnel for each task. Ensure that each of your chosen staff understands that accountability for their assigned task falls squarely on their shoulders.

4.) Promotion is the Key

Get the word our about your school fundraiser. Proper promotion of your event will ensure that you reach your goal. Send out press releases to local media outlets. Don’t forget your own school web page is a great way to post your fundraising ideas and opportunities and get the word out about it. Depending on the type of fundraiser you are planning will dictate if creating flyers and asking local business to place them in store windows would be helpful. There are many ways to promote an event and you should take advantage of as many of them as possible.

5.) Pre-Sell for Success

This tactic will work effectively for any type of school fundraising event. If your event is a dance, dinner, guest speaker, or other ticketed type of event you must pre-sell your tickets. Start the revenue stream long before the actual event. When items such as cookie dough or Christmas gift items are your main products start mentioning it to friends, family, and neighbors ahead of time.

6.) Multiple Income Streams

Do not put all of your eggs in one basket. Multiple income streams have been a recipe for success in business for many years and you should be running your school fundraising just like a business. If all of your efforts are concentrated in only one program, then your market may become saturated. You might even have another nearby school start the same thing your were planning to do the week before you kick your fundraiser off. If you are located in a small town, this can be a huge blow to your school fundraising success. Try using multiple events to your advantage. This is an excellent way to reach your goal as quickly as possible and spread out some of the risk.

7.) Post Event Analysis

While not part of the actual event planning phase this is something that you should not overlook. Analyze how each of your school fundraising efforts performed. Which ones did your customers like the best? Which ones made you the most money? Which ones were the easiest to do? You can use your analysis of your current campaign to enhance future fundraising efforts. It is especially helpful to write these things down in a journal for the next board to view in case all the faces on the board change from year to year. This way, they don’t have to re-invent the wheel like you did!

If you have been disappointed with your school fundraising results lately, you should click on this link and see how you can imporve your results.

As all good things come to an end… an new school year that started is now in midcourse. Christmas break is over and Spring break is eagerly anticipated.

Many schools did their school fundraiser this past Fall and are relieved that it is now behind them. Others, for whatever reason, had to put their fundraising plans off till Spring or did not make enough money on their fall fundraising program to meet their goals. Either way, all is not lost to having a very successful and profitable fundraiser.

I have run many schools that actually did better on their Spring fundraiser than their Fall one.  It seems strange, but it is not really all that hard to do if you do a couple of things different than what you are used to doing.

At AIM Fundraising, we pride ourselves in the fact that we don’t just help schools run fundraisers.  We try to teach and coach our sponsors in the finer art of “program management.”  What that means is that how well your school fundraiser turns out is only partly due to the product you choose to sell.  Actually, how you run your sale is THE most important part.

Simply passing out brochures with a “jinky” prize program is the “normal” way that most go about it.  It certainly gets results, but perhaps if that is all your school has been doing, you don’t know what you have in store for you by making some changes.

Anyway, if you would like to find out more about “Program Management” and what it can do for your school, take a look at the opening page of the AIM Fundraising’s School Fundraising website and you’ll likely be shocked at the results.

Smencils, the Smelly Pencils Make for Great School Fundraisers. Every once in a while there is a new product introduced to the market that lends itself to be a great item to be used for fundraising. Gourmet Scented Pencils call “Smencils” made from 100% recycled newspapers happens to be one of them.

If you are needing money for your club, team, school or group, this is an original and fun way to do your fundraising. With such emphasis put on the “environment” these days, this is also a great way to create awareness about the environment. Because “Smencils” are made from recycled newspaper, they bring with them an ode to environmental responsibility.

Here are some facts about this great $1 in-school seller:

* Sheets of 100% recycled newspaper are rolled around a #2 graphite core until
smencils of proper thickness are formed.

* They then are hardened, allowing them to be sharpened just like a wood pencil.

* Next the Gourmet Smencil is soaked with a liquid gourmet scent.

* Once dry, the erasers are attached and flavor sticker is wrapped around the Smencil
to identify what scent is infused into the Smencil.

* Each Smencil is put into its own Freshness Tube. The Smencils are guaranteed
that the scent will last for 2 years – even out of the tube.

Smencils are great for fundraising. How much you need to raise on your fund raiser will determine how you would want to run your fundraiser. The average group would simply order one to three buckets of Smencils for every member of the group. Students, on average, will generally sell out within a day or two of starting the sale. The group profits $25.00 on each bucket of Smencils sold.

One group that AIM we work with orders two buckets of Smencils for every club or team members every 6-9 weeks during the school year. So fare this year this group of students has raised $3000.00 with only 15 students in the group! Everyone loves it because the sale starts and stops and raises a whole bunch of money in a very quick!

It does not matter what method of fund raising that you do. The part that is most important is the planning. Most of the time it is better to make your funding a big effort and raise all the money that you need at one time. Or another way to do it is to plan your fundraising efforts in smaller chunks that don’t tire the members or the community.

Many people find themselves needing to do something to raise the funds to buy equipment or fund certain activities. Whatever it is that you need, you may find it best to have a consultation with a fundraising consultant to help you come up with a fundraising plan to fit your groups needs and goals. Simply go to AIM Fundraising’s page for Smencils Fundraising for that help and experience.

A Word to the Wise!

Most fundraising companies are more interested these days in “getting your business” than in actually coaching you in how to run a school fundraiser to get maximum profits. Most fundraising companies will try to sell you the notion that their brochure or their product or their service is the key point in a successful fundraiser. This is far from the truth, and if you take just a little while to think about it, you know this is true. Prizes are what drive school fundraisers. If you do the same old worn out standardized prizes, you will end up with average same old tired out and fizzless results. That is the reason that schools that change up how they do their prizes have huge increases over their former sale. It is not the product or services offered or the profit percentage given that makes for a successful school fundraiser… it’s the prizes.

It is pretty much official that as of today we are out of time to get any new fundraising programs setup, started and finished before the Christmas break. So if you are needing to raise money for an end of the school year trip or event, then now is the time to start thinking about January.

This is really not a bad deal anyway. I know many people think that you will always do better on a “before Christmas” fundraiser than you would starting one in the Spring. However, that is both true and false. The best fundraiser you will ever have will be one that is started within about 3 weeks of school starting in Aug or Sept. After that, average sales per student drops with each passing week.

The redeeming thing that happens in fundraising however, is the Christmas break. For some reason January is as good a month to fundraise in as mid September. Granted, it is not as good as those first 3 weeks of school, but it is better than any October or November fundraiser. It seems that the break at Christmas time give fundraising new legs.

So if you still need to raise money before the end of school, my suggestion is that you start in January. Don’t wait till Feburary or March as the same thing happens in the Spring as happens in the fall. The earlier school fundraisers are run in the Spring, the better.

The exception to that would be groups I call “camp” groups. When you have a group of students like cheerleaders who get picked in April or May and have to come up with anywhere from $300 to $1500 for camp and uniforms and competition expenses. Because the motivation of these students is much higher than the average student needing to raise $30.00 for a field trip he doesn’t really want to go on anyway, cheerleaders will average 40 sales per person no matter what month they start their sale.

Hooray for Cheerleaders

Anyway, enough rambling. If you need to do a cheerleader fundraiser or a field trip fundraiser or a boy scout fundraiser, you need to get it planned and started as soon as you possibly can.

I hear this at the end of every Fall fundraising season… “I wish we had done better.”  Or, “I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t do as well as I thought we should have.”

Being on the receiving end of this because we run hundreds of school fundraisers every semester, I can tell you my take on “WHY” most of these groups didn’t meet their expectations.  The only problem with me saying it is that most people seem to nod their head in agreement (just being nice) and then go on their way forgetting the piece of gold they are hearing simply because it sounds to easy to fix or it goes against their own idea of what works and what doesn’t.

I can say that without a doubt I can tell you that as long as a school does a main stream product line in their school fundraisers, they can and do have above average sales IF they do one thing.  One simple thing, that’s it.  The answer to a great fundraising program can be summarized in three words… Do Great Prizes!

That’s it!  If you do average prizes you will have an average school fundraiser.  If you skimp on prizes, you will have a poor sale.  If you partner with your fundraising company and go whole hog into giving premium prizes you will make more money than you thought possible.  Period.  The fact don’t lie.  This is not my opinion.  This is based on the results that even you could take a look at on our website.  If you “Wow” the students and families with the prizes and incentives you offer with your fundraiser, they will “Wow” you with the results that you did not expect. In short, if you make it worth their while to participate in your school fundraising drive, they more than likely will do just that… participate! And participation is where you make your money.

The method of going about how you put the “Wow” in your incentive program is a little more involved that adding a drawing for a 40 gig IPod, but it is pretty simple.  In fact, if all you do is add a $200 IPod or Xbox game as your top seller prize, the only thing that will happen is you’ll waste $200.  But, there is a way to structure your “Wow” factor that will increase your participation and the level of that participation.  In most cases, the first time you set up your school fundraiser incentive program in a “Wow” way, you’ll more than likely see anywhere from a 40% – 200% increase in your previous sales.

Well, like I said earlier, this is too simple and the claim just a little too far fetched for many people to actually believe it.  It’s simplicity and outlandish nature however, does not change the fact that it works for school fundraisers almost every time it is tried.  Period.