World’s Finest Chocolate has a special Buy 1 Get 1 Free on some of the best selling chocolate fundraising candies - the popular $2 chocolates and the new premium $5 items.

Get more information now because the last day to take advantage of this special is Friday, September 30th.

Click here for details or Call 1-866-450-5794

No Comments »

Craigslist Foundation is sponsoring a day long non profit conference. If you live near San Francisco or are able to travel this is a golden opportunity to learn more about fundraising, non profit management, marketing and more.

The event will be on October 8th and registration is $50 per person and this includes meals! This is an amazingly low price considering all of the valuable information you’ll be getting.

Choose from the following seminar tracks:

Nonprofit Basics: An intro to the nonprofit world for those new to the sector, presented by Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) and The Volunteer Center.

Fundraising I: Basic fundraising skills including honing your pitch, grant writing and grassroots fundraising. Both fundraising tracks are presented by the Association of Fundraising Professionals - Golden Gate Chapter, The Foundation Center and Development Executives Roundtable.

Fundraising II: More advanced fundraising topics including Internet fundraising, Board development, donor stewardship and a “Reality Grantmaking” seminar offering the chance to win a $1000 grant. Both fundraising tracks are presented by the Association of Fundraising Professionals - Golden Gate Chapter, The Foundation Center and Development Executives Roundtable.

Men in Black: Legal and Accounting issues including applying for & maintaining nonprofit status, lobbying & advocacy and nonprofit law 101. This track is presented by the IRS, theVolunteer Legal Services Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco and the California Association of Nonprofits.

The Business of Running a Nonprofit: Information and advice to help you run your organization more effectively, including content on social entrepreneurship, green business and fiscal sponsorship. Presented by Tides Center, the Agape Foundation and Social Fusion.

IT/Technology: An overview of IT topics ranging from online community building and tech support for nonprofits to Internet fundraising. Presented by CompuMentor and N-TEN.

Marketing: Basic communication strategy, event marketing and Internet & email marketing. Presented by SPIN Project and Media Alliance.

Location: Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street, San Francisco, CA
Saturday, October 08, 2005, 9:00 AM - 9:00 PM
Cost: $50 per person
Register Online

No Comments »

Students at an elementary school in Danbury, New Hampshire wanted to find a way to raise money for the Red Cross to help hurricane victims. Students decided to hold a “silly day” where teachers would dress in silly costumes if the individual classes met their fundraising goals.

The principal of the school offered an additional challenge — she offered to be taped to a wall to help raise money. Students paid for the opportunity to tape their principal to the wall. View the story online to see a photo… Principal ’sticks’ to fundraising promise

Related Resources

Save time in your search for fundraisers…try the SuperFundraiser.com custom Fundraising Matchmaker system. Based upon your answers to a few simple questions you’ll discover which fundraisers will work best for your school group.

Top School Fundraisers Blog offers school fundraising tips, timely news and school fundraising ideas.

No Comments »

Last year I was elected to my daughter’s school PTO Board as the person in charge of fund raising. My first assignment was to coordinate a candy-gift wrap fund raiser. The program ran for about 7-8 weeks and we were able to raise over $56,000.

The program success is directly related to two factors. The first was time and effort spend planning and soliciting motivational items which served as incentives for the children. The second was a reliable group of volunteers to handle the administrative aspect associated with the weekly recordation of students’ individual level of sales and their prize distributions.

The approach and view was this was a program to benefit the community: businesses were asked to make donations. Donations were as varied as the businesses. These donations were packaged into individual gift for the each student in accordance with his weekly sales. Historically, the sales activity level peaked during the first two and last two weeks of the program. In reviewing the activity level of previous years’ sales that the report showed sales doubling during the time that the vendor offered a double incentive. Hence the conclusion to keep the incentive for the duration of the program.

For every six items sold the student received a prize (all prizes were donated). Initially, we used the small trinket items ( such as a school supply item) and as the program progressed we began using the higher value donations (such as a complimentary large pizza or a menu meal from a local restaurant, or movie tickets). There were no limit on how many prizes a student could earn. Additionally, there were special rewards and large ticket item prizes at the end of the program for top children in elementary, middle, and upper school. For the duration of the program the sales level remained at a consistently high level.

It was a great way to solicit the businesses support and participation while teaching the children a number of life and business skills. Simple but working as a team it was very effective.

Related Resources

How to Choose a Product Fundraiser
Unusual Fundraisers
Super School Fundraisers

No Comments »

The best fundraisers are those that are just plain fun. And throwing a party is a great way to have fun and raise money for a good cause. Let your creativity and imagination help you plan a party your friends will enjoy and you can raise funds at the same time.

There are several ways that parties can be planned so that they serve as a fundraiser. You can charge an entry fee (which may or may not include food), charge for food/drinks, have raffles, or just request donations.

Here’s several party fundraiser ideas…

Luau Party Fundraiser
Murder Mystery Party
Trivia Night Event
Ice Cream Social
Pizza Party Fundraisers

1 Comment »

“The Traveling Potty” submitted by Dawn Turner-Dupuis was named the winner of the Unusual Fundraising Idea Contest.

This entry was chosen because it is unusual, fun and really excites interest among those participating. It’s also great because it takes place over an extended period of time (not just one day) and is easy to plan and particpate in.

By far the most unusual Fundraiser we have done to date is our Relay For Life Potty. We took a regular bathroon toilet and painted it in Relay For Life Colors - Purple - with a little bit of added pink (for Breast Cancer). We also painted ribbons on it in a lighter purple color, got a garden knome and put him on the potty.

We then took requests from people to have the potty placed in someones yard. The cost to place the potty was $10. The cost to have the potty removed from your yard was $10 - and you could forward it to someone else for an additional $5. We also offered “Potty Insurance” that could be purchased for $5.

We actually had a waiting list for this potty and before it was over we had 3 potty’s floating around our County. We first started delivering the Potty after dark - but we had to stop that when we had the cops called on us. After that we figured out that about 2pm was the best time to move and place the potty as most people are at work.

We had alot of fun with this fundraiser - we kept the potty going for a 1 month period and raised closed to $800.

No Comments »

I’ve been writing the Step By Step Fundraising Monthly Newsletter nearly since starting the site began in November 2003. (Hint: if you’d like to see the old issues, they’re archived here.) For me and perhaps many of the subscribers, a monthly schedule works out pretty well.

However if you’d like to get an more frequent notices about new fundraising news, there’s two ways that you can do this.

1. By Email:

First you can get regular email updates by signing up for a handy little service called FeedBlitz. This is a separate email system that will automatically send one email each day that new articles are posted.

The notification emails will come from FeedBlitz and not Step By Step Fundraising or my name, so if you sign up for this service just watch for “FeedBlitz” in the from address and subject line.

All you need to do is add your email to this list. You’ll get an email from FeedBlitz with a password and a link to confirm your subscription.

2. Online Services / Feedreaders

Do you use My Yahoo or My MSN? You can add custom content to these pages including “feeds” from websites like mine. A feed is just an updated list of most recent articles on the website.

When you add Step by Step Fundraising to your My Yahoo, My MSN homepage or other feedreader you will see the most recent headlines. Then if something interests you, you can just click through.

Simply click on one of the buttons below to get online notifications:

No Comments »

Thought for the day from Marc Pitman…

So much of fundraising is common sense. And so much of it is repetitive. Too often, we get bored and end up trying gimmicks and trinkets to raise more money. And that becomes addicting. Who’s doing what? Who’s mailing what? What gimmick will increase giving by a percentage point?

All the while we’re forgetting the basics: fundraising is about people asking people to invest in a cause. It’s not a letter asking a person. It’s not a website asking a person. It’s a person asking a person. Plain and simple.

Read the full article

Listen to an Audio Interview with Marc Pitman

No Comments »

One of the questions that I occasionally get asked is how to find and apply for grants. There are actually many grant making institutions including foundations not associated with the government as well as grants available from the US government.

I don’t normally mention grants on this website first because it’s not my area of expertise, and second because grants make up a small percentage of non profit funding. In fact on average over 80% of non profit funding comes from individuals. This has been demonstrated quite recently by the outpouring of support for hurricane survivors, largely by individuals who have been moved to contribute.

All that being said — grants can be a particularly appropriate form of funding for organizations that because of their mission or focus, don’t do well fundraising from the public. Grants can also be a great supplemental and reliable source of funding for non profit organizations.

Each grant making organization has specific procedures that applicants must follow in order for their request to even qualify for consideration. Follow these instructions to an absolute T and have several members of your organization review the application before sending it in.

I’ve recently added new links to the resources section of this website and you may find these helpful. There’s links for government grants, foundations, grant writing tips and even information about grants for businesses and individuals. –> Grant Resources

No Comments »

As many of you know there are many worthy organizations that are helping the hundreds of thousands of people effected by Hurricane Katrina. Donations for hurricane Katrina relief continue to come in to help those effected by this disaster.

The American Red Cross is the largest national organization that responds to natural disasters such as this one. You can find out more about what they’re doing to help, view the family registry and donate hurricane aid at redcross.org

My family has chosen to donate for hurricane relief through our church’s outreach organization, The United Methodist Committee on Relief. It is providing health supplies, food and volunteers to the effected areas.
Beliefnet.com is donating $1,000 for every 100 people who give through Mercy Corps or World Vision. To multiply your donation with this grant and see a list of many other organizations assisting in the relief effort visit The Beliefnet Pledge.

Find more info on technorati about hurricane aid.

No Comments »