Five Things to Look For in the Search for a Professional Fundraiser

Selecting the right fundraising company is a critical step toward your program’s success. In some areas, dozens of companies offer myriad fundraising products and services, which increases the need to completely evaluate a company before choosing a program.

Service is a critical consideration when evaluating a fundraising company. Let the sales representative explain what he or she will do to make your fundraiser a success and, importantly, make your job easier. To help you and the company determine what services will be critical to the program’s success, discuss up front your financial goals and the number of volunteers you can count on for help. Armed with answers to the following five questions, fundraising sponsors can make solid decisions for their group:

1. Experience – How long has the company been in the product fundraising business?
2. Services Offered – What value-added services does the company offer, and how much do these services cost (i.e., assistance to volunteers, communicating with parents, custom packing, etc.)?
3. Flexibility  -How will the company tailor its program to fit your organization’s needs, and more importantly, how will it meet your financial goals?
4. Knowledge of Laws – Does the company comply with state sales and use tax laws and understand how these laws impact your program?
5. Troubleshooting – How responsive will the company be should problems arise (i.e, damaged products, back orders, etc.)?

Smart Fundraising Equals Better Results

Beginning this fall, schools will lose about $100 billion in federal funding that was provided as part of the $814 billion American Recovery & Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, according to news reports. Education continues to feel the budget-pinch across the country. Many schools and groups are relying on fundraising to bridge the gap in order to keep everything from extracurricular programs, class offerings and even teachers and teacher’s aides. There are now more fundraisers than ever before (e.g. school, sports, scouts, music programs, etc.) and that is why it is so important to stand out in the crowd.

We now live in an age of smartphones, smart cars and even smart homes. So why not “smart” fundraising? By bringing something creative, efficient and effective to the table, school and youth groups can easily execute sales, without exhausting themselves, just by planning smarter.

When a high school band in Ridgewood, NJ, needed to pay for new uniforms, color guard equipment, scholarships and guest performances, supporters came up with a plan to boost their door-to-door sales of citrus fruit, just by thinking creatively. Parents were organized to supervise and drive the students in groups of two, to houses around the community. Students placed flyers in mailboxes with information about the fundraiser and how to order. This ensured that every potential customer was aware of their sale –even if they weren’t home to answer the door.

“By combining traditional sales tactics and increased group efforts with efficient and less intrusive online based ordering, students were able to cover their entire community within a few hours and increase their sales by 10 percent,” says Jim Messina, owner of a New Jersey based fundraising company with more than 30 years of experience.

The Power of Social Media and Internet

A growing trend in schools is utilizing the power of social media, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to reach fundraising goals. Among Americans who supported a fundraiser in the past year, 9 percent report that they made their purchase online, according to findings from a recent national survey commissioned by the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers (AFRDS). Social networking sites, blogs, forums and RSS feeds have penetrated modern school and youth group fundraising operations, thanks to their ability to increase online traffic, enhance communication, retain existing volunteers and attract new ones, according to fundraising professionals. By utilizing these types of Web 2.0 technologies, schools and parent groups can affordably launch and manage fundraising campaigns and projects, update members, boost collaboration and communicate with people across the globe.

Schools and groups can also use email templates that can be customized to their fundraiser. Parents and students can then send this out to their email contacts. The email can contain information about their cause and their fundraising goals, along with photos and contact information to place orders.

“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Myspace are all great social media tools that can be used to post about your fundraiser everyday to friends and family,” said David Hammon, founder and president of a fundraising company in Colorado. “On YouTube we even have how-to videos on fundraising technology and how to drive sales using these game changing tools. We also have contests for which student sends out the most template emails promoting their sale, and each student has their own specific shopping site to send contacts to.”

Utilizing Smartphones

Another tool that fundraisers can tap into fits in the palm of your hand: smartphones. They can be used to plan and communicate with ease and speed. Advisors can synchronize dates and deadlines with students, volunteers and teachers –just by sending calendar invites. Mobile apps like maps and GPS can be helpful when trying to cover communities for sales. If a volunteer has to leave early, they can mass text other volunteers to find a replacement. The sky is the limit.

“The fundraising industry is looking into developing smartphone apps for each student to track their progress,” said Hammon. “Solid promotion from start to finish is key. I always say that if you do one sale and do it right, you can reap the benefits for a whole year and not burn out parents and the community.”

Making your fundraiser “smart” is as simple as utilizing technology to plan and organize your fundraising and being the most enthusiastic group, with the best product and the best customer service in your community.

http://www.fundraisingedge.org/2011/09/smart-fundraising-equals-better-results-2/

How To Become a Superstar Fundraiser

If you’re like most people, you wish you could help your favorite non-profit, church, or school raise more money and do more good work… you wish you could be the superstar fundraiser or rainmaker, or the top-flight event chair, who brings in the resources that the non-profit you love needs. But, if you’re like most people, you’re also a little bit scared of fundraising… how does it work? Will people say yes? Why would they say yes to me? How do I ask someone for money?

The Antidote to Fear: Knowledge and Practice

Fear in the face of fundraising is understandable. Most people don’t like talking about money, and with fundraising, well… there’s no way around it. Anytime you do something for the first time, it’s a little it awkward, and a little unsettling. It’s the same way with fundraising. The first time you make a fundraising call, or send out a letter, or try to sell tickets to an event, it seems a little weird – perhaps, even a little frightening. That’s ok! Everyone else felt that way too… all those people at the charity you are working with who are fundraising superstars? They felt the exact same way during their own first calls.

What’s the difference between you and them? What takes someone from feeling awkward about fundraising to being completely comfortable making fundraising calls and asks? The answer is: knowledge and practice.

People have been fundraising for a long time. Over that time, people have learned what works, and what doesn’t. Fundraising professionals have tested methods, strategies, and tactics, and seen what helps organizations raise money – and what just wastes time and resources. Likewise, experienced fundraisers have made hundreds, if not thousands, of asks. They know what succeeds in getting a donation, and what just turns the other person off. When you start out fundraising… you don’t need to reinvent the wheel!

Instead, study the basics of fundraising: how to make an ask, how to hold an event, how to find prospects and build a fundraising network. Study what works, and what doesn’t, and learn from those who have been there before.

Don’t Forget the Practice!

The next step is to practice… to run through the material in your head, then out loud… and then to practice fundraising with other people. Ultimately, you’ll need to actually get out there and do some real fundraising: make some asks, write some letters, hold some events. The best way to learn fundraising is by doing it.

Yes, you will feel a little unsure and awkward in the beginning, no matter how well-prepared you are. But armed with the knowledge you gain from our Getting Started Guide (http://www.publish-it-online.com/publication/?m=17149&l=1), it won’t be long before you will be fundraising like a real pro.

You CAN Do It!

You can become a better fundraiser, learn best practices, and raise more money for your non-profit organization, church, or school. How ? By studying the basics, practicing, and getting out there and giving it a shot.

How to Write a Successful Fundraising Plan

Many non-profits, particularly smaller charities and start-ups, operate without a fundraising plan. When someone has an idea for an event or a campaign, these organizations simply put together a host committee or volunteer group and go for it. They may send out a letter here and there, and do some donor meetings, and when the bank account seems to be low, they often go into “panic mode” and race around trying to find cash to keep the doors open.

This is definitely not the best way to run your development program. Even if your non-profit is flush with cash, running an un-organized and un-planned fundraising operation is a recipe for stress, headaches, and ultimately, financial ruin.

How can we avoid this? The best way is by having a written fundraising plan. No matter how small your church, school, or charity is, or how far along you are into your operations, your group needs a comprehensive, well-written fundraising plan. A written plan will allow you to focus your efforts, plan out your yearly fundraising calendar, and give you guidance on strategy and tactics when you are in the thick of events, mailings, and calls. In short, your fundraising plan will keep you sane in the insane day-to-day world of the development office.

Seven Steps to a Successful Fundraiser Campaign

Fundraising events can be great instruments to raise money for an organization; however, they can also be time consuming and expensive. Hence, the success of these kinds of events depends on careful planning.

To help ensure that your fundraising event is a success, below are seven major components you need to have in mind as part of your plan

1. Purpose:
Before doing anything else, you must decide what the purpose of your fundraiser is. Is this truly a fundraising event? Or does it have other goals? Figuring out the details for your event will depend on knowing what goals you are trying to achieve.

2. Fundraising Goal:
You must decide what amount of money you plan to raise at the event. If this is truly a fundraising event, then everything in the event plan will be geared to raising this specific amount of money. The amount you choose should be what you hope to net, that is, the amount you plan to raise after expenses are deducted. In the case of a brick campaign, determine how many bricks you need to sell to reach your goal.

3. Budget:
Every fundraising event plan should contain a complete budget listing all of the expenses that will be required to hold the event. Your budget should include staff, invitations, space rental, catering, entertainment, transportation, security, utilities, and anything else that will be required to make the event a success. Your budget should take into account your fundraising goal, ensuring that you raise that amount above and beyond all expenses. Be sure to leave a little extra room in your budget for unforeseen costs.

4. Target Audience:
Who is the target audience for your event? Is this a general fundraiser where everyone will be invited? Or is this event geared towards a specific group like business people, parents, or young professionals? In short, you must decide whom you will invite to your event.

5. Marketing:
Just like a new product, your event needs to be aggressively marketed to your target audience. You need to convince your supporters that your organization and event are worthy of their time and money. Draw up an entire marketing plan for the event. Possible methods of “getting the word out” include: using your non-profit’s fundraising network, mailed invitations, direct mail, phone banks, word of mouth and the event host committee. In case you are doing a brick fundraiser, Brick R Us offers a unique array of free services, to help you achieve your marketing and sales goals. To view a detail of all the available services, please visit: http://www.bricksrus.com/services

6. Sales:
If you are selling engraved bricks, once you market your event, there must be a procedure for people to purchase their bricks, paying and keeping track of all that. As part of our effort to make this process easier for the staff managing the campaign, we have designed our Online Ordering System. By using a password protected secure log-in, this system allows you to enter the bricks as they are sold, print detailed reports, proofs and invoices at any time. You may also input your donor’s full information such as address, phone number, e-mail address and how much they donated for each brick. All of this information will appear on the donor information report. When you are ready to send the order to us, all it takes is one click. In addition, since all of your order will be stored on-line, you may review or re-print them at any given time or place. You can also check the status of your order, track the shipment and even pay for your order online. When placing your order, you get to pick your own shipping date!

7. Thank – You:
Make sure that your organization takes the time to send thank-you notes to everyone who is involved in your event, including contributors, volunteers, staff and vendors. To make this process a lot easier, those of our customers who use our Online Ordering System are able to automatically send custom “Thank You” letters to all their donors. The point here is, always keep your donors happy.

Strategies for Keeping your Current Donors and Winning New Ones

1. Proactive research. Acquisition for the sole purpose of bringing in new donors, without an eye toward donor
retention, might be the major factor in high attrition. Why build an acquisition profile on a group of donors with a 50 percent to 75 percent attrition rate? The solution is to build acquisition-to-retention model profiles that identify the characteristics of acquired donors who persist in their giving for two to three years. It’s a much better strategy because you can identify persistent donors and their common characteristics, and focus on acquisition lists that mirror these characteristics. Better yet, use a donor-retention model to score acquisition lists, and only mail prospects with a high likelihood to respond and persist over time.

2. Lifetime potential. Admittedly, it’s difficult to quantify lifetime donor value (ultimate giving), but predictive
modeling could identify target gift potential as well as major- and planned-giving likelihood, which are great indicators of ultimate giving behavior. Operating under the assumption that all donors are not of equal value to your organization, prospects with high planned- or major-giving potential as well as projected growth in annual giving levels have greater value. Scoring acquired donors annually identifies those individuals with the greatest
ultimate gift potential.

3. Stewardship. If you know the donors most likely to be retained and the donors with greater ultimate giving potential (the first two points here), you can initiate stewardship efforts that increase the likelihood these donors will continue to give to your organization. The best lapsed-donor strategies are proactive and include positive steps to ensure that annual support does not stop in the first place. Call these donors and thank them for their gifts. Do not overwhelm them with repeated efforts to secure additional gifts. Report on the uses of gift money, and whenever possible, find out what they like about your organization and their specific interests so you can build a donor-centered relationship.

4. Solicitation frequency. Research indicates that there often is an inverse relationship between the frequency of solicitation and donor retention or movement to ultimate giving potential. Many people recommend that you solicit for the second gift as you thank for the first, but what effect does that have on your retention rate? If your goal is to maximize the number of donors annually without fearing high attrition rates, that may be one strategy, but it is unlikely to result in donor growth and success in major and planned giving.

5. Testing. Try new ideas and strategies for renewing donors. Here is one: Collect e-mail addresses from your new direct-mail donors, ideally at the time they send in the response card. (Self-reported e-mail addresses are best.) Avoid the temptation to begin mass e-mail solicitations, and use the information to thank and inform.  Good stewardship breeds loyalty. When the time comes to renew these donors via direct mail, send an e-mail in advance alerting them to the upcoming direct-mail piece.

Tips for Making the Most of Your Fundraising E-mails

• Research your e-newsletter service provider. This has implications for all of your e-touches. Make sure your service provider is on the whitelist (protected list) of personal e-mail service providers such as AOL, Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo — to name a few — so your messages will get through.

• Only send your e-newsletter to those who opt in. You can’t just add people’s names to an e-newsletter subscriber list. A double opt-in policy is even better and prevents spammers from registering for your e-newsletter. When people subscribe to your e-newsletter, send them an e-mail that includes a link that they must click on to confirm their subscriptions.

• Make it easy for e-newsletter recipients to unsubscribe or change their subscriber information. In our increasingly transitory world, folks are changing jobs and e-mail providers all the time, so you want to make it easy for your subscribers to manage their subscriptions.

• Once you’ve drafted and formatted your e-newsletter, run it through a spam filter. How many times do you use all caps? How many times do you include words such as “click” and “free”? These words are red alerts for spam filters. Use the spam filter test to see what can be corrected so what you deliver is as clean as it can be.

• Don’t send e-newsletters as attachments. Attachments are a burden for recipients to have to download and run through virus protection. Either send your e-newsletter within an e-mail format or send an e-mail with a link to the e-newsletter.

5 Steps to a Fundraising Plan for a New Nonprofit

1. Develop your fundraising goals.
You should have goals for the amount of money you need to raise, plus what the money will be used for. Will you use it for overhead expenses? To fund an ongoing or new program? To build a new facility? To develop an emergency fund for a future rainy day? To close a deficit?
You will likely have a number of goals. If so, develop a fundraising plan for each one. Goals should be developed with your board of directors, and have the board’s sign off. Having your board’s involvement will also set the stage for their participation in the fundraising itself.

2. Write down your fundraising plan.
It is important not to just fly from one fundraising scheme to the next. Develop a written plan that states how much you need to raise, from what sources, and how you will do it. Don’t worry, the plan can be revised as you proceed. Not all of your ideas will work out, or you may find new sources along the way.
Start with your current programs and current funding. Is that amount of money covered or is there a gap? Do you want to do more but lack the funds? This preliminary financial accounting will help you arrive at what your monetary goal should be for your fundraising.

3. Estimate how much your fundraising program will cost.
Include costs such as postage, creating your website, running special events, the cost of staff dedicated to fundraising, and the staff costs of managing the volunteers who will help you raise funds.
Be realistic when estimating costs, but plan to use cost-efficient methods so that costs don’t eat up all your fundraising proceeds. Most experts recommend that fundraising and overall administrative costs not exceed 25% of your overall operating budget. In other words, three-quarters of your expenses should be spent on doing what you were founded to do.

4. Develop a timeline for your fundraising plan.
Fill in a year’s calendar with specific activities, and identify who will be the lead for each of those projects. Go further by developing timelines for each fundraising activity, such as the direct mail campaign, the online auction, or the planned giving seminar.
The timeline will surely change during the year, but having one to start with will ensure that you get something accomplished.

5. Evaluate your fundraising plan during the year.
Evaluation will improve your results. Plan to evaluate what you are doing every few months. Develop what criteria you will use, such as amount raised, number of new donors, how many contacts you’ve made with foundations, improvement in donor cultivation activities. What accounted for the biggest successes? What were the biggest challenges? What should you change, drop, or add?
Once your organization gets the hang of raising funds for a year’s operation, you’ll want to move on to multi-year plans, higher goals, more sophisticated strategies, and newer techniques.

Online Ordering System – Outstanding Benefits

Why is our Online Ordering System (OOS) one of the best brick campaign management tools in the industry?  Below we give you a few reasons that will make you consider it next time you plan on doing a brick fundraiser.

Our Online Ordering System allows you to:

• Enter brick inscriptions as you sell them or one at a time.
• Enter donor information (Name, Address, Phone, Email, Amount).
• Send (editable) form letters (Thank You and Verification) via email to your donors.
• Print donor reports, proof sheets and invoices.
• Keep track of your donor payments.
• Export your donor information to MS Excel.
• View all past or pending orders.
• View order details (Ship date, payment received, tracking information).
• Have multiple people enter information from any computer.
• Pick your own shipping date.
• Ticket System Customer Service
• Pay for your orders electronically (e-check or credit card).
• Link to your Donor Site.
• No need to download any programs on your computer.
• Available 24/7 from any internet connection.
• Secure server.

• 

Customer Service – 24 Hour Policy

We believe that our customer service is what sets us apart from any other company.  This is why we have our 24 Hour Policy - we will always respond to your phone calls or emails within 24 hours.  When you send us an order, you will receive a proof sheet within 24 hours.  When you send the approved proof sheet, we will give you the actual shipping date within 24 hours.  When we receive your payment, you will receive a received payment notification within 24 hours.  When we ship your order, you will receive your tracking information within 24 hours.  This is our way to make sure you are always informed throughout the entire process.