A Quick Beginner’s Guide to Fundraising

Fundraising isn’t the easiest task to undertake. Whether you’re trying to raise funds for a youth group at church or for a middle school, it can be a rather daunting task.

If you’re a beginner at fundraising, there are some basic things you want to understand before moving forward. Let’s look at a few quick things to ensure you have a guide you can use to start fundraising for your group.

Five Quick Tips for Fundraising Beginners

1. Clear and Concise Communication

It’s always important to communicate your fundraiser properly. Whether you’re speaking to a church congregation or you’re sending a letter home for parents, the communication needs to be straightforward and easy to understand.

This is especially true if you plan to let parents, students, or members of your group do the selling during your fundraiser. You want to ensure they receive the message and know exactly how to sell the product you plan to use to raise money.

2. Choose the Right Product/Fundraiser

A huge part of fundraising is matching the right product or fundraiser with your group. It wouldn’t make much sense to have a group of seven-year-olds hold a fancy gala, just as it wouldn’t make much sense to have a casino night for a church that doesn’t believe gambling is okay.

You want to choose a fundraiser your group members can get excited about and fits the age of the group. Some fundraisers are a bit universal, such as selling custom car magnets. Just about any group can sell car magnets designed specifically the way they prefer.

3. Create Opportunities for Your Fundraiser

If you’re selling a product or tickets to an event as a fundraiser, you want to create opportunities for those doing the selling. Don’t just send students or group members out on their own to find ways to sell. Give them ideas and even create opportunities.

For example, you can speak with local businesses and see if there’s a time you can have a few group members set up to sell outside the business. This can effective with grocery stores and gives participants an easy way to earn some sales.

4. Motivate those Selling for You

There are many ways to motivate your group. While you might think the end goal of raising money should be enough motivation, it’s often not going to be.

Some groups will be motivated by prizes they can receive for selling the most or hitting certain milestones. Others might be motivated by a collective goal that helps them earn a pizza party or another type of reward.

Figure out what will motivate your group and use it to your advantage.

5. Stay Very Organized

It can become rather hard to run a successful fundraiser if you’re not organized. Have a system in place to ensure everything is organized and easy to understand.

There are many things you should know about starting out with fundraising. These five tips will get you started and the type of fundraiser you choose will determine how much more you will need to learn before taking on fundraising for your group.

5 Fundraising Sales Tips

Maybe you’ve chosen the perfect fundraiser for your group, but you don’t know how to get people to sell for you. With the right fundraising sales tips, you can make your fundraiser a huge success.

There are a ton of fundraising ideas to choose from. Whether you’ve chosen to go through the process of selling a food item or the easier option of selling custom car magnets, the following fundraising sales tips will help you make more money.

Start with the Basics

Teach all your participants a few basics for selling including:

• Smile and use direct eye contact
• Have a quick one or two sentences pitch
• Communicate what you’re selling and why quickly
• After asking for the sale, remain silent as you wait for a response

A huge mistake people make when selling anything is, they oversell. Teach your participants to ask for the sale and stop.

Create a Sample Pitch

A sample pitch can help your participants sell better. It should be very quick and to the point. For example, “Hi! My name is John Doe from the church youth group. Can you help us out because we are raising money for our upcoming mission trip?”

Of course, you will want to customize the pitch to fit your specific needs. When you give people a short pitch they can follow, it won’t be long before they make it their own.

Choose High Traffic Areas

If you’ve been given permission to sell your custom car magnets after church or at a local department store, make sure you choose a high traffic area. Don’t set your table too far off to the side. You want people to have to walk past you and see what you have to sell and why.

You should also create signs that make it clear what you are selling and why. Use big, bold letters, and put the signs in an easy place for people to spot.

Sell Online with Social Media

One of the best fundraising sales tips many people miss is selling online with social media. There are some great ways to go about spreading the word online with hashtags, asking others to share the custom magnet they bought, and more.

A good social media campaign can be huge for any fundraiser. It can put you in a great place to raise more money.

Fundraising Sales Tips for Selling Custom Car Magnets

When you choose to sell custom car magnets as a fundraiser, there are a few things you can do to sell your magnets faster and easier. The tips above will certainly help. You should also consider selling at the following types of events:

• School sporting events
• Church events
• Church services
• Festivals
• Local Trade Shows
• And More!

Any event where people might be and you have permission to sell is a good choice.

It can also be a good idea to offer a deal for those buying multiple magnets. Many people own more than one car these days so consider deals, such as 1 magnet for $10, 2 magnets for $15, or 3 magnets for $21. These types of deals can help you sell more magnets to the same person, which can boost your sales.

If you use these fundraising sales tips, you’ll be in better shape to make more money from your fundraiser this year.

Top 4 Fundraiser FAQs

Running a fundraiser for the first time comes with plenty of questions. Whether you have questions about choosing the right fundraiser or how to collect the money, you need answers. Here are some of the most common fundraiser FAQs and the answers.

Answering Your Top Fundraising FAQs

1. How do I make the right fundraising decision for my group?

When you’re trying to decide which fundraiser is right for your group, there are several things to consider. The size of your group will make a difference, along with how much money you need to raise. It’s also important to consider the age range of your group.

How quickly you need to raise money will also be an important factor, along with your budget. If you’re planning a fundraiser for next year, it’s a different decision than starting a fundraiser in a couple of weeks.

2. How do I find people willing to volunteer to help?

The first place to look for volunteers to help is your group. If you’re raising money for a sports team, the players are your best resource.

The next group to talk to are the parents of your participants. You can also speak with local businesses and community groups for help. Partnering with a local group or organization can help make finding volunteers much easier.

This fundraising FAQ can also be eliminated if you choose the right fundraiser. For example, if you decide to sell custom car magnets as your fundraiser, you can pull all your volunteers from your own group.

3. How do I make my fundraiser stand out from others raising money at the same time?

It’s easy to count on the same people year after year, such as family, friends, and co-workers. However, when you get outside this group, you’ll likely find out you’re not the only group raising money.

There’s always competition and you need to stand out above the competition. When you have a sentence created to explain quickly and concisely why and how you’re raising money, it goes a long way.

It can also help to sell a lower priced item as price does factor into the decision to support your group. In fact, the low price of a box of girl scout cookies is one of the reasons they are so successful in raising funds every year. Custom school magnets are also very low in price and offer a high-profit margin.

4. When should I start planning my fundraiser?

The simple answer is as soon as possible. Even if you’re planning for next year, start immediately. The more time you have for any fundraiser, the easier it will be to start warming up your audience, find sponsors, and get everything in order.

For example, if you choose to sell custom car magnets for your fundraiser, you’ll need time to choose and finalize the design. You might need time to find a sponsor to pay for the magnets in exchange for their name or website URL on the magnet as the sponsor.

The sooner you can start, the better prepared you will be, and the more you can spread the word.

There are many good fundraiser FAQs out there. These four are very common and the answers will help you build a foundation for your next fundraiser.

Top 7 Fundraising Mistakes to Avoid

Understanding some of the things you should do and tips to help you run a successful fundraiser can help. However, it’s also important to look at the other side and know the fundraising mistakes you want to avoid.

When you’re in charge of organizing a fundraiser, you want to make sure you do things correctly. Here are some of the top fundraising mistakes you want to avoid, if possible.

Fundraising Mistakes You Should Be Aware Of

1. Low-Quality Item to Sell

When you choose a low-quality item to sell for your fundraiser, you are making a fundraising mistake. Customers will turn you down if they feel like they are overpaying for something they don’t need, want, or believe is worth the money.

One of the best ways to avoid this mistake is to sell custom car magnets for your fundraiser. You can sell these magnets for $5 to $10 and give your buyers great value!

2. Fundraising Too Much

If you’re consistently running fundraisers, you’ll end up with burnout. Those helping will get tired of always fundraising and those supporting you will get sick of sales pitch after sales pitch.

Instead of making this fundraising mistake, choose the right fundraisers. Fewer fundraisers can help you raise even more money if they are run properly

3. Low-Profit Margin Fundraiser

Choosing a fundraiser without much meat on the bone is a mistake. You want a solid profit margin so you can raise plenty of money for your efforts.

4. Poor Planning

Without a good plan, you’ll likely fail with your fundraiser. When you want to run a successful fundraiser, you need a good plan.

Poor planning is one of the worst fundraising mistakes you can make. You want to create a good plan and make sure you follow through with your plan, once you start your fundraiser.

5. No Promotion

Sure, those participating are promoting your fundraiser, but you need more. Social media is a great way to spread the word. You can also promote through your organization or partnerships you have with sponsors or businesses.

6. Poor Timing

Be careful not to make this fundraising mistake. You don’t want to run your fundraiser during the holidays, during bad weather (if it’s weather dependent), or at the same time as school exams. Anything that could take away from the success of your fundraiser should be avoided.

It’s best to choose the right timing to ensure you run a successful fundraiser.

7. Choosing the Wrong Fundraiser

Every group is different and so is every type of fundraiser. Not all fundraisers fit with your group. Avoid this fundraising mistake by choosing to sell custom car magnets for your group.

For some groups, holding an event doesn’t make much sense, while an event might fit perfectly for another group. Most groups can certainly benefit from selling car magnets, however.

These fundraising mistakes can be avoided. Now that you’re aware, you can create a plan to avoid making any of these mistakes.

Custom Car Magnet Fundraiser vs. Selling Flowers Fundraiser

When it’s time to choose your fundraiser, you’ll have plenty of options to consider. Two of the best options include selling custom car magnets and selling flowers.

These are two very different types of fundraisers, however. Making the right decision between a custom car magnet fundraiser and a flower fundraiser will help your group raise the necessary cash.

Let’s look at both types of fundraisers to help you make the correct decision.

Custom Car Magnet Fundraiser

A custom car magnet can be sold for a large profit margin, especially if you order in larger quantities of 300 or more. They don’t need to be stored and you can hand them to each purchaser as they buy them.

Not only will custom car magnets help you raise money, but they will also help you spread awareness for your group. You can even partner with a local business as a sponsor to cover the cost of the magnets.

Flower Fundraiser

When you choose to sell flowers or flower bulbs, you will get an eco-friendly fundraiser with little risk. Flowers are riskier than selling flower bulbs because they need special care.

Flower bulbs require you to take orders and fill them. A flower fundraiser may provide you with the ability to sell on the spot, but you won’t be able to keep fresh flowers for long.

Typically, groups will do a flower bulb fundraiser and take orders. This means you will need to collect payment and fill orders once you receive the bulbs.

Which Makes More Money?

The big question for many groups is which fundraiser will make us more money? Comparing custom car magnets to a flower fundraiser provides a pretty clear answer.

Flower fundraisers typically come with a 50% profit margin, while custom car magnets have a profit margin ranging from 100% to 400% or more. In addition, you can partner with a sponsor for custom car magnets to cover the cost, while it’s harder to do this with a flower fundraiser. The sponsor can include their logo or business name on your magnet, which cannot be done with flower bulb fundraisers.

Along with the higher profit margin, custom car magnets are easier to sell to a larger audience. With a flower bulb fundraiser, you have to find people willing to plant flowers. Even with just a flower fundraiser, you still have to find people that like flowers and are not allergic to what you’re selling.

Which is Easier?

Do you prefer to take orders, and then track down those orders to deliver their flower, along with collecting payment? Maybe you’d rather take payment and hand the person a custom car magnet on the spot.

Selling custom car magnets is easy and you won’t need to take orders. Just collect payment and deliver the magnet at the same time. It’s easy, the magnets can be sold for a low price, and there’s no doubling back to deliver the order.

When you decide a custom car magnet fundraiser makes more sense than a flower fundraiser, we’re here to help. At ARC Marketing, we help you choose and design the perfect magnet for your needs. Start the free online design process today!