Minneapolis/St. Paul Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Fundraising Event Ideas
Hey ladies,
I am participating in a walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in September with a group of friends and family. I am trying to brainstorm a fundraising event idea for sometime this summer. So far we've thought of getting a room at a restaurant/bar and having food and drinks available for a minimum donation along with a silent auction or doing the event at a bowling alley. Has anyone here organized an event like this? Or know of a good place to host? We are open to other ideas too if someone has organized an event before. Thanks!
Re: Fundraising Event Ideas
I'm on a fundraising volunteer committee for this organization. We are currently planning a garage sale for June. We also have a walk in less than a month that's more an awareness event for CHD.
When I walked the Breast Cancer 3Day in 2006, I:
What about a spaghetti dinner or pancake breakfast?
My DH and his Family made cookbooks using a company like this when they were raising money for someone in his family who had Cancer.
I know someone that is currently doing a benefit for someone who has Cancer and they're doing a pool tournament at a bar. They're having a silent auction as well as sloppy joes/chips/pop for sale too. The money made will benefit the family. They know the bar owner, but perhaps a bar in your area would donate some reserved pool time for you?
Hope that helps!
When I fundraised for the Breast Cancer 3 Day, I had a HUGE garage sale. I took donations from friends, family, co-workers - even strangers off Craigslist. Then I organized it all and held a huge garage sale. It was during my community garage sale, so I advertised in the booklet they put together for that and on craigslist and made nice signs to put at the busy intersections by my house.
I made everything $1.00, unless it was a larger item that was obviously worth more than that. But almost all the clothes, books, dishes, etc were $1.00. People LOVED it. Everybody loves the dollar store and that is basically what this was. I made over $800 even taking out the personal money I put in for the tables and signs. Plus my company matches up to $500 so I made a total of $1300 on the garage sale.
I say nice signs because I invested (about $75 - $100) in the signs, bought nice sturdy ones and bought the nice reflective house number/letters for them. I had TONS of comments about how nice they were and was told by a lot of people that they actually came because the signs were so nice and they were actually readable. It made a big difference.
It was a TON of work, but I made way more money that I thought I would.
Good luck. Fundraising is a lot of work.
When i walked the 3 Day, we partnered with a friend's band and a bar they play at every Sunday and they donated all the money they would have been paid to our fundraising. we also held a raffle with some great items we'd been donated. some people put together things like a "movie night" basket or a "spa basket" and donate them. we got concert tickets donated as well. additionally, we just walked around with the bucket and people were dropping in $20s! it was amazing. i think we raked in like $900 that night.
silent auctions are also an option but i recommend you do that in concurrence with some form of entertainment. i've also done those at a bar, partnered with a band.
(can you tell most of my friends are musicians?
)
I did quite a bit of fundraising last year in memory of my cousin's son who died from a mitochondrial disorder last spring.
Buffalo Wild Wings does a FANTASTIC job with fundraisers. You just have to present a ticket dealie to the server and a portion of your bill is donated. We just walked around and handed strangers the tickets so even random diners helped the cause (at no extra cost to them!). I want to say it raised at least a couple hundred bucks in the 5 hour window that they were running it. Plus they let you use their announcement system to talk about your cause on occasion and set up an educational table.
I thought about doing a "lunches for (insert cause)" event at work but ran out of time. I was going to make grilled cheese lunches to order for a couple bucks but if you get the stuff at Sam's Club, you come out ahead quick!
One of my other cousins hosted a dodgeball tourney that raised money. I think they did a $20 entry per team and then each team could raise additional money for "sponsors" etc.
I also walked in 2006!!
Some of the things we did:
Garage sale with all money donated minus cost of advertising.
I wrapped presents at the local mall for free will offering - you could do this for Mother's day/Father's Day (I did it for Valentine's Day). Had the wrapping paper donated by Herberger's.
Bagged groceries at the supermarket for free will donations.
Sold car magnets, rubber braclets and pins that we paid for with donations first and then the proceeds went to donations. I also approached gas stations and asked them to sell them. They paid me up front so I didn't have to worry about coming back to collect as they sold them.
Sent out letters to all family members, extended family members, friends of family to request personal donations. Also went to business I went to frequently as asked for donations.
I like the idea of silent auctions along with another event. Those seem to get great response!
I have a friend who's a sales consultant for a direct sale jewelry company and she does fundraising sales. It's usually an open-house type of deal, so it's not quite like a traditional home sales party where everyone has to sit there and listen to a big sales pitch. People just mill around, look at the products, have a snack, and buy stuff. She donates 50% of her profits to the organization hosting the open house, and many organizations make $500 or more during a 2-3 hour open house. She did one for a high school tennis team once and they made $900 in 2.5 hours because they were great about inviting a lot of people. I'm sure the people hosting fundraisers with Tastefully Simple or Pampered Chef handle things similarly and they would be good too ... I just wanted to point out that it's a way to make a lot of money in a short period of time with not a ton of effort on your part.
Mr. Sammy Dog
The letters/e-mail to EVERYONE you know is so important. I sent a monthly "reminder" to every single person I had an e-mail address for once a month from the time I decided to walk until the event - about 7-8 months.
It's so important to keep it out there in front of people. They get busy and mean to/want to donate and forget about it. I can't tell you how many people said "thanks for the reminder."
Do be afraid you are bugging people. I mean don't send one every day or even every week, but I didn't get any complaints about once a month.
That's a great idea! I will definitely look into that.