Fundraising Ideas - Snowball Fundraising

From Planning to Profit: How to Master Your Silent Auctions

Snowball Fundraising — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:23:01 +0000

As a fundraising professional, you likely know that effective charity auctions can raise awareness for your cause, boost supporter engagement, and help you solicit critical funding. But perhaps you’ve never hosted one yourself, or you’re looking for a refresher before planning your next big event.

That’s why we’ve put together this guide to pulling off a successful silent auction. We’ll cover the following topics to prepare you for hosting your own auction and bringing in the big bucks for your organization:

Silent Auction FAQs
How to Run a Silent Auction
Best Practices for Silent Auctions
Top Silent Auction Software

Ready to take your fundraising efforts to the next level with a silent auction? Let’s jump in!

Silent Auction FAQs

What Are Silent Auctions?

Silent auctions are a type of charity auction in which bidders can browse, bid on, and purchase items without the supervision of an auctioneer by placing their bid electronically or on a physical sheet of paper.

This format differs from live auctions in the following ways:

In silent auctions:

Guests can browse items on display.
Participants place their bids via bid sheets.

Live auctions, in contrast:

Are hosted by an auctioneer.
Use hand signals for the bidding process while the auctioneer is talking.

Whereas guests have to attend a live auction in order to participate, silent auctions can be hybrid by accepting bids on a virtual platform. All you need is an event management tool that offers mobile bidding features. Then, more supporters can participate and donate to your cause!

Why Host This Type of Auction?

Silent auctions are particularly advantageous for the following reasons:

They’re inexpensive. All you’ll need are the auction items, your auction platform, and bidders! You can easily set up enticing item displays at low costs and raise even more revenue by selling concessions.
Bidding is kept private. More people will be likely to bid on items when they don’t have to engage in a bidding war in front of a large crowd. Bidders can privately compete for items and wait to find out if they’ve won.
Supporters are more engaged. Without the presence of an auctioneer and simultaneous bidding, guests can mingle with each other and your nonprofit’s leaders or volunteers. This creates more opportunities for you to communicate your cause, connect with potential donors, and cultivate a healthy community of supporters.

Plus, silent auctions allow for mobile bidding, which can help your nonprofit reach a larger audience.

How Do They Work?

Before you can start planning your event, it’s a good idea to first understand the way it should function.

For this event, items are typically set up throughout a physical space with a sheet of paper, called a bid sheet, at each one. When participants find an item they’d like, they simply write their bid amount (in dollars) with their anonymous bidding number that they receive upon registration or check-in.

Nonprofit auction software provides a streamlined, tech-based alternative in which attendees can efficiently bid from their phones instead. Users can then be notified when they’ve been outbid and decide to raise their bid to stay in the game.

As participants explore your available items, individuals continually one-up each other by placing a slightly higher bid than the person before them. After the event, the individual with the highest bid “wins” the item in question, pays the agreed-upon amount, and is gifted the item. Proceeds from bids are then collected and go toward funding your mission.

How to Run a Silent Auction

Now that you know the basics of silent auctions, you’re ready to walk through the steps involved in planning and hosting the event itself.

Like any fundraiser, extensive preparation is crucial for ensuring a successful event. An auction may require more planning than most events, so here are three key stages to keep in mind:

1. Procure auction items

Donors cherish the opportunity to support your cause while also receiving a tangible item in return—it’s a win-win!

Your auction items are the star of the show, so it’s crucial to get started with this step as early as possible—typically, 3-6 months before your planned event is a reasonable time frame. Build a procurement team of five or six dedicated individuals—preferably a combination of nonprofit staff and volunteers—who are willing to solicit auction items from family, friends, community members, and local businesses.

Your revenue collection can be directly impacted by offering high-demand auction items, such as:

Special experiences from local favorite restaurants. Consider which eateries in your community are fan favorites and secure a gift your participants are sure to want. Think about prizes like gift cards, private dinner parties, or tasting events with the head chef.
Valuable virtual experiences. Plan a virtual cooking or cocktail-making class with a chef. You might even be able to have a virtual meet-and-greet with a celebrity!
Exclusive items. What items are of high value to your participants? Consider items such as expensive wine, an autographed jersey, or perhaps a piece of high-end jewelry.

Consider what establishments in your area could contribute an item or experience. When you form partnerships with local businesses, you can solicit gifts for free and low costs, ensuring maximum revenue for supporting your mission.

Remember to choose items that appeal to your specific audience. For example, a local school will have a much different supporter base than a large-scale nonprofit, and auction items should be adjusted as such. Include items of various price ranges so that all bidders can opt for something they’d reasonably be able to afford.

2. Organize your event

Once you’ve procured the perfect items, it’s time to pull together the rest of the event’s details. This may include:

Volunteers. Plan out the number of volunteers you’ll need and what their roles will be at the event. Then, plan a recruitment and training process to start creating your dream team!
Venue setup. From table arrangements to item displays, organize your venue to facilitate a seamless event flow. Put yourself in your guests’ shoes and imagine what their experience should be when attending the event.
Registration. Plan how participants should sign up and check in to your fundraiser. If you use auction software that offers online registration and ticketing, this process will run smoothly.

Just because you need to plan the event’s logistics doesn’t mean this stage has to be boring. In fact, this is your opportunity to infuse your event with creativity! Brainstorm ways your volunteers can add some excitement to the fundraiser or unique venue decorations to wow your guests.

3. Promote the auction

Your promotion strategy is one of the most important elements of your silent auction prep. After all, your dedicated supporters must first be made aware of your event plans beforehand to attend and participate. Here are a few easy marketing channels your nonprofit can use to get the word out about your auction:

Your website. Use your website as the main source of information for your auction, including event details and a registration form on a dedicated landing page for the event. Your website might already receive a lot of traffic, but you can also use marketing resources like Google’s Ad Grant program to promote the page and draw more attention to your site. Also, keep search engine optimization (SEO) best practices in mind to make your website even more visible.
Email. Email is a favorite for donor communications. For one, you can easily invite thousands of individuals in just a few clicks. Plus, email marketing software allows you to personalize invitations and address each donor by name without sending a separate invite to each. Once a supporter receives your invitation, they can quickly navigate to your registration page with a bright and eye-catching call to action.
Mail. Everyone loves getting mail, especially when it’s not a bill. That’s why sending invitations via direct mail can be an effective way to inform supporters of your upcoming event and boost excitement from the beginning. Plus, your physical invite can serve as a powerful reminder for individuals who might hang it on their refrigerator or leave it around the house.
Social media. This is a great way to spread the word far and wide, including potential guests you may not have on your email or mailing lists. Share posts including the date, time, and if applicable, a location and registration link for your auction. Encourage current supporters to interact with and share your posts with their own social media networks, effectively expanding your reach and introducing you to new avenues of support.

While your outreach strategies will likely be adjusted to your particular supporter base, it’s a good practice to implement multiple of these key suggestions. In fact, studies show that 72% of consumers would rather connect with brands through a multichannel approach.

4. Streamline auction checkout

Imagine this: It’s the end of the night and bidders have enjoyed a long evening of mingling with friends and bidding on enticing items. Now, it’s time to pay for and collect the items they’ve won. They’re eager to receive the item they competed for, but as they approach the check-out table near your venue’s exit, they see a long line of guests also waiting to receive their items and feel discouraged from attending future auctions.

At the end of a successful event, finish strong with a streamlined checkout process! With mobile bidding software, participants can input their payment information and pay directly from their phones, eliminating the need for a physical checkout table. You can even send automated email receipts so bidders receive confirmation that you received their payment.

5. Follow up after the auction

Post-auction operations play a considerable role in whether your attendees return for future events. Be sure to have a carefully organized, streamlined checkout process for your winners so that they can pay, receive their items, and head out without complication.

A few days later, be sure to thank all of your guests for participating and ask them to fill out a quick survey. This way you can get a feel for what your attendees really thought about your event, including what can be improved for next time.

Each of these is a crucial element in a successful auction and something you don’t want to leave to the last minute—or to chance! When participants and attendees can tell you put a lot of time, effort, and thought into pulling off the event, they’re more likely to get involved.

Are you ready to plan your best auction yet?

Best Practices for Silent Auctions

Even if this is your first time planning a silent auction, the good news is that thousands of organizations before you have helped pave the way for a successful event—and can provide some best practices to ensure yours gets off without a hitch. Let’s walk through some tried-and-true tips to get you started.

1. Set a theme and consider other entertainment

While not every auction has to be a themed one, choosing and sticking with a particular theme is a great way to boost excitement for your event. Depending on when your auction will fall in the calendar year, you may consider planning an event around a major holiday such as:

Valentine’s Day
Halloween
Christmas

Another creative idea would be aligning your silent auction theme with your organization’s mission. For example, if your nonprofit supports wildlife conservation, you could decorate the venue like a rainforest with related items available for bidding.

2. Limit the number of items

It may be tempting to collect and auction off as many items as you can. After all, more items to bid on means more money, right?

In reality, an overabundance of auction items can spread out bids too thinly and reduce the competition for top items that end up driving prices through the roof. Select a few big-ticket auction items that will be in high demand (such as an automobile or vacation package), supplemented by some smaller and mid-sized items like gift cards, local experiences, and artwork.

3. Offer “buy now” options

Bidding is a great way to drive prices up on valuable and high-demand items at your auction. However, some attendees prefer the convenience and certainty of “buy now” options.

In addition to your top auction items, provide some items available for immediate purchase. Be sure to set the price high enough to make a decent profit—a good practice is to set the price at twice the item’s retail value.

4. Leverage gamification strategies

In the same way that competitive bidding can spur donations, gamification techniques can boost your auction’s fundraising capabilities. Popular methods include:

Displaying a fundraising thermometer
Creating leaderboards
Giving away prizes

A great way to implement such a strategy into your silent auction planning is by alerting participants when they’ve been outbid. Provide a countdown clock to motivate users to make their next move before they lose the item.

5. Encourage additional donations

The vast majority of funds raised through your silent auction will likely come from auction item sales. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be your only source of revenue!

Consider asking for additional donations across multiple points of contact, including pre-registration donation pages and day-of opportunities to give. This way, you can provide an easy way for dedicated supporters to go above and beyond for your organization and bring in more funding for your mission.

6. Use comprehensive auction software

The right software makes any fundraiser run smoothly. Your silent auction is no different! Effective silent auction software allows you to:

Accept additional donations
Provide mobile bidding options
Streamline the checkout process
Add photos and descriptions of items
Send an email and/or text notifications
Compile all your auction data in one spot
Implement a countdown when the auction closes

Auction software comes in handy whether you’re running an entirely virtual experience, a hybrid event, or a traditional in-person auction. Be sure to research your options and find the right auction software for your event and your cause.

Top Silent Auction Software

Your auction software can take your event to the next level, so be sure to find the ideal option for your nonprofit. After all, this tool will streamline every step of the auction process—including registration, bidding, and payment.

At Snowball, we understand that the auction software you choose should help things run smoothly, which is why our auction software offers:

Ability to accept additional donations via your Snowball account
Online event registration and ticketing tools
Unlimited app-based auctions with unlimited auction items
Mobile and online bidding options offering contactless participation, supported by all major browsers and devices for increased accessibility
Text-to-bid functionality optimized for live (virtual and in-person) events
Streamlined checkout process and automated email receipts
Email and text notifications when a guest has won or been outbid
Compilation of all auction data in one location
Real-time stats and fundraising updates
“Purchase Now” option for raffle tickets or instant item purchases
Flexible and secure payment gateways, with the choice of bringing your own or using the dedicated Snowball payment processing tool
High-quality customer support available in both English and Spanish

…and so much more. Our powerful suite of fundraising tools balances your nonprofit’s need for affordable yet robust fundraising software—we offer the greatest valued auction tools in the market.

Still not convinced? Here’s how our platform helped Friends of Franklin Parks raise more:

$41,017—a record-setting amount—raised in auction revenue at the first event using Snowball’s platform
64% increase in auction revenue
437 bids generated

$77,199 revenue raised on the Snowball Fundraising Platform in 6 months

Use our platform to streamline your silent auctions and any other fundraising events you plan after your auction concludes! From text-to-give to pledge campaigns, our software can manage it all.

The post From Planning to Profit: How to Master Your Silent Auctions first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

99+ Church Fundraising Ideas to Energize Your Congregation

Snowball Fundraising — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:26:44 +0000

To do great things for your congregation and in your community, your church needs to launch fundraisers. But which fundraisers will generate the most support? And how do you know that your fundraising efforts are set up for success?

These 99+ church fundraising ideas will help you decide which fundraiser is right for your church, broken down into the following categories:

Favorite Church Fundraising Ideas
Easy Church Fundraising Ideas
Church Fundraising Events
Youth Group Fundraising Ideas
Mission Trip Fundraising Ideas
Holiday Church Fundraising Events
Fundraising Ideas for Large Churches
Fundraising Ideas for Small Churches

Once you’re done checking out our top ideas, you can find some helpful tips about online donation software at the end of this guide. Let’s get started with a few of our favorite fundraising ideas!

Favorite Church Fundraising Ideas

Text-to-Give

A text-to-donate campaign is a highly effective fundraising tool. In fact, it’s becoming a fundraising fundamental for all types of charitable organizations because of its ease, simplicity, and speed. With two clicks, donors text a keyword (such as “GIVE”) to your church’s text-to-give number, then confirm the amount they’d like to contribute. That’s it. It takes just a few seconds to support the church they love.

Not only is text-to-give, aka text-to-tithe, a quick way for parishioners to tithe, but it’s also something you can encourage them to do during live events, including sermons. Consider it the 21st-century version of the offering basket!

To start accepting text donations, you’ll need to find an industry-leading text-to-give software platform. Then, start promoting your new donation method to your congregation.

Google Ad Campaign

To raise funds and grow your organization, your church needs new members. However, money spent on marketing is money not going toward bettering your church and funding your programs. Fortunately, your church can earn funding specifically for marketing with the Google Ad Grant.

The Google Ad Grant allows your church to promote any page on your website, such as your donation, community programs information, or church activities pages. With the Ad Grant, you receive $10,000 in monthly ad credits you can spend to create sponsored ads that appear at the top of Google search results for relevant keywords.

While some grant programs exclude religious organizations, the Google Ad Grant is not one of them, and as long as your church is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, you’re welcome to apply!

Of course, creating and managing ad campaigns on an entirely new platform can take up a significant amount of your church staff’s time. To ensure you get the most out of your free ad credits and save your staff from devoting all their time to managing your ad campaigns, consider partnering with a Google Ad Grant consultant. Look for organizations that are Google-certified, meaning Google has assessed their practices and determined that they are the best of the best.

eCard Campaign

One highly flexible fundraiser churches should look into is eCards. eCards are digital greeting cards that combine the fun of receiving a card in the mail with the efficiency of email and online delivery.

Churches can use eCards for a number of activities. For example, to fundraise, churches can host donation eCard campaigns. In exchange for a donation, supporters are able to send one of your church’s custom eCards to a friend or family member. These eCards can celebrate holidays and special occasions like birthdays, host thank-you or get-well messages, or include anything else you can think of!

However, this is just scratching the surface of what your church can do with eCards. Send out eCards to volunteers to thank them for their hard work, to members of your congregation when you want to wish them well, or event invitations when your church has a special activity planned.

For an example of eCards in action, check out Vineyard Church North Phoenix uses eCards to encourage its congregation to invite others to attend church service:

To create, distribute, and manage your eCards, you’ll need an eCard platform. Look for a solution that is used to working with churches and other nonprofits, has custom design tools, and is user-friendly for your staff and congregation.

Matching Gifts

Corporate matching gifts are an easy way for charitable organizations to earn more without asking their supporters to spend more. While these programs often exempt churches, that’s not always the case, and with a little encouragement and research, you can help your congregation take advantage of these opportunities.

Often, businesses will match donations made to religious organizations if the organization serves the wider community or conducts secular community programs, like running a soup kitchen or medical clinic. A few well-known businesses that match gifts made to religious organizations include:

American Express matches gifts to “ongoing and independently-run [programs] affiliated with a religious organization if the gift is restricted to a nonsectarian project that provides needed social services to the community at large on a non-discriminatory basis without any religious teaching, directive, or requirements to receive services.”
The Pew Charitable Trust will “match contributions made to religious organizations, such as houses of worship, schools, hospitals, shelters, etc., just as it would to any other qualifying organization.”
Chevron matches gifts to programs operated by religious organizations that meet the following requirements: “a) are open to all individuals in the community regardless of religious belief; (b) serve a secular purpose, such as a food pantry or a homeless shelter; and (c) do not require participants to join in religious worship as a condition of receiving the services that the nonprofit offers.”

These restrictions may sound complicated, so it’s a good thing there’s a way to simplify the matching gift process: auto-submission. Auto-submission is an exciting new advancement in matching gift technology that allows donors to have their match request applications completed for them.

Here’s how the process works:

1. A supporter donates to your church’s community program as normal. If your church has matching gift software, they will be prompted to enter their work email address or employer’s name to get paired with their matching gift program’s information.
2. The supporter checks their employer’s matching gift program guidelines. Given religious organizations often have stricter guidelines than other types of nonprofits, it can be worthwhile to invest in a matching gift database to help supporters easily find this information.

Once eligibility is confirmed, the donor has the opportunity to opt into auto-submission. Auto-submission technology uses the information the supporter provided on their initial donation to complete their employer’s matching gift request for them.

After the match request is submitted, all your church needs to do is wait for the check to arrive in the mail!

Direct Mail Appeals

Direct mail appeals are physical promotional materials like targeted letters, postcards, and other tangible forms of communication. Similar to any other fundraising approach, its medium impacts its effectiveness, but so does the effort and strategy behind your approach.

After all, anyone can mail out simple letters in regular envelopes. While some members of your congregation may open these, chances are that direct mail appeals with low-quality materials or plain designs might get overlooked. Avoid this scenario by adding attention-grabbing graphic design elements to your direct mail. This might include:

Bold colors and designs
Imagery that represents your church
Unique packaging materials

To create designs for your direct mail appeals, check if anyone in your congregation with artistic skills would be willing to volunteer. Another option for larger churches or those lacking a readily available graphic designer is to hire a third-party service that specializes in graphic design needs for nonprofit organizations, like your church.

Charity Silent Auction

Here at Snowball Fundraising, we’ve seen how powerful silent auctions can be—which is why they’re a favorite fundraising method of ours. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more effective church fundraising event.

Have members of your congregation donate items or services to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. You might be surprised by what people will offer up.

You’ll need your technology in place before the auction so you can run the entire silent auction from the first donation to the last receipt and all the bidding in between. Also consider alternate giving methods so everyone is able to contribute, whether they win the auction or not.

Set up a text-to-give campaign with a keyword such as “auction.” Put handouts on the silent auction tables with your church’s text-to-give phone number and keyword, to raise money during the auction and well into the future.

Online Giving

If your church doesn’t offer the option to give online, you’re likely missing out on critical congregant support.

With online giving, your church can raise funds in a way that’s convenient for your congregation and leadership teams. You can customize your online giving page to match your church’s colors and brand and include it on your church website. You can then promote your new giving page in other marketing avenues and even in services during the offering.

With the right online giving software, you can quickly bring your church giving to the next level. Although many church fundraising efforts are the opposite this is one your church can set up easily and with rapid results.

T-Shirt Fundraiser

Everyone loves a good T-shirt, and more than that, everyone loves to show off that they’re an active member of an organization, especially a church. T-shirt fundraisers are perfect to promote at different events such as Vacation Bible School, field days, or a kickball tournament.

With T-shirt fundraising platforms, you can customize your T-shirt design and either sell it from your website or buy it in bulk to sell at your event.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding campaigns are perfect for raising money for a cause that’s close to your heart, and one you believe others would be interested in donating to. Use your church’s donations platform as a crowdfunding hub, where people can tithe and add comments and messages of support. Here’s an example of what an effective online donation page looks like.

Crowdfunding may be just the tool that allows your next mission trip or community event to thrive even before it starts. Don’t forget to use all your communication channels to spread the word!

Pledge Fundraising

Pledge fundraising is a fantastic church fundraising idea for members of your congregation who may not be able to donate right away. Pledges are promised support of donations to be paid and processed in the future.

To get started with pledge fundraising, look for online or mobile pledge fundraising tools. Make sure you look for a tool that prioritizes speed, ease of use, and flexibility in its fundraising options. This pledge fundraising guide can help your team get started easily.

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising is when supporters raise funds on your behalf. Parishioners will set up a fundraising page (with your help!) and ask their friends, family, and online network to donate. The great thing about peer-to-peer fundraising is that you can gain new supporters in the process!

Shoe Drive Fundraiser

Shoe drive fundraisers are a unique church fundraising idea that also helps your congregation declutter! Work with a shoe drive fundraising company to set up collection boxes where people can donate their gently used shoes. Shoe drive fundraising companies will send you a check based on the pounds of shoes you collect.

Social Media

With 90% of the United States population actively using social media, this is an important channel for spreading the word about your church’s fundraisers.

Use social media to tell people about your church’s work in the community, events, and fundraising initiatives. Share a link to your online donation page, and encourage people to share it with their friends in turn. For example, Facebook fundraisers are an incredibly effective way to raise money for your church.

Recurring Gift Drive

When members of your congregation choose to give through your easy-to-use online donation pages, make sure to provide the option to set up a recurring donation on the spot. Securing recurring gifts is the best way to ensure a steady flow of fundraising revenue year-round, even when you don’t have a campaign running.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Easy Church Fundraising Ideas

Candle Selling

Candles are a great gift for any occasion, especially if you tailor your candles for each upcoming holiday (Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day). There are tons of great websites that sell heavily discounted candles for fundraisers. Find the site that works best for your church’s fundraising needs, then ask volunteers to sell the candles.

You can sell your candles door to door, or you can advertise and sell them on your church’s website.

Daily Indulgence Drop

We all indulge a little here and there, and that’s okay. But imagine the kind of money you could raise for your church if you challenged your congregation to go one month without that one thing they indulge in regularly. Instead of buying that expensive cup of coffee or fast food snack, congregation members set that money aside as a donation.

At the end of the Daily Indulgence Drop, invite congregants to text-to-give the amount they saved. After a month of not partaking in an indulgence, it will take them just a few seconds to text their donation.

Bonus! Host this fundraiser for the full 40 days of Lent if your congregants are up to the challenge. Lent and indulgence drops go hand in hand.

Popcorn Sales

A popcorn sale is a perfect church fundraising idea to treat your congregation of all ages. To get started, your church only needs to find a company that helps churches and nonprofits sell popcorn as a fundraiser. Send around pledge sheets beforehand to get an accurate idea of who wants what kinds of popcorn, and build up a buzz on social media.

Coffee Mornin’

Your early risers are probably hankering for a hot cup of joe on Sunday mornings. They likely also wouldn’t say no to a homemade muffin or scone. Assemble your coffee and muffin stand right outside of the service to catch congregants before or after church.

Bonus! Get a local coffee shop onboard to sponsor your coffee mornings. You might be surprised by how willing (and even happy) to donate supplies some coffee shops are. They might even include some free cups and lids.

500 Dollar Wheelbarrow

This is not at all what it sounds like. No, you don’t have to go out and buy a $500 wheelbarrow for the afternoon. Why the $500 then? Because a wheelbarrow can hold up to 50,000 pennies, amounting to $500!

Ask to borrow a wheelbarrow from someone in your congregation. Then encourage each member of the congregation to bring their unwanted pennies and coins to dump into the wheelbarrow. You’ll raise more money than you expect!

Pizza Sale

Who doesn’t love a good slice of pizza? It’s cheap, easy, and hard to resist. Order a few different types of pizza and charge a dollar a slice. Ask some church members to volunteer to bring in plates, cups, and some soda. Many pizzerias will offer up deals and specials to churches and schools that are trying to fundraise.

At your pizza sale, you could have a “pizza-themed” thermometer to show your donation goal and how far you are from it. Each level could be represented by a different type of pizza (pepperoni, cheese, veggie, etc.). Fundraising thermometers are an effective tool to motivate donors to give.

Envelope Fundraiser

The basic premise of the envelope fundraiser is that your church labels envelopes with different numbers on the outside. Your church’s members will pluck a random envelope from the bulletin board and donate the amount that matches the number on the envelope. If you number all the envelopes between 1 and 100, you could end up with $5,050!

The envelope fundraiser is a great church fundraising initiative for the more artistic members of your congregation. Let them craft the envelopes to be funky, colorful, and fun!

Quick fundraising tip: For all events, increase donations by putting up posters with your text-to-give phone number. While the activities are going on, people can quickly text in their added support!

Lost Treasure

Have you ever shaken out your couch’s cushions and found an extra chunk of change you didn’t even know you had? A super easy church fundraiser you can host is to implore your members to go on a treasure hunt to look for all that spare change that gets tucked away. Your members can bring in that change and donate it on Sunday.

Have your congregation search their couches, cars, and laundry rooms to find spare change. Because it’s money they didn’t even know they had, they won’t miss it quite as much!

Bake Sale

This classic church fundraising idea only requires some volunteer bakers and some more volunteers to sell the cookies and cupcakes. We suggest enlisting the help of your Sunday school’s finest helpers. You can put out a call on social media and use social media again to spread the word about the bake sale after the details are worked out.

Once you have your volunteer bakers and salespeople, scope out the ideal location for your bake sale. After church lets out, assemble your teams and start pushing those perfect pastries!

Lollipop Fundraiser

Kids of all ages—and grownups too—are suckers for suckers. Lollipops are ultra inexpensive, and there are tons of sites that sell tasty lollipops in bulk for very reasonable prices. You can charge just $1 per lollipop and end up with almost pure profit!

Just let a few people in your church know about your fundraiser, and they’ll be sure to tell their family and friends. Before you know it, everyone will be asking where they can get gourmet lollipops to help out.

Guessing Games

Apart from the cost of a roll of tickets, a large mason jar, and three bags of M&Ms to fill the jar, this fundraiser is essentially free. Fill the container with the M&Ms (or other small countable items). Then charge people $1 for the chance to guess how many pieces of candy are in the jar. Reward the person with the closest answer with the jar itself.

Kids (and adults too) will love the chance to bring home such a big jar of candy.

Live Auction

A live auction can be an incredibly engaging event for your church. When planned and executed well, your live auction can set your church up for great success in the long term!

Be sure to invest in auction software to make sure your event runs as smoothly and effectively as possible.

Benefit Worship Concert

Is there an upcoming worship concert by a well-known Christian band or singer in your area? Try to secure some good seats, and auction the tickets off for your church fundraiser. For best results, be sure to take into consideration the music that your congregation is partial to—whether that’s traditional, contemporary, indie, or even Christian hip hop.

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Church Fundraising Events

For all events, before the fun gets underway, make sure your church donations software is up and running. This will help with post-event donations, for attendees who want to keep the generosity going!

Jumble Sale

Jumble sales are perfect for your ministry. It’s pretty likely that everyone has a few articles of clothing they haven’t worn in a while. Families, in particular, can have clothing that their children quickly grow out of. Encourage your participants to do a quick clean-out before your sale!

Jumble sales are essentially yard sales specifically for clothing. Ask your congregants to round up clothes they no longer wear, with prices in mind. Set up those clothes and invite everyone in your church to be a part of the sale.

Trivia

If your church members are looking to have a little bit of family-friendly fun after church on Sunday, you can host an afternoon game of trivia right there in your service hall. Charge a small entrance fee to raise a little money while your congregants have a great time.

Start by coming up with a list of questions and categories. Once you have them, you can create a presentation. Or if you’re more low-tech, you can print off answer sheets to pass out. Designate one member of your church as a game-show host, and let the game begin!

Chili Cook-Off

You probably have more than a few church members in your congregation who think their chili recipe is the best around. The best way to end this silent rivalry between your church’s chili experts is to hold a definitive chili cook-off.

The first step for this church fundraising idea is to pick the time and place for the competition (late fall or early winter is an ideal time for chili). Then, charge a small entry fee to enter the competition. On the day of the competition, provide tasting bowls, judges, and finally a prize to the winner!

Basket Raffle Bingo

Take one part bingo. Add a dash of raffle ticket sales. Mix in a pinch of festive baskets. No need to preheat the oven. Your recipe for the perfect basket raffle bingo is complete. Ask members of your congregation to donate contributions to your prize baskets.

Once you have your prizes, sell raffle tickets for the bingo night. The more tickets a bingo player has, the more likely they’ll be to win the basket of their choice. If you’re struggling with basket ideas, try themes like a spa basket, fruit basket, picnic basket, or coffee basket.

Virtual Road Race

The main difference between a typical road race and a virtual race: a virtual race can be run anywhere. Set a date for your race and have your out-of-town members mark it on their calendars. Set up a giving portal as a way for members to make pledges.

Participants in the race will pledge a few dollars per mile they plan to run, so the farther they run, the more money they’ll donate to your church.

5K Run

Thanks to crowdfunding, 5K fun runs have become one of the easiest fundraisers with some of the lowest overhead—which is great news if you’re looking to host more than just a couple of fun runs a year.

To set up this fundraiser, your first step is to figure out a loop to run. Next, set up your event through your donations platform, and collect your race fees. On the day of the race, place markers in the right spots, and have volunteers pass out race essentials such as water and race numbers. The final step is to just have fun!

If you do end up hosting a more complex event like a 5k, some event management systems will let you arrange unlimited events through them.

Color Run

Color runs are all the rage! Young and old alike will pay to get absolutely covered in colorful powder as they run. And it’s all for a great cause; what could be better? Color runs work just like any other standard 5K fundraiser—they’re just more colorful.

Through online donation pages, you can instantaneously raise the money for your color run. Encourage your race participants to wear their finest white running outfits. They’ll be getting extremely colorful by the end of the race!

Christian Speed Dating

You may be pleasantly surprised to learn that there are a number of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes sitting next to you on Sunday. A great way to bring these Christian singles out to mingle is to host a speed dating night.

All the church’s singles can buy event tickets to participate in a night of quick get-to-know-yous. They may end up meeting a new Bible study buddy!

Yard Sale

Yard sales are a perfect church fundraising event for first-time fundraisers. They’re easy to plan, simple to set up, and almost 100% profitable.

Ask your congregants to bring two or three boxes of gently used items and set up some tables in the churchyard or parking lot. As your members are filing out of Sunday service, they’ll love perusing the goodies laid out in front of them.

Ladies’ Day

Treat the women in your church to a special ladies’ day. First, decide what kind of event you’re hosting. Try ideas like a nice brunch, a spa day, or a good movie. Once you’ve decided what you’re doing, start selling tickets for anywhere between about $10 and $50, depending on what you have planned.

Bingo Night

Establish a regular bingo night. Once you’ve decided to host bingo on a certain day, you can send out an email blast to invite your congregation to participate. Charge just a couple of dollars per bingo card, and get the game rolling.

Bingo is a fun game for folks ages 4 to 99. It’s an incredibly easy church fundraising event. All you need to host it are scorecards, bingo chips, an announcer, and maybe a couple of prizes for winners.

Live Auction

A live auction can be an incredibly engaging event for your church. When planned and executed well, your live auction can set your church up for great success in the long term!

Be sure to invest in auction software to make sure your event runs as smoothly and effectively as possible.

Benefit Worship Concert

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Youth Group Fundraising Ideas

Encourage support of your church’s youth group with the following ideas. For any of them, enhance donations by also highlighting your church’s text-to-give phone number. Nine in ten millennials own smartphones; text donations allow them to use their phones for good!

Retro Game Night

Scrabble! Risk! Monopoly! Life! Battleship! Clue! The list goes on. Nowadays, too many games are virtual. Bring everyone back to a time of simple, old-fashioned board games with a retro game night.

This church fundraising event is as easy as asking congregation members to bring in their favorite old games. Sell tickets for $1 or $2. You can have prizes for the winners, or it can be all about healthy competition.

Bail Out

This is an exciting and engaging fundraiser that’s sure to get participants riled up. Throwing a bail-out fundraiser means tying up one or more church members (or leaders) and refusing to untie them until their “bail” or “ransom” has been met by the congregation. The bail, of course, is the fundraising goal to be met.

Use a fundraising thermometer to show everyone how close they are to letting the person go free. Here’s how. This event would be easiest to pull off during a church service when everyone is in attendance. But you wouldn’t want it to be too much of a distraction, so be sure to pick a less eventful Sunday.

Make the Grade

“Make the grade” fundraisers are a fantastic way to motivate your church’s Sunday school youth group members to get the best marks in school. All it really involves is students (of any age) signing up at the beginning of the semester to be a part of the challenge.

For every A (or B) they receive, participants will ask donors to pledge a dollar or two. At the end of the grading period, youth group members will bring in their report cards and cash in those pledges.

Karaoke Night

Who doesn’t love a fun karaoke night out? Well, now you can bring all of that excitement and good-natured fun into your church hall. Just set up a karaoke machine, or make one of your own using the church’s projector and lyrics videos on YouTube.

Charge a few dollars for admission, or charge per song. Your youth group is bound to love the chance to pretend they’re the next Beyoncé or Justin. This youth group fundraising idea is sure to leave people both singing and laughing.

Hat Day

Your youth group’s members probably own at least a dozen hats. One beanie, one fedora, one baseball cap, one Indiana Jones wool hat, etc. But they’re not allowed to wear these cool hats at school (or during the church service!). They’ll jump at the opportunity to pay a dollar to wear their favorite cap on Sunday morning.

There’s nothing more fun than seeing your members expressing themselves, all while supporting a great cause.

Books for Bucks

Books for Bucks is like a yard sale; it’s just a little more specific. Instead of allowing your old books to gather dust, sell them to fund your next youth group mission trip!

Pick a time and place for the sale, then encourage church members to donate their old books to sell. Your youth might even find next year’s summer reading requirement at this unique church fundraiser.

Magic Show

With the help of Youtube and Google, anyone can become a mind-blowing magician. As a youth group fundraiser, your church can host a night of magic tricks and illusions.

First, pick a night for the event. Treat the magic show as though it were a talent show and present sign-up sheets for willing participants. If a youth group member doesn’t want to show off their magic skills in front of a crowd, they can volunteer to be a part of the backstage crew. Sell tickets ahead of time, and prepare to be amazed by what your church’s youth can do!

Quick fundraising tip: For ticketed events, make sure your event management software collects ticket buyers’ registration information, such as names and email addresses, so you can reach out to them later. Express thanks for their support, and build a relationship that extends beyond the initial donation.

Worm Charming

If you’ve never charmed a worm before, get ready to get your hands dirty! This fundraiser works by providing paying customers (donors, church members, random passersby) with a dirt plot full of worms.

By the end of a certain amount of time (typically 20 minutes), the farmer who has “charmed” the most worms to the surface of the dirt plot without digging any of them out wins a prize.

All-Night Dance Party

Appeal to the night owls and dancing fools alike by hosting an all-night dance party right in your church’s service hall. You only need to charge a few dollars a ticket to break even on costs and make a little extra for your church.

Decorations can be minimal as long as the beats are blasting. Put up fun posters around the dance hall with your text-to-give number and the web page for your church’s online donations. Attendees can donate during dance breaks, before getting back on the floor.

Hire a DJ or master your own playlist. All that matters is that the dancing doesn’t stop ’til morning!

Sunday School Calendars

Get ready to get crafty! Your Sunday school students can craft their own calendars to sell as gifts. Break out the glitter, magic markers, and stickers. Collect your students’ artwork, along with photos of the Sunday school class and pictures of the kids at church, to put together a calendar they will treasure forever.

Don’t forget to pack the calendar full of upcoming church events and other church fundraisers.

Quick fundraising tip: Once your fundraising event or donations page is live, let congregants know about it through social media, your church’s website, email, and any other communication channels you’ve found to be effective. Read more in this guide about social media and fundraising.

Noisy Sunday

Noisy Sunday is a fun and easy church fundraiser that can be used multiple times a year. It involves your Sunday school students running up and down the church aisles with half-empty cans and jars of change, making as much noise as they possibly can.

The point is to encourage everyone in the service to donate as much as they can to fill up the cans and make the noise disappear. Be sure to give your congregation a heads up, so they come prepared with change and bills to fill the noisy cans!

Burrito Mile

Your youth group will love this unique way to raise money for their trips. Encourage them to help host (and participate in!) a burrito mile fundraiser. Burrito miles are just like your typical 5K race, except right before your runners start, they eat a huge burrito.

All you really need to do differently from any normal 5K fundraiser is to find a restaurant that’s willing to sponsor the race by providing burritos. A burrito mile is a fun challenge, and your church’s members will love to buy T-shirts afterward to commemorate the zany experience.

Face Painting

Come one, come all! Get your faces painted like lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Face painting fundraisers are lovely when the weather starts to get nice again, and everyone wants to be outside basking in the glorious sun.

You can easily find inexpensive face painting kits, and there are sure to be at least a few members of your church who would love to volunteer as artists.

Dog Wash

Dog washes are a great church fundraising idea for the whole family, Fido included! You can hold your church’s dog wash in the parking lot or somewhere with a ton of room for multiple “groomers” to set up shop.

Put up signs and flyers all over the neighborhood to attract all the pooches to your fundraiser. Include your church’s text-to-give phone number on them, so even if people don’t come to the dog wash, they know how to show their support.

Charge a small amount for people to come and have their dogs washed. Who doesn’t love a freshly pampered poodle? Those tufts of fur are irresistibly cute!

Talent Show

A talent show is an awesome way to give members of your church a chance to showcase their talents. Provide a registration form for acts, and close it after a certain number of participants, to keep the show to a reasonable length.

Your church can host this in a few ways. Make your talent show a live event in your meeting hall or outdoor area. Or, you’re able to make it accessible to supporters across the world by virtually streaming the event or compiling act videos submitted ahead of time. All money raised will benefit your church. Don’t forget to promote the show on your website and social media!

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Mission Trip Fundraising Ideas

International Food Day

For an international food day fundraiser, each member of your youth group or Sunday school class brings in a dish from a different culture. Other church members pay a small entrance fee to come and try all the tasty treats from around the world. Build anticipation for your church’s international food day on social media, and share photos of the event afterward.

International food days are an excellent way to teach youth and adults about diversity to prepare them for mission trips around the world.

Bike-a-Thon

Active mission teams are a perfect fit for a bike-a-thon fundraiser. Much like a marathon, bike-a-thons are pledge-based. Donors pledge per mile that the youth group bikes during the fundraising event.

This church fundraising idea allows your mission team members to bike as long or short as they would like. The point is to have fun, raise money, and stay active.

Encourage donors to text their donations, to reach the per-mile goal. Text donations were used for a 2019 cycling race by W.A.R. on Wheels (short for Wishes, Awareness, and Research), to raise money for the pediatric cancer foundation Cal’s Angels. There’s something exhilarating about supporting the race toward an important goal, with just a few clicks.

Letter Writing Campaign

A classic mission trip fundraiser: the old-fashioned letter-writing campaign. It probably goes without saying, but the real key to a successful letter-writing campaign is a well-written letter. A strong, meaningful message is sure to take your letters to the next level and help your church’s mission team meet its goal in no time.

Always remember to say thank you in the letter. Regardless of whether or not they donate, the recipients of your letter have taken time out of their days to read your words.

Charity Car Wash

Much like yard sales, car washes take little to no effort to plan and set up. This fundraiser is always best during the spring or summer, but if you’re having an unseasonably warm fall, you probably won’t find quite as much competition.

You really only need a few members of the church to volunteer to wash cars, a couple to advertise by the side of the road, and some basic car-cleaning supplies.

Balloon Count

Much like a jar guessing game, a balloon count involves participants paying to guess how many balloons are stuffed into a car. The person who comes the closest to guessing the right number wins a prize of the pastor’s choosing.

Choose a time and location for this mission trip fundraiser, and blow up as many balloons as you possibly can. Charge $1 per guess. For extra fun, try to cram as many balloons as possible into your pastor’s car.

Create a Cookbook

Your congregation might have some of the most talented cooks in town! Let them share their favorite recipes with the rest of the church. Have church members compile recipes into a unique church cookbook, featuring recipes they’ve created or been given by their parents and grandparents.

Once you have enough recipes to fill up a book, you can easily get it bound with and include pictures and neat type. This is a great mission trip fundraising idea to do just before Thanksgiving.

Smoothie Stand

A twist on the traditional lemonade stand, a smoothie stand is a fabulous idea for your church’s next mission trip fundraiser. Who doesn’t love a fresh fruit smoothie on a hot summer day?

You can make the smoothies beforehand, or you can make them fresh to order by bringing an extension cord and portable power source to your smoothie stand location. Set up on the street on a warm, sunny day when everyone’s out and about—or just outside your church’s doors when service lets out!

Pink Flamingo

Pink flamingo fundraisers are an easy way to get your neighborhood involved with your church’s fundraising. All it takes is an obnoxious pink flamingo lawn ornament with a note attached, including your church’s contact information and text-to-tithe number.

The younger members of your congregation will have a blast planting the flamingos in other church members’ yards. Plus, receiving a donation as “ransom” money to have the flamingos removed and going in to clean up can be just as fun.

Classic Lemonade Stand

It’s a hot summer day. Nothing is quite as refreshing as an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed lemonade. This may seem like an old-fashioned fundraiser, but it’s one that’s withstood the test of time. And for good reason!

Find a recipe for lemonade, and whip up as much as you can ahead of time. When you’re setting up your stand, be sure to enlist the help of your most artistic Sunday school student to make signs. Pick a busy area, and start selling.

Pie in the Face

This fundraiser is super simple (some might even say it’s as easy as pie!)—if your pastor is on board with being pied in the face.

At the beginning of the event, sell as many tickets as church members and Sunday schoolers are willing to buy. Those tickets will then go into a drawing bucket. A ticket is drawn, and the lucky ticket holder gets to run up on stage and throw a whipped cream pie right in the pastor’s face.

Travel Raffle

Imagine the buzz you could create if your church hosted a raffle, and instead of the traditional fare, you were giving away airfare! Before you start planning a true travel raffle, first survey your congregation to see if any one has a connection with any travel agencies or airline companies.

Even if no one is connected, you can still book an inexpensive giveaway, like a camping trip. Use your ticketing platform to set up the raffle, and encourage congregants to share it through their social media feeds.

Your congregation will love a church fundraiser that also allows them to get away for a memorable mini-vacation.

Kickball League

You don’t have to be particularly skilled to play kickball, but it sure is fun for all ages! Divide your church up into teams, and have your members pay a small entrance fee to be a part of your “league” and play in your “tournament.”

You can have a set of trophies made up for the winners. Other than these trophies, kickball is a very inexpensive fundraiser. You can play almost anywhere, as long as there’s enough space.

Volunteer Chore Team

Perhaps your congregation has some elderly members or working parents with young children who might have trouble keeping up with important tasks around their homes. In this case, a chore team is a great resource to auction off at your fundraiser or host at the cost of a small suggested donation.

To pull this off, be sure you have a team of hardworking individuals, perhaps from your youth group, who are willing to donate their time for a day of chores or yard work.

Sponsor a Child

To host this, you’ll have to partner with a local foster care system or a homeless shelter. You can then arrange a relationship with this organization to help sponsor children. Your congregants can donate to buy them books, school supplies, and essentials on a recurring basis. This can also be done around the holidays to sponsor a child’s holiday gift.

Quick fundraising tip: For all fundraising events, don’t forget to foreground your cause! It’s easy to get lost in the details of event planning, but always bear in mind the mission of your fundraising, and how you’re communicating that mission with congregants. Learn more about branding and church fundraising.

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Holiday Church Fundraising Ideas

Easter Egg Hunt

Easter egg hunts are special-occasion activities that come only once a year. Children of all ages love to go on safari to find precious, goodie-filled eggs.

Egg hunts are incredibly simple to set up with the help of a few volunteers. Gather your supplies: eggs, treats, baskets, and more. On Easter Sunday, hide as many eggs as you can throughout the hunting grounds. Charge a nominal fee (like $1 or 50¢) for each participant, then let them loose to go hunting!

Angel Festival

An angel festival is a fun and exciting way to raise money while allowing your congregation members to dress up and be creative. Angel festivals are just like any other festival, except they’re 100% angel-themed.

Sell angel cakes as your main bake sale treat. Offer up angel-themed crafts. Play classic carnival games with a festive twist. This holiday-themed church fundraiser will raise money and spirits for your church!

Ornament Sales

This is a great church fundraising idea for the holidays. People love to give and receive ornaments for the Christmas season. If you’re using ornaments to help pay for mission trips, have your mission team craft unique ornaments in the shapes of the countries they’re going to serve.

As an alternative, ask your Sunday school class to craft and sell the ornaments for an especially adorable ornament sale.

Quick fundraising tip: For those of us who seek fewer material goods and more spiritual satisfaction, giving someone a gift of a church donation is especially meaningful. Give congregants the chance to donate online at your church on behalf of their loved ones.

Gingerbread House Making

An excellent church fundraising idea for right before Christmas, gingerbread house making is fun for the whole family. You can even make it a competition between the participants as to who can make the best house! Charge a small fee for each entrant at the door, or ask for donations from participants.

All you really need to do is provide the basics (gingerbread, icing, peppermints, and gumdrops). But if your congregants want to get a little more creative, they can bring in their own candy for decorations.

Holiday Symphony

Hosting a holiday symphony gala is a marvelous way to engage the whole family in a night of culturally enriching fun. Pick a date for the performance, and set up online ticketing for it.

Then, pick classic pieces to play along with everyone’s holiday favorites, like “Jingle Bells” and “Silent Night.” Try to find musicians who will play these songs for free or cheap (they may even be a part of your congregation!).

On the night of the symphony, have ushers and ticket sellers help set up the venue and make the evening as smooth as possible.

Holiday Child Care

In the midst of the Christmas shopping season, your church can offer a special service that Santa and Mrs. Claus will greatly appreciate. Enlist the help of your church’s youth group, and offer babysitting or child care for the week or two before Christmas, so parents can have time to go shopping for presents.

Ask for suggested donations in return for these services. You might be surprised by how generous parents can be around the holidays.

Pumpkin Patches

Pumpkin patch fundraisers are a fabulous way to raise a few extra donations in the month of October. It’s just what it sounds like: transforming your church’s front lawn into a pumpkin patch, and inviting everyone (friends, neighbors, church members) to come to buy their fall staples from you!

All you really need to do is set up an inviting pumpkin patch and charge a little bit more for each pumpkin than you paid for them. Be sure to set up an area for pictures, and encourage guests to tag your church’s social media in the photo!

Polar Plunge

Only for the bravest of hearts, the thickest of skins, and the craziest of the crowd, the polar plunge involves donating money to get up early on a Saturday morning in January or February and run into a freezing cold lake, river, or pond—whatever body of water you have nearest.

Ask people to pledge money for those who make the jump. And make sure to have hot cocoa and warm pizza to warm up with after they make it!

Quick fundraising tip: Amid holiday busyness and events, it can be easy to let other church management tasks drop. Here are some simple tips for preventing that from happening.

Christmas Lights Removal

Right after Christmas, no one wants to take down the lights they spent so long putting up. That’s why it’s the perfect time to advertise your church’s Christmas light removal service.

Get your youth group out volunteering, armed with ladders and tools. You can ask for donations or a small fee from those who want their lights removed. Giving your church’s members the option to donate via credit card on the spot will make it easier for your light removal crew to accept payments on the go.

Flower Fundraiser

Similar to the lollipop fundraiser, selling flowers for Valentine’s Day is a cost-effective fundraiser that will make everyone’s day a little brighter. Your church’s members pick and pay for as many flowers as they’d like to send to a loved one or a friend on February 14.

Those flowers (and perhaps a sweet message) get delivered in person on Valentine’s Day. Or if you’re not wild about Valentine’s Day at your church, you could easily transform this church fundraising idea for Mother’s Day!

Caroling for a Cause

Another easy church fundraising idea, caroling for a cause is a festive fundraiser to employ right around Christmas. Much like traditional carolers, carolers for a cause wander door to door and sing hymns and cheery Christmas tunes.

While donations are not guaranteed, December is the most generous month, and people love to give to carolers who are singing for a specific cause.

Egg ’Em On!

No, your volunteers won’t be egging houses. For this church fundraising idea, gather willing participants to go to each house in the neighborhood with a basket of eggs (it’s especially fun during Easter when you can color the eggs). They then negotiate how much each neighbor is willing to pay to see the church member do stunts with the eggs. The members can offer to juggle them, toss them up in the air, or even crack them on their own heads!

Quick fundraising tip: The holidays are a wonderful time to ask donors to support your church. ’Tis the season of generosity, after all! When they make donations, give congregants the option to set up recurring donations, to continue in the spirit of giving.

Present Wrapping

Present wrapping is a great church fundraising idea for the holidays. It’s also an easy idea that your youth group can get into. You can buy nice wrapping paper and tape dispensers in bulk. Ask the youth group to bring their own scissors. They can then offer to wrap Christmas presents for busy shoppers.

If you put a jar out on the table where you’re wrapping presents, you can prompt people to make donations without actually charging them for your services.

Wreath Decorating

Encourage church members to get in touch with their artistic side by hosting a holiday wreath sale. This is wonderful for the Christmas season, as everyone is in the spirit and decorating their homes. Ask one of your Sunday school classes or some creative church members to craft wreaths. You’ll need to pay for the supplies, but selling Christmas decorations should generate profit for your church!

Sell these at a sale after one of your Sunday services, or a holiday event. Think about turning it into an annual event that church members come to look forward to every year.

Pictures with Santa

Don’t let your church members fight the long lines at the mall for a memorable picture with Santa. An easy solution and fundraiser includes having a congregation member volunteer to be Santa and host a photo shoot at your own church.

You’ll only need a volunteer Santa and photographer, a plain backdrop, and some props! It’s that easy. Since you’re making the most of your volunteers’ help, you can charge less and spread the joy further.

Quick fundraising tip: For an extra charge, print and frame the pictures. Be sure to upload the digital photos to a storage hub for easy access!

Fundraising Ideas For Large Churches

For larger congregations, offering streamlined fundraising methods is especially important. Otherwise, you’ll be juggling donation amounts, donor names and email addresses, and everything else that goes into keeping your church running.

Buy-a-Brick

Buy-a-brick fundraisers are typically for physical projects, such as building an auxiliary building for your church or repaving the front walkway. You can host a virtual buy-a-brick fundraiser, and have people buy their bricks (i.e., donate to your church) online or on their cell phones.

Brick by brick, your congregants will help you build up your church in more ways than one! You can charge a little extra to have congregants’ names or a message engraved on the bricks they buy.

Gala

Hosting a gala takes some advanced planning, but it will be well worth it in the end. Everyone loves to get dressed up and feel glamorous.

You’ll need to invest in some decor and enlist a top chef-in-training to whip up some hors d’oeuvres. You may also want to hire entertainment, like a band or DJ, to encourage people to dance, talk, and mingle.

A great way to build donations is by setting up a “donations sprint” during the gala. Over the span of a few minutes at some point in the evening, attendees can text in their donations, sharing in the act of generosity.

“Snowball Fundraising was a critical part of the success of our annual gala. Because of a last-minute glitch with a different product at our event, we needed to find a solution that was easy to set up and configure—and Snowball was that solution! In just a few minutes, we had our campaign created and ready to go for the evening’s event. The attendees loved watching the thermometer grow as our call-to-action continued. In just twenty minutes, we raised over twice as much money as we had set as a goal—it was incredible!” — Matt Hladun, Brave Will Foundation Board President

Sip-and-Paint

Sip-and-paint fundraisers are pretty much just what they sound like: your church’s members pay to learn how to paint a certain work of art while sipping on a beverage of their choice.

Generally, sip-and-paint fundraisers provide canvases, paint, brushes, and wine. After paying for all of those supplies, you might be wondering how this fundraiser could possibly turn a profit. It’s simple: you charge just a few dollars more than the cost of supplies, and you make sure people contribute funds before you purchase the paint.

50/50 Raffle

This church fundraising idea is simple and easy to remember. It can also be done in conjunction with any other event you have going on. All you have to do is sell raffle tickets.

The reason it’s called a 50/50 is that 50% of the proceeds go to the winner of the raffle, and 50% go to the church (or your next mission trip). The more tickets you sell, the greater the jackpot will be—and the more likely people will be to buy tickets.

Photo Pledge

Make everyone in your large congregation feel like a photographer with this fundraising idea. The way a typical photo pledge works is by asking participants to pledge money and submit photos centered around a theme. They can make pledges through your campaign donations page, and then either email their photos to a church member who collects and shares them, or post them on social media and tag your church.

Themes range from cutest pet to the most interesting photo of the pastor you can snap without his or her noticing, and beyond! The photographers of the five best photos will receive a special prize.

Coffee Bean Fundraiser

Coffee is a wonderful item for a fundraiser because let’s be honest, who can go a morning without a hot cup of joe? Chances are, someone in your congregation knows or is willing to reach out to a local coffee roaster. Order a large quantity of coffee at a lower price, then turn around and sell individual bags at a profit.

Movie Night

Who doesn’t love a good, wholesome movie? You can throw a drive-in movie night, or you can go the simpler route and host a classic movie night in your church’s gymnasium or main hall.

Before the opening credits, thank everyone for coming, and ask them to consider showing their support by sending a quick text donation. Give everyone a chance to text (it’ll take less than a minute), and then press play!

Another great way to raise a little extra money (and make the whole experience better) is by offering childcare services during the movie.

Adopt-a-Mile

For the next big mission trip you host, try an adopt-a-mile fundraiser. This church fundraising idea is an easy way to raise money for excursions, especially when the excursion is far away.

Adopt-a-mile fundraisers involve mission trip participants mapping out exactly how many miles away their missions are. For every mile, they have to convince a church member to donate a dollar or two.

Quick fundraising tip: When your events are over, the relationship with participants is still just beginning! Use a CRM or donor database to keep track of who has supported your church in the past. Learn more about donor management.

Fast Food Night

Fast-food night fundraisers are simple, profitable, and popular with congregation members of all ages. All they have to do is purchase fast food from the restaurant that’s sponsoring the charity night, and say they’re with your church. Voilà! Ten percent of their purchase goes straight to your church.

It’s a simple way to get people who rarely participate to join in on the fundraising. They’d already be buying those chicken nuggets, so why not take a 10% tithe out of that?

Chuck-a-Duck

Chuck-a-duck fundraisers, also called rubber duck fundraisers, are a church activity that involves exactly what it sounds like. Participants in the fundraiser chuck rubber ducks at a target.

Those who get closest to the bullseye of the target are the winners. Chuck-a-duck fundraisers may sound simple, but they’re actually a lot of fun—and not just for kids. Adults really get into them too. They’re great for the whole family.

Night at the Museum

Essentially, this church fundraising idea is a glorified lock-in. Sell tickets for a “Night at the Museum,” and decorate your church’s atrium, like a museum.

Think large cutouts of dinosaur bones, caveman exhibits, and mockups of famous paintings. Get creative with it! The best way to entice teens and young adults, as well as young kids, is to offer a late-night dance party and game stations throughout the event.

Best in Show

Hosting a dog show can be a lot of work, but it’s well worth the payoff.

People love to show off their prized pooches. Why not give them an arena and the possibility to take home a blue ribbon?

You can have prizes for every sort of category (“waggiest tail,” “shiniest coat,” “cutest bark,” etc.). If you charge entrance fees to the show and for each participant, this easy fundraiser is bound to rake in some moola.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Fundraising Ideas For Small Churches

Smaller congregations allow for fundraising events that will strengthen the community feeling within your church! Get to know your fellow congregants even better through these creative events.

Baby Picture Guessing Game

The baby picture contest doesn’t answer the question, “Who’s the cutest baby?” It’s a guessing game using baby pictures from the congregation.

All your church needs to do is pool together 15 to 20 baby photos of church leadership and current members. You can post them on either the church bulletin board or your church’s website (or both). Everyone then guesses who’s who if they pay $1. You’re sure to get some outrageous guesses and funny stories along the way!

Pancake Dinner

In this breakfast/ dinner mix-up, a pancake dinner can be a great church fundraising idea that brings the congregation together over a simple meal. No one can refuse a freshly flipped flapjack.

With the price of ingredients so low, you can charge a few dollars per ticket and come out way ahead. Provide extra toppings like chocolate chips and banana slices to make those flapjacks extra flavorful.

Community Work-a-Thon

A community work-a-thon involves your members rallying together to do some good deeds in your local community! Have your volunteers collect pledges for hours contributed to the effort, like picking up trash in the park, or collecting cans to recycle. This can be hosted over a weekend or even an entire month depending on scheduling!

Local Business Partnerships

Partner with businesses in your area to help raise money for your congregation. In having conversations with these businesses, seek to secure a corporate gift in return for advertising their business at your church, and sending your adult groups to those places for meetings and hang-outs.

Penny War

This is perfect for small congregations, as you can have your Sunday school’s age groups form teams. To run this event, each team gets a jar and is encouraged to bring in coins to contribute. Each coin counts positively towards the team. It gets competitive when children drop dollar bills in their competitors’ jars, who are then forced to subtract points from their total.

Family Photoshoots

Ask some talented congregation members to volunteer to help out with a family photoshoot. In exchange for a donation, families can pose for photos and download them from a photo-sharing site of your choice.

Parents in your congregation will love to hold onto these portraits for years to come and will be happy they didn’t have to pay a professional studio price to have them.

Board Game Tournament

Bring everyone in your congregation together for a phone-free, old-fashioned board game night at your church.

Just like the retro game night outlined above, this is easy to host with donated board games, and a low ticket fee to play. Don’t forget to sell snacks and play some upbeat music!

Fundraising Software

Look for an online donation platform that includes the fundamental features listed above. There’s great free software out there that takes just a few minutes to set up—no programming background needed—so you can offer donors a quick way to give donations online. Setting it up means setting your church up for fundraising success.

The reason to do this before pursuing any of the following fundraising ideas is simple: People tend not to carry cash. If your fundraiser inspires them to give more than what they have in cash at that moment—or to give at a later date or on a recurring basis—you need to give them a convenient way to do just that.

Make your next church fundraiser a success with any of these awesome church fundraising ideas. For more information on church fundraising, check out our resources below:

Church Planting: 8 Effective Principles to Guide You. Being called to plant a church is a gift. Here are some effective principles to help guide you.

The post 99+ Church Fundraising Ideas to Energize Your Congregation first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

How to Hold the Perfect School Fundraiser: 4 Great Tips

Snowball Fundraising — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:49:35 +0000

When students, parents, and supporters are engaged with your school’s fundraisers, they can change the trajectory of the campaign. The right school fundraiser gets students excited about supporting a good cause and has a positive impact on your school or community. But what steps can schools take to actually achieve this outcome?

Of course, the first steps are to choose a fundraiser that students will enjoy and market the campaign to your target audience of donors. In this guide, we’ll explore other tactics your school can use to improve its fundraisers:

Hold an event-a-thon fundraiser.
Get the community involved.
Encourage and incentivize participation.
Follow up after the fundraiser.

To select the right fundraising idea, it’s key to have an understanding of what options are age-appropriate for your students and appeal to their interests. First, we’ll explore the concept of “event-a-thons” and how you can adapt these fundraisers to align with your students’ preferences.

1. Hold an event-a-thon fundraiser.

Event-a-thon or “a-thon” fundraisers are peer-to-peer campaigns that often involve participating in an activity, event, or challenge. Usually, participants (in this context, your students) collect pledged donations from friends and family for participating. Some common examples of event-a-thon fundraisers include:

Walk-a-thons, jog-a-thons, and fun runs
Dance-a-thons
Hit-a-thons
Bowl-a-thons
Read-a-thons

Clearly, this fundraising format is extremely flexible, allowing your school to choose an idea rooted in sports, skills, or interests your students enjoy. Additionally, organizing an event-a-thon is simple and well-suited to online fundraising. 99Pledges’ list of kid-friendly fundraising ideas breaks down the simple process into these five steps:

Partner with a fundraising software provider to help you set up donation pages for your school and individual students.
Ask participants to share their fundraising pages online.
Encourage participants to collect pledged donations from their families and friends. Donations typically correspond to their participation in your event (e.g., $5 for every mile completed in the fun run).
Track progress throughout the fundraiser to ensure you are on track to meet your goals.
After the event, your school receives the pledged donations.

As with any peer-to-peer fundraiser, it’s your participants’ responsibility to spread the word and secure donations. Encourage students and parents to post about the fundraiser and link to donation pages on their social media accounts. Consider writing captions, creating hashtags, and sharing graphics that they can use to make posting easy.

2. Get the community involved.

Depending on the idea you choose, there might be additional ways to generate revenue and bring the community together to support your school. For example, if you hold an outdoor fundraising event like a walk-a-thon, you might recruit volunteers to sell drinks, snacks, and school merchandise to spectators.

Exciting events and fundraising campaigns can also draw the support of community members outside your school, particularly those with an interest in supporting the youth. Get your PTA, local businesses, and other community members and institutions involved with ideas like:

A percentage night at a local restaurant. Partner with a restaurant and invite families from your school to go out to eat there on a designated night. A percentage of each bill will go to your school or chosen cause.
A craft or bake sale. Parents who enjoy cooking or baking will enjoy the chance to sell their food in support of a good cause, whether this is at your event or after school. Have artistic parents or students? Try an arts and crafts sale!
A community movie night. Poll students and families to get a sense of what their favorite movies and genres are. Then, select a few of the most popular options, rent a projector and screen, and sell tickets for outdoor screenings.
A school or town cookbook. Give students’ families and other community members the chance to have their favorite recipes immortalized in a cookbook. Request submissions well ahead of the fundraiser, compile them together in a book, and sell the finished copies. If you’re looking for a more low-cost idea, eliminate printing costs by creating an eBook instead.

As Funds2Orgs’ guide to fundraising events explains, getting your community involved gives community members the chance to learn more about you, allowing you to build more substantial relationships with them. Remember that by engaging your community, you’ll both tap into a new pool of donors and build your school’s network of supporters by working with businesses.

3. Encourage and incentivize participation.

As a school fundraiser, you know that it can be a challenge to garner the support you need for your fundraiser from students and parents. To inspire participants to share about the campaign and fundraise on behalf of your school, consider using special tactics to motivate them.

To get students involved, try strategies such as:

Gamifying the fundraising process. Apply elements of gameplay to the fundraiser to appeal to students’ competitive sides. For example, you might set up milestones for different fundraising amounts and award students who reach the milestones badges, awards, or small prizes.
Offering prizes to top earners. Track each student’s progress as they fundraise, creating a leaderboard based on how many fundraising dollars they earn. Offer prizes to those in the top positions, such as passes to skip homework, school t-shirts, candy, or gift cards.
Providing frequent updates. When supporters know how close you are to reaching your goals, they may feel more inspired to donate. Set up a fundraising thermometer that tracks your progress in real-time. Host the thermometer on your website and share it on social media, over emails, and in other marketing materials.

If your school holds a peer-to-peer fundraiser, remember that you’ll need to engage donors and participants. Make sure to use tailored strategies for both of these audiences to maximize your revenue.

4. Follow up after the fundraiser.

One important indicator of a successful school fundraising idea is whether your students and their families are eager to continue their support for the cause or even host another fundraiser. Whether you’re fundraising for your school or a community organization, lasting support is central to achieving larger goals.

One of the most effective ways to build loyal relationships with your supporters is to remain in contact with them, keeping your school at the top of their minds. Here are some ways you can foster relationships with your supporters:

Show gratitude for their contributions. Thanking donors for their generous gifts is critically important. This confirms that you received and deeply appreciate any gift they gave to your school. When sending thank-you messages to donors, make sure to greet them by name, recognize the exact amount they contributed, and share what kind of impact that gift made (e.g., “Your $100 donation bought 20 new books for our library!”).
Share other ways to get involved. By donating, these supporters have shown that they have an interest in the success of your school and its students. Take the time to share about other ways they can help you reach your goals, as they are likely to participate. For example, they might volunteer with young students who need help reading or contribute in-kind donations of sports equipment to your PE teacher.
Ask for feedback. Getting input from supporters will help you understand how you can improve future fundraisers to earn more revenue and build a positive reputation in your community. Additionally, accepting and implementing their suggestions shows that you truly value your supporters and their experiences with your school.

Your existing donor base is invaluable. Not only do they contribute money to your school, but they may also share positive things about your school and recruit other donors and volunteers. When you take the time to communicate with them, you can cultivate long-term, loyal relationships that translate into hundreds or thousands of dollars in fundraising revenue.

With creative ideas and enthusiastic student participants, your school fundraiser is sure to be a success and help you achieve your goals. Leveraging these tips will empower your school to build deep relationships within your community that go beyond supporting a single fundraiser or event. Instead, you’ll foster a dedicated and reliable base of supporters who are excited to contribute to your school’s lasting success.

The post How to Hold the Perfect School Fundraiser: 4 Great Tips first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

4 Best Fundraising Ideas for Your Women’s Ministry

Snowball Fundraising — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:48:28 +0000

If you lead a women’s ministry, you know the importance of regularly engaging your community. From Bible study books to online courses to weekend retreats, the right resources can help you make a lasting impact! But how can you raise the funds needed to access these resources?

Thoughtful ministry fundraising can have more meaningful benefits than a simple donor stewardship strategy—these events and campaigns can financially support your ministry while helping you connect more deeply with the women in your church. In this guide, we’ll review the top four fundraising ideas for your women’s ministry:

Auction Fundraisers
Mobile Giving Campaigns
Product Fundraisers
Fundraising Letters

Your women’s ministry is unique, and so will be whatever fundraiser you choose to host. Use the following ideas as guidelines to help you brainstorm, but don’t be afraid to put a creative spin on these fundraisers to make them your own or combine them for maximum impact! With that in mind, let’s get started.

Auction Fundraisers

If you’re looking for a fun way to raise money and encourage healthy competition, an auction is the way to go. Not only is the highly competitive bidding process fun and exciting, but the women in your church will be able to bid on items that interest them, making them more likely to increase their donations for the sake of winning.

To create this atmosphere, you’ll need to collect auction items that will appeal to your ministry. Consider auctioning off Bible study materials or Christian books, but be sure to gather a wide variety of genres so that no two items are too similar. Esther Press’s roundup of Christian books for women categorizes Christian books according to the following topics:

Spiritual growth: These books help women deepen their faith by exploring various spiritual topics.

Scripture studies: These books draw inspiring insights from the Bible to help women better understand biblical stories and lessons.

Group reads: These books encourage relationships between Christian women by allowing them to study and learn together.

Other popular items that may interest your group could include artwork with a Biblical meaning, high-end home goods, or even tickets to a spa weekend. Gather feedback from the women in your ministry to narrow down your top picks and offer a variety of appealing, top-tier items.

Additionally, a fundraiser for your women’s ministry should make fellowship a main focus, meaning attendees should have ample opportunities to mingle. Instead of focusing the event on the fundraising activity, host a silent auction in which women can place bids while talking to each other or even bid from their mobile devices.

Mobile Giving Campaigns

Let’s say you’re looking for a fundraising strategy that doesn’t require a venue. Or, maybe you want to double up your fundraising efforts and raise more by hosting two campaigns at once.

Regardless of your unique fundraising strategy, a text-to-give fundraiser can be helpful for raising money without having to facilitate the donation process. With the help of a text-to-give provider, your church can host a mobile giving campaign in just three simple steps:

Your ministry is assigned a phone number by its text-to-give provider. Share this number with the women in your ministry and explain how they can send a text message to it.
A donor texts a keyword and donation amount to your phone number. Consider making the keyword themed to the topic of your ministry’s current Bible study, such as the name of a woman in the Bible or a biblical attribute the study is talking about.
You receive and allocate these donations. Without any additional work on your part, you’ll receive donations and can start spending them on the resources your women’s ministry needs.

Furthermore, mobile giving campaigns won’t interrupt your usual marketing messages, such as sharing encouragement with fellow believers or inviting more women to your church activities. That’s because text-to-give simply requires a donor to send a text message! You can leave simple instructions in your social media bio or on a short post and center the rest of your communications around impacting women.

Product Fundraisers

Everyone loves receiving something in exchange for their donations, which is why product fundraisers are such popular options for supporting church initiatives. Create custom products with your church’s branding, such as:

T-shirts: Think of fun designs and catchy phrases to adorn custom-made t-shirts. You could even customize them to represent a current women’s Bible study or group. Buyers will enjoy the exclusivity of a t-shirt that represents their involvement in your women’s ministry!
Baked goods: Invite the women in your church to bring their favorite baked goods to a bake sale. You’ll appeal to both members of your church who want to support your fundraiser and external donors who are just excited for a sweet snack.
Books: Research the best Bible studies for women and purchase them at a wholesale price. Then, sell the books at a table after women’s meetings or to the entire congregation on a Sunday after the service has concluded.

The highly customizable nature of product fundraisers also makes them great tools for ministering to others. For example, you might sell a t-shirt with a thought-provoking phrase written on it, like, “Got Jesus?” or “Jesus saves.” When your ministry’s supporters buy these t-shirts and wear them in public, they’ll start conversations about their faith with strangers and your ministry will reach more people than you imagined possible!

Double the Donation’s list of church fundraising ideas recommends launching a web store, or an online shop, to sell your fundraising products. That way, you can sell any product at all times of the day, and donors will have an easily accessible source through which they can browse your available products.

Fundraising Letters

While fundraising events can be an exciting way to raise support for your women’s ministry, don’t underestimate the power of directly appealing to potential donors. A direct and specific case for support is one of the most effective tools for engagement, meaning you can secure support for your ministry simply by asking!

Write fundraising letters to potential donors, including information about your fundraising campaign and the specific amount you need to raise. Be sure to personalize each letter and thank recipients for their support to make them feel appreciated and important to your ministry.

Whether you launch just one of these fundraisers or try all of them, you’re sure to raise support for your women’s ministry when you customize the fundraiser to meet your church’s unique needs. For example, a smaller women’s ministry might prefer to gather for a bake sale while a larger group would enjoy getting to know each other at a silent auction.

Gather data throughout the duration of your fundraiser to gauge its success. That way, you’ll know just how receptive the women in your church were to a particular fundraising idea and how you can increase support next time. You’ve got this!

The post 4 Best Fundraising Ideas for Your Women’s Ministry first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

4 Top Strategies to Boost Your Mobile Giving Potential

Snowball Fundraising — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:33:16 +0000

A top priority for all nonprofits, regardless of the campaign, is boosting donor engagement to reach their goals. One of the best ways to do this is to promote mobile giving to your supporters. Mobile giving is a convenient and powerful way for your supporters to give to your organization, whether it’s during an event, for a specific campaign, or simply because they’re inspired to give.

Using text messaging to reach your supporters can be exciting and immediate, so to help you make the most it, we’re sharing four top strategies will take your donation acquisition from mobile sources to the next level:

Create mobile-optimized donation forms
Start a text-to-give campaign
Include a social media button
Try mobile bidding

If you’re ready to take your mobile giving to the next level, this guide will help you get started connecting with donors on their mobile devices.

1. Create mobile-optimized donation forms

An overwhelming number of donors now use different online donation platforms to submit their donations. Make sure they can continue this practice even when they don’t have access to a computer by making your donation page accessible from any device. Mobile optimization is the practice of building an online giving page so that it is easily navigable from a smartphone or tablet.

Here are a few ways your nonprofit can ensure its digital giving pages are optimized for mobile devices:

Build your donation forms on a platform that automatically optimizes for mobile. This is the most straightforward way to ensure that your forms are always mobile-friendly.
Make sure the images you include are properly sized and responsive. Responsive images “respond” to the screen they’re being viewed on and automatically adjust to fit the screen. This ensures that your donors won’t have to zoom or scroll to view your image.
Keep any text to short paragraphs and bullet points. When this text is condensed onto a smaller screen, this will make it easier to read. It also just makes your content more easily skimmable, whether it’s being viewed on a smartphone or large computer screen.
Use easy-to-read text. This means using a standard font in a readable size, with good color contrast against your background. If your text is difficult to read, donors who are visually impaired may not be able to donate.

You’ve already convinced your supporters to visit your nonprofit’s donation page, so make sure the donation page is convincing and easy to use. If not, you’ll risk losing donors after having worked so hard to bring them to the page.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

2. Start a text-to-give campaign

While some people might find your donation page through your website on their mobile devices, others would prefer a more direct method to reach it. Text-to-give technology allows for this direct connection.

Text-to-give is a perfect donation method to promote during fundraising and stewardship events. It enables you to collect donations quickly, easily connect with donors, and confirm transactions through email.

Once your nonprofit has found the right text-to-give software for your needs, you can begin promoting your text-to-give campaign. You’ll receive a unique phone number for your donors to text and the process will look like this:

Step 1: Your donors will text your nonprofit’s phone number.

Donors initiate the transaction by texting the pre-selected keyword to an organization’s phone number. Intuitive software will accept the donation even if there’s a typo.

Step 2: Your donor will follow the link they receive.

Within a few seconds, they’ll receive a confirmation text with a link. Once they click it, they’ll need to select your preferred donation amount. First-time donors will also need to fill out a short donation form with their payment information. Repeat donors just click “donate.”

Step 3: Press send.

Clicking on “donate” in the text message will lead them to a pre-written email that authenticates the transaction. They simply press “send” to submit your donation. It’s as simple as that!

With the right software, all your donors have to do is follow these easy steps to donate to your cause!

3. Promote social sharing

From viral videos to campaigns with nonprofit influencers, social media is a powerful way of getting your message across. Posting about mobile giving on your own social media accounts is great for informing your followers, but it may not reach as many new potential supporters.

To work around this obstacle, your organization should add social sharing buttons to your website and donation forms. This encourages your supporters to share their contributions with their personal network. By posting about their contribution, they’re promoting your organization’s brand and inviting others to also give to your organization.

Because many donors will be donating from their phones and view social media posts on their phones, this form of free marketing allows supporters to directly click back to your donation page from their friend or family member’s post. Harness the power of social media as part of your digital campaign and see how it can boost your mobile giving rates!

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

4. Try mobile bidding

Whether you’re hosting a traditional in-person, silent auction, a hybrid auction, or a fully virtual event, mobile bidding can help you streamline and expedite your bidding process.

With mobile bidding, supporters can view your digital catalog and bid from anywhere. Not only that, but monitoring competitor bids and checking out if they win will be quick and easy for your winners. The process works just like text-to-give, with supporters texting in their bids for items and checking out directly from their phones.

Adding mobile bidding software to your tech stack can help you increase competition, widen your bidder pool, and make it easy for everyone to participate. For ease of use, it’s best to find a mobile bidding tool that is built into or integrates directly with your auction software.

If you’re looking for a way to modernize and up your donations, mobile giving is a great avenue to explore. So many organizations could boost their donation amounts heavily through the implementation of simple mobile giving methods. Reach your organization’s full potential by implementing these four strategies today!

The post 4 Top Strategies to Boost Your Mobile Giving Potential first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

24+ Tried-and-True Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas

Snowball Fundraising — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 16:03:03 +0000

Political campaigns play a huge role in ensuring a successful democratic process. After all, it’s how we’re able to elect representatives who we feel are able to best portray our wants and needs on a grander scale. This is true whether it’s concerning the president of the United States right down to local officials such as your city mayor or town council members.

That being said, this process can become quite costly for the officials looking to get their names on the ballots. That’s where political fundraising comes in.

Here at Snowball, we know all about effective fundraising ideas—and how to raise more with limited resources. So we’re here to help! We’ve put together this practical guide to political fundraising with a list of some of the most effective political campaign fundraising ideas.

Our 24+ ideas are divided among the following categories:

Our Favorite Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas
Virtual Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas
Easy Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas
Fundraising Event Ideas for Political Campaigns
Product Fundraising Ideas for Political Campaigns

Feel free to skip around to the sections that most interest you or read along from the top to walk through all of our best ideas.

Ready to jump in? Let’s get started!

Our Favorite Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas

With so many possible fundraising ideas to choose from, we thought we’d make things a little easier for you by picking out our top suggestions. And best of all, these campaigns can also work very well alongside other fundraisers mentioned throughout this list. Feel free to mix and match to find the best combinations to raise more for your political campaign.

Without further ado, these are our all-time favorite political campaign fundraising ideas:

1. Online donation pages

An optimized online donation page should be the foundation of any fundraising campaign—political or otherwise. That’s because it’s an extremely easy way for interested supporters to make the jump to invested donors!

Just be sure to invest in an online giving platform that emphasizes mobile-friendly donation pages so you don’t have to worry about excluding potential donors simply because of the device they’re using.

And here’s another key tip: Make sure to keep your online donation pages short and sweet so that the entire process can be completed as quickly as possible—thus decreasing the likelihood of donation form abandonment.

Then, it’s important that you link back to your online donation page in any supporter communications such as email, social media, and on your campaign website, of course.

2. Text-to-give

Text-to-give and other mobile fundraising efforts are extremely popular among both donors and fundraisers because of the ease with which funds can be raised. Supporters simply text a predetermined keyword (such as DONATE or [CANDIDATE NAME]) to your dedicated mobile giving number.

Then, the individual receives an automated text response with a link to a brief mobile-friendly giving page to fill out and confirm their donation.

Even better, once an individual has completed the donation form, they can make repeat gifts to your campaign in just two clicks! It’s a super simple process, plus it can be completed on-the-go from wherever they are.

3. Pledge campaigns

A pledge fundraising campaign is a unique type of fundraiser in which you attempt to collect promises of future donations to be collected at a later date rather than the funds themselves. While this might seem counterintuitive, it’s actually a fantastic way to secure support without becoming bogged down by all the details upfront.

To get started simply ask potential supporters if they’d be willing to pledge their support for your political campaign. If they’re interested, they then move on to complete a super short online form requesting only their name and basic contact information. Then, either after reaching a pledge goal or a set amount of time, you’ll follow up with each individual via the contact information they provided to collect the donation they had promised.

4. Advocacy campaigns

Advocacy campaigns often go hand-in-hand with political campaigns—whether the bottom line is to collect funds for your cause or not. An advocacy campaign tends to focus on lobbying for (or against) a particular public policy or proposal. If you’re currently running for office, it can be a good idea to host an advocacy campaign in support of an issue that’s near to your heart. That way, community members can get a feel for the type of causes you care for and start to see you in action even before you’ve been elected.

Popular advocacy ideas include online petitions, click-to-call, and Tweet-a-rep campaigns—all of which are made possible by top advocacy software.

5. Major donor solicitation

Major donor fundraising is a great way to collect hefty-sized gifts from a select few of your most prominent supporters. These gifts can make up a significant portion of your campaign revenue, so it’s important that you take a strategic approach when requesting major gifts. Where you might use email or direct mail to solicit the average donation, it’s more important to consider face-to-face discussions (in-person or through live-streaming tools) with your prospective major donors.

If you’re choosing to go this route, we definitely suggest you implement prospect research before diving in. By researching prospects’ ability and affinity to give before making your donation requests, you can go into each conversation better prepared. For example, it’s a good idea to look into not just wealth markers (such as real estate, business affiliations, stock ownership, etc.) but also social and emotional connections like political leanings.

Then, you’ll be more likely to target qualified prospects and reel in additional major gifts from your dedicated donors!

Virtual Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas

If you’re fundraising in the midst of the pandemic, you likely already understand the importance of virtual campaigns. However, even before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, virtual fundraisers offer unique and powerful benefits to fundraisers—such as the ability to widen your reach and expand beyond geographical boundaries.

These are some of our top favorite virtual ideas for political campaigns:

6. Email donation requests

Email donation requests are a popular and simple way to collect donations from your existing supporters. With an effective email marketing strategy, you can automate messages to send to a large group of recipients simultaneously. Then, be sure to conclude each email with a prominent call-to-action directing the readers to your online donation page to give.

Here’s a bonus tip: your email campaigns are more likely to thrive if you take the time to personalize messages to each recipient. For example, including the individual’s name in the email subject line can increase open rates by up to 50%!

7. Social media fundraising

The rise of social media fundraising is largely due to the power of social proof. When people see their friends and family members are supporting a campaign, they’re more likely to do so as well, rather than if you had reached out yourself.

Facebook fundraisers are extremely popular among donors with its built-in fundraising capabilities, while Twitter and Instagram are each fantastic platforms for sharing your campaigns even further.

That being said, make sure to encourage your supporters to share your virtual fundraisers with their own personal networks—even if they can’t give themselves! Social media fundraising is a great way to raise both money and awareness for your campaign at the same time.

8. eCard campaigns

An eCard campaign is another excellent way to reach new supporters and widen your audience. For this fundraiser, existing supporters are encouraged to send electronic postcards with personalized messages to their friends and family members. You can think of it as a virtual candy gram fundraiser (minus the candy, unfortunately).

To get started, you’ll have to come up with a set of images that will go on the eCards. It’s a good idea to choose something visually appealing that also relates to your campaign. You can also include a cute or catchy saying to go alongside the picture.

Then, promote this campaign to your supporters, who can pay a set fee (around $5-$10) and submit the email address for each recipient to which they’d like to send a card.

Easy Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas

Running a campaign can be hard work in and of itself, so it’s understandable if you’re looking for some easy fundraising ideas to bankroll your efforts. These are some of our most low-tech, high-ROI political campaign fundraising ideas:

9. Direct mail fundraising letters

Email fundraising requests are great, but there’s something special about an old-fashioned letter campaign for raising funds effectively.

Be sure to include a pre-addressed reply envelope with your letter along with detailed instructions for online donations. That way, your direct mail recipients can know exactly what to do to support your campaign—and will be more likely to take the next step.

Plus, when you partner with a dedicated direct mail fundraising company like GivingMail, they’ll even do all the hard work of printing and shipping your fundraising letters!

10. Phone call requests

Donation requests via phone call are both popular and effective. That’s because it’s harder to say no when you’re speaking verbally with a real person! And while you certainly don’t want to bully anyone into donating to your fundraiser, it is a good idea to leverage that human connection for your campaign.

Be sure to provide each team member with a basic script to use when requesting funds, but encourage them to personalize it for themselves to provide a more genuine phone conversation experience. Then, make sure each individual you talk with knows how to support your fundraiser—whether that’s taking their payment information over the phone or directing them to your online donation form.

11. Door-to-door fundraising

Door-to-door fundraising is a popular and long-held political campaign fundraising idea—especially for smaller towns and tight-knit communities. Although it may seem a bit “old-school,” the results can be astounding!

For this type of campaign, it’s a good idea to recruit some dedicated volunteers to help you better canvas your local neighborhoods. Then, equip each individual with the resources they’ll need (i.e. collection bucket, printed materials, etc.) and send them off in groups to drum up support for your fundraiser.

While this fundraising idea may be taking a backseat this election season due to social distancing guidelines, many face-to-face fundraising companies are taking a strategic approach to keep fundraisers and donors safe.

12. Restaurant partnerships

A restaurant partnership is a fundraising favorite—and for good reason. Many participating restaurants are willing to donate a percentage of revenue from an agreed-upon night to a good cause.

Be sure to partner with a local favorite in your area. Big chains like Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, and IHOP are well-known for their fundraising partnerships, although your local mom-and-pop stores might be willing to participate as well.

Then, encourage all of your supporters to visit the restaurant that evening—making sure to get the word out via text blast, email, social media, etc. The more business the restaurant gets that day, the bigger your payout will be!

13. Change drive

A change drive, which is sometimes known as a penny or coin drive, is a great way to earn some extra funding for your campaign in a very passive and low maintenance way. Change can add up very quickly, and, despite the name, you’re sure to collect some paper bills as well.

For best results, place collection buckets all around town with eye-catching signs explaining what you’re fundraising for. Be sure to reach out to local businesses and restaurants and see if you can keep a collection jar by their register. You might be surprised at how many people will donate their loose change when there’s a receptacle there!

14. Pie the Politician

Pie the Politician is a simple and fun political fundraising idea—all you need to get started is an easy-going candidate, a group of excited supporters, and, of course, a pie. (Pro tip: you can actually just fill a pie tin with whipped cream. It makes a bigger splat and it’s not a waste of a delicious dessert!)

Be sure to display your digital fundraising thermometer prominently on your website and social media pages so that donors can easily see how close you are to reaching your goal! With each donation, you get closer to your fundraising goal. And when you reach it, the politician gets a pie to the face!

Then, you can host a community event so all can view the finale of your fundraiser, or even live-stream it on social media.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Fundraising Event Ideas for Political Campaigns

Fundraising events are highly regarded campaign ideas because they allow you to spread awareness and raise funds for your campaign simultaneously. And if you’re worried about adhering to social distancing guidelines when planning and holding your political fundraising events, most (if not all) of these favorite ideas can easily be transitioned to the virtual realm.

Let’s take a closer look at some popular political event fundraisers:

15. Political rally

Rallies are very popular fundraising events for political campaigns of all shapes and sizes. Gathering a large number of supporters together for an event is a great way to boost both awareness and excitement for your campaign.

You may sell tickets for a price, or opt to accept donations of any size instead. If you do choose to sell tickets, you can even put them on sale ahead of time online. And thanks to top-notch live-streaming software, it’s even possible to host a virtual rally! That way, you can raise money and engage with your supporters remotely.

16. Meet and greet

A meet and greet is a lot like a political rally, only on a much smaller and more intimate scale. It’s a great opportunity for donors to get to meet the face behind the campaign they’re supporting. This is especially important for meeting some of your major donors—those who have significantly contributed to your fundraiser.

Also like a rally, a meet and greet can be held both in-person or online using top live-streaming tools. Give your supporters a chance to meet the candidate running for office, ask questions, and generally get to know you as a person.

17. Dinner party

Hosting a meal as a campaign fundraiser is a great idea. Dinner is the most popular, although pancake breakfasts have also seen huge successes. For this fundraiser, you can choose to charge a flat fee for the food served or collect donations on a sliding scale. This event provides an opportunity for supporters to mix and mingle with other like-minded individuals and have a good time.

This is the most difficult to bring to the online fundraising space due to the natural constraints of food-based events. However, feel free to turn this into a virtual gala instead!

18. Event-a-thon

An event-a-thon is any fundraising event based on activity that participants take part in for pledged donations. For example, you could host a walk-a-thon, dance-a-thon, bike-a-thon, etc. These are each great ways to raise money for your campaign, engage with your supporters, and encourage your community to get out and stay active! And if your supporter runs 10 miles at $10 a mile, they’ll bring in $100 for your campaign.

For a successful event-a-thon fundraiser, you’ll need a group of dedicated supporters who are willing to fundraise on your behalf. They’ll reach out to their own friends and family members to request donations for their personal campaign. On the day of the event, each supporter will partake in the specified activity and receive donations that were pledged on their behalf.

19. Silent auction

Silent auctions are very popular fundraising ideas for all sorts of causes.

At a silent auction, your supporters will browse the items on display and bid anonymously on the items they’d like. Then, as other supporters go around and place their own bids, the going price will continually rise until the bidding closes.

Additionally, new auction technology makes virtual silent auctions plausible and engaging events for both participants and fundraisers. In that case, attendees browse an online auction item catalog and bid virtually via mobile or online bidding tools.

20. Live auction

Just like silent auctions, live charity auctions are a great way to raise money for your political campaign. Plus, they offer the increased benefit of being an extremely engaging, high-energy event that your supporters will love to participate in. Rather than browsing items on display and bidding at their leisure, guests will bid for one item at a time as narrated by a personable auctioneer.

One of the most important components of this fundraiser is the auctioneer—so be sure to bring in the best. After all, that’s the person that will be convincing attendees to spend all their money!

21. Benefit concert

Benefit concerts are popular fundraising events for all sorts of causes—including political campaigns! That’s because they’re a fun experience for the community and a great way to gather support.

To get started, you’ll need to locate a talented artist who is willing to donate their time to support your campaign. Try finding a local musician or band that’s previously been vocal about community issues that you also care about. You might even want to reach out to more famous and big-name artists to see if they’ll perform at a benefit concert for your campaign—the worst they can say is no!

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Product fundraisers are one of the most-used political campaign fundraising ideas. That’s because once you make the sale, that supporter goes on to become free advertising for your campaign. Whenever they sport their branded merchandise in public, they’re essentially functioning as a walking billboard saying, “Vote for [candidate]!”

Here are just a few of our favorite sale ideas for a political campaign (although the opportunities are endless):

22. Custom t-shirts

T-shirt sales are a favorite political fundraiser for obvious reasons. For one, it’s a practical and useful item that supporters will be able to make use of time and time again. That means it’s a win-win: donors get a high-quality, nicely designed t-shirt promoting their favorite candidate in the upcoming election while your campaign gets a financial boost!

Plus, when you partner with a dedicated t-shirt fundraising platform like Bonfire, all you have to do is design your t-shirt and they’ll help with the production and distribution.

23. Cookie Dough

Cookie dough may not be the first product to come to mind when you think of political fundraisers, but you’d be surprised how well they can work for your campaign. By selling at events or around the community, cookie dough fundraisers provide an opportunity for you and your staff to have vital face-to-face conversations with community members.

After you’ve collected and placed the orders, distribute the cookie dough at another campaign event. This is a chance to get your message across to a potential new group of voters, while providing them with a delicious reminder of your campaign.

24. Stickers and buttons

Who doesn’t love a cute sticker or button to spruce up any outfit while letting the world know your stance on something (in this case, an upcoming election)? These are popular product fundraisers, especially for political campaigns, due to their low cost. That means you can get a ton made for a small price and re-sell them at a slightly higher, but still low, price point. And that way, supporters who may not have a lot to spend can still take part in your fundraisers!

Election season is ramping up and it’s time to put these political campaign fundraising ideas in action. Hopefully, you’ve found a few ideas that caught your eye, so get your fundraising team ready and get started!

And remember, the easiest way to raise more for your campaign is by ensuring you have the right fundraising tools in your toolkit. Good luck!

For more information, be sure to check out our other educational resources below:

Free Fundraising Software for Nonprofits: Top Providers. If you’re looking for powerful fundraising software to bring in more revenue without breaking the bank, this list is for you. Take a look at our favorite free and low-cost fundraising software providers!
Text-to-Give | Complete Guide for Nonprofits and Fundraisers. Mobile fundraising is on the rise and you don’t want to miss out on that opportunity. Find out how to leverage text-to-give and other mobile fundraising tactics with this comprehensive guide.
Virtual Fundraising: The Complete Guide for 2020 & Beyond. Fundraisers are relying more on virtual means than ever before. Be sure to check out this practical guide to strategic virtual fundraising to learn more (and raise more!) in no time.

The post 24+ Tried-and-True Political Campaign Fundraising Ideas first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

School Fundraising Ideas: 75+ Top Fundraisers (& Pro Tips)

Snowball Fundraising — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:36:44 +0000

Thinking about starting a campaign to raise money for the school you love? You’ll need some top school fundraising ideas, so you’ve come to the right place!

If you want to give your school a funding boost to be able to provide more resources and better education for students, a fundraiser is an effective way to get everyone involved. A well-organized school fundraising campaign or event engages students, teachers, parents, and volunteers, making a positive impact on your school as everyone comes together to reach the goal.

However, fundraising with the same old ideas year after year can get boring! You’ll raise more with interesting, unique school fundraising ideas that catch people’s attention. We’ve got plenty of ideas for outside-the-box fundraisers that will produce greater results for your school.

Plenty of these school fundraising ideas are COVID-safe, and others can be used once the pandemic has fully subsided. Either way, your school should be prepared for post-pandemic fundraising, to be better positioned for the inevitable resurgence of in-person events, as well as virtual fundraising opportunities, which are here to stay.

This guide will walk through our top ideas for enjoyable and intriguing campaigns for all ages, as well as a few expert tips and tricks to set your school up for success with any fundraiser.

Our Favorite Fundraising Ideas That Work:

Most Popular School Fundraiser Ideas for All Ages
Elementary School Fundraising Ideas
Middle School Fundraising Ideas
High School Fundraising Ideas
Student Group & College Fundraising Ideas
School Fundraiser Ideas with No Selling

Best Practices for Ensuring Successful School Fundraisers:

Create a detailed school fundraising plan.
Build out a comprehensive school fundraising toolkit.
Take a multichannel approach to promote your school’s fundraising campaigns.
Boost school fundraising engagement with strategic incentives.
Set yourself up for long-term fundraiser success.

With these ideas and pro tips, you’ll be able to raise more for your school to help out your students and teachers and create a greater sense of community in the process. Let’s get started!

Our Favorite Fundraising Ideas That Work

Most Popular School Fundraiser Ideas for All Ages

1. Online donations

Your supporters need a place to give money quickly and effortlessly, and your school needs a way to accept those donations. Therefore, your online donation page is the foundation for all school fundraising initiatives.

Encourage sharing among donors’ friends, families, and social networks. Your school’s online giving pages have the potential to go viral—probably not globally, but among the grandparents, aunts, and uncles within your community!

2. Text-to-give

Students, parents, faculty, and staff— almost everyone at your school has a phone they’re practically glued to. Take advantage of the cell phone epidemic with text-to-give fundraising.

Donors simply text a keyword (like “give”) to your school’s text-to-give phone number and confirm the amount. First-time donors will be directed to a brief online form, while repeat donors can complete a donation with only two clicks of a button. It’s a super-easy way for individuals to contribute to the school!

3. Matching gifts + volunteer grants

If you’re interested in increasing your fundraising success without having to find more supporters or ask them to donate more of their own money to you, tapping into corporate philanthropy is the way to go.

The two most common types of corporate philanthropy programs are matching gifts and volunteer grants.

Matching gifts: An employee makes a donation to a nonprofit, and then their employer matches their gift to the nonprofit.
Volunteer grants: An employee gives a certain amount of their time to a nonprofit, and then the employer makes a financial donation.

Reach out to the parents and other supporters of your school and find out if they work for a company with a corporate philanthropy program. If you’re eligible to receive matched donations, provide your supporters with the information that they need to complete their match or grant and double their donation!

4. Cookie dough fundraiser

Everyone loves the taste of a warm, freshly-baked cookie. But not everyone — especially busy families! — has time to make cookies from scratch.

You can solve this problem for your school’s supporters by hosting a cookie dough fundraiser!

To get started with a cookie dough fundraiser, you simply need to find a dedicated product fundraising company to partner with, like ABC Fundraising. They can set you up to sell all sorts of cookie dough — from classic flavors like chocolate chip to fun new options like caramel pecan chocolate chip.
From there, you can sell cookie dough for your school in person with customized catalogs, or take your sale online with a custom-designed fundraising web store. Either way, all the heavy lifting will be done for you.
With a cookie dough fundraiser, your students, families, and community supporters will be enjoying their delicious cookies in no time, and you’ll raise more money for your school!

5. Pledge fundraiser

Pledge fundraisers are one of our favorite types of school fundraisers thanks to their ease of planning and universal appeal. To get started, first plan a fun and engaging event that students want to participate in. A walk-a-thon is one of the most common, although you can mix things up with a dance-a-thon, hit-a-thon, or even a read-a-thon.

Then, you equip each participant with their own fundraising page to share with family and friends. These supporters then pledge a certain amount (either a flat fee or per activity completed) that will be collected upon the conclusion of the event. This way, kids get to partake in an exciting event that also raises money for their school— it’s a win-win!

6. Silent auction

We’ve seen how remarkable silent auctions can be when it comes to inspiring generosity. Schools, in particular, are the perfect match for auction fundraisers because they offer an opportunity to showcase local businesses and engage members of the wider community in your fundraising efforts.

Discover what your community has to give. You never know—someone may be willing to auction off their vacation house for a weekend getaway, or a local business owner may be able to offer irresistible goods or services.

7. Social media

Spotlight your school’s educational initiatives on your social media pages and let followers know how to get involved. When it comes to soliciting donations, social media is tough to beat— it is currently cited as the most inspiring factor behind donations from both Millennials and Generation X.

Feature your school’s online donation page and text-to-give number front and center on your social media pages. Once supporters make donations, encourage them to use your social media sharing buttons to tell their friends.

8. Email campaign

Email is a quick and classic way to keep in touch with students and their families. By including links to your campaign (that drive traffic to your online donation page) in monthly e-newsletters and dedicated fundraising emails, you can spread the word about your fundraising opportunities.

9. Crowdfunding

For a crowdfunding campaign, your school sets up an online fundraising page where anyone can donate and see real-time updates on your progress. The most successful crowdfunding campaigns are fueled by social media, so make sure parents and students are actively sharing your page— and leaving encouraging comments!

10. T-shirt sale

Everyone loves well-designed t-shirts, so why not use them to raise funds for your school? T-shirt fundraising platforms let you create a custom t-shirt design, then sell your shirts to raise money during a scheduled time-frame. Look for a platform that doesn’t require payment upfront, like Bonfire.

With a t-shirt campaign, you can wear your school pride on your sleeve. T-shirts are also great places to feature your text-to-give number in a fun, artsy way.

11. Prospect research

How do you know which of your students and their families are going to give? By taking into account both prior philanthropic interests and certain wealth indicators, prospect research shows you who’s most likely to donate to your cause. This strategy is especially effective for private schools in affluent communities.

In addition to your generalized fundraising efforts, prospect research shows you where to focus your marketing tactics for maximum impact.

Elementary School Fundraising Ideas

12. School carnival

It’s time to break out the classic state fair games and attractions— a carnival is a great way to have some family fun while raising money for your school. Students, teachers, and parents can all get involved and have a great time with this fundraiser.

You can charge for general admission or per activity, and don’t forget to sell concessions. The only thing better than a funnel cake is a funnel cake for a good cause!

13. Pajama day

Nothing beats the simplicity of a pajama day fundraiser. There is hardly any planning or startup costs, it’s easy to organize, and your students will love it. Your school will raise money, and kids get a nice, comfortable school day in their PJs!

Charge students a few dollars (maybe $1 or $2) to wear pajamas to school for a full day. You can amp up the fun by serving breakfast for lunch in the cafeteria or putting on a movie in the classroom. Get your students pumped for the fundraiser by offering a prize to the class with the highest participation rate.

14. Field day

By the time the spring semester rolls around, there’s nothing kids want more than to go outside and play. That’s why field days are great fundraising opportunities for elementary schools. You can set up classics like dodgeball and tug-of-war, rent a bounce house, or get splashing with some water games.

You can charge for general admission or for participation in individual games. Invite parents to participate and set up concession stands and a general donation booth.

15. Parents’ party

Creating student-approved events is a great idea when planning elementary school fundraisers, but let’s not leave out the parents! A parents’ party is a fun event that brings parents together to rally for a good cause.

You can host a virtual happy hour for parents, host a virtual cooking class sponsored by a local restaurant, or live stream a concert for parents featuring a local musician.

16. Movie showing

What’s better than watching a good movie with friends? Watching one during the school day and raising some money while you’re at it!

Elementary students will do pretty much anything to get out of class for a while, including giving a few dollars to the school fundraiser to watch a popular film. Don’t forget to bring the popcorn and hot chocolate to tie the whole event together.

17. Principal challenge

Sometimes principals get a reputation for being serious and authoritative— maybe even mean. This curious fundraiser will change your students’ minds and boost school spirit while raising money for your school.

Students donate with the goal of seeing their principal do something silly, like getting pied in the face, kissing a pig, or dying their hair with your school’s colors. Set a reasonable fundraising goal, so students will be able to see the payoff.

18. Dunk tank

This works great in addition to another fun event, such as a carnival or field day. Gather bold teachers and staff willing to brave the dunk tank for a good cause.

Kids pay $1 per throw (or 3), for a chance to toss a ball at a target and dunk the individual in the tank. Students will jump at the chance to embarrass their favorite (or least favorite!) teacher.

19. Board game tournament

Host a tournament either during lunch, recess, or an evening after school, and set up a few popular board games for students to choose from. See if you can borrow games from families and community members to reduce expenses.

Charge students an entry fee donation and watch as they compete to become the Uno or Monopoly champs!

20. Community yard sale

Most of us have plenty of random items thrown in storage or bedroom closets that haven’t been used in years. Encourage community members to bring these items to your school for a community yard sale, with the proceeds going toward your fundraising pot.

Get your students involved by teaching them how to take payments and letting them take over cashier duty (with supervision). They’ll help raise money while learning valuable life skills.

21. Balloon raffle

This fundraiser adds a surprising twist to a typical raffle. Participants purchase a balloon, and when it’s time to find the winner, they pop their balloon and see if they have the winning ticket inside.

Kids will love having the chance to see if they’ve won a prize, but they’ll mostly get a kick out of trying to pop their balloon.

22. Bake sale

When it comes to fundraisers, bake sales are one of the most delicious options. Ask your school parents to cook up a yummy treat to put up for sale at your fundraising bake sale.

Kids can get involved by helping their parents bake, or selling the baked goods at lunch or during recess.

23. Bingo night

Bingo is one of the easiest game nights to put on because basically everyone already knows the rules, and all you have to do is purchase bingo sheets, markers, balls, and a cage.

Students will pay a small entry fee, and you can host the bingo event after school.

24. Family photoshoot

Bring in a professional photographer to your school on a Saturday to host family photoshoot sessions. In exchange for a donation, families can pose for photos and pick up their photos after they’ve been developed.

Parents cherish family photoshoots because they can document their children’s lives and have beautiful, professional portraits that remind them of when their kids were young.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Middle School Fundraising Ideas

25. Talent show

Middle school students might be hiding a multitude of talents, from comedic chops to Broadway-style belting. Give these kids their chance to shine by hosting a school-wide talent show.

Charge a small fee to participate, as well as an admission fee for spectators. Assemble a panel of judges, and don’t forget to bring prizes for the winner(s)!

26. School picnic

A school picnic is a fantastic way to get kids out of the cafeteria and into the sunshine on a nice spring day, while also earning money for your school.

Students can donate a small fee to attend the picnic during an extended lunch period. Find a nice, shady park near the school, plan for a day with a good weather forecast, and make sure to offer plenty of snacks and games.

27. Spelling bee

What better way to cross excitement, knowledge, and fundraising than by hosting a spelling bee? Combining education with a little friendly competition is sure to spell success for your school.

Encourage students to gather pledges for each word they spell correctly. Put up a fundraising thermometer to show the students how much money they’ve raised with sheer brainpower! Add a special twist by holding a teachers’ bonus bee at the end.

28. Haunted house

When it comes to seasonal fundraising ideas, almost nothing outranks (or out-spooks!) a haunted house around Halloween.

Recruit parents, teachers, and volunteers to build and staff a haunted house, and have students pay a small fee to walk through. You can hold the haunted house during school hours, or host an event one evening or weekend.

29. Read-a-thon

What’s a guaranteed way to make reading cool for middle schoolers? Add a competitive element by turning reading into a fundraising challenge.

In a read-a-thon competition, students recruit sponsors to donate based on the number of books or pages they read throughout a defined period. Don’t forget to offer prizes for each milestone the students hit. And, to boost competition, consider positioning different years or classes against each other to find the reading champions.

30. Scavenger hunt

Scavenger hunts are easy to organize and fun for all ages. Make the clues a little more challenging, and middle schoolers are sure to participate. Bonus points if you can tie the clues into your teachers’ lesson plans, making for another educational yet effective fundraiser.

Students can pay to form teams and embark on the hunt throughout a full school day, or even longer. The winning team may be the first to find every item on the list or the team with the most found at the conclusion of the event.

31. Jelly bean jar

Keep a large jar of jelly beans (or another candy) in a highly trafficked area of the school, such as the front office, for a few weeks. Encourage students, teachers, and parents to submit their jelly bean estimate into the contest for a small fee.

At the end of the set time period, the person who had the closest guess wins the jar of candy. This is one of the easiest fundraisers; all you need to get started is a clear jar, a few bags of candy, and some eager participants looking to show off their guessing skills!

32. Video game tournament

Middle school is the age where plenty of kids are starting to become interested in video games. Just like a board game tournament, you can charge students a small fee to join a video game tournament during lunch, a free period, or after school.

Set up consoles and ask community members to donate games. Games in the Mario franchise are always a popular pick for kids.

33. Themed fun run

You’ve likely held a fun run to raise funds for your school or a local charity in the past, but you can spice up this traditional fundraising idea by hosting a running competition with a theme. For example, give this year’s virtual or socially-distanced running event a theme like “Running through the Decades” and ask participants to dress up in clothing representing their favorite decade.

You can have students and/or community members join in on the fun. Have participants collect pledges from friends and family members. At the end of the event, they’ll collect donations based on how many laps they ran or a certain distance they achieved.

34. Scratch card fundraiser

There’s nothing quite like the excitement of playing the lottery. You eagerly scratch away at your cards, hoping to see some big winnings. You can bring this same excitement to your fundraising efforts by having your middle school students distribute scratch-off cards.

Donors will scratch away at different circles on the cards that reveal small donation amounts (usually less than $5). Then, once donors make their contribution, you can offer a coupon sheet in return. This is a great way to raise funds quickly from many different sources!

35. Rock, paper, scissors tournament

Create a unique fundraising opportunity from the world’s most intense game—rock, paper, scissors! The tournament starts with pairs matching off in one-on-one matches, and players get knocked out as the event progresses. You can even have those who lose their matches become “fans” of the person who beat them and follow them around, cheering them on as they go. The event concludes with a final face-off, and a champion is declared.

Be sure to charge a small registration fee for students to join the tournament to capitalize on this fundraising idea!

36. School sleepover

There’s something about being at school after hours that holds an air of mystery and intrigue for middle school students. In a school-sleepover fundraiser, students can make a donation to gain access to an exclusive nighttime event.

Have attendees bring a sleeping bag or small air mattress and their PJ’s, and set up a sleeping area in the gym or other large space. Then, you can host fun activities like a haunted classroom tour or a movie with popcorn. This way, middle schoolers can have some fun in the place where they’re normally hitting the books all day!

37. Hula hoop contest

Hula-hoop contests get students up on their feet and exercising while they groove to their favorite songs. Have participating students grab a hoop and start twirling. You’re out when your hoop falls to the floor, and the last student standing wins!

Be sure to offer prizes for your top competitors, too.

38. No uniform day

If you work at a private school or any other type of school with required uniforms, you know students are always eager for a chance to dress casually.

In exchange for a donation, give students the chance to forgo their uniforms and wear an outfit of their choosing for a day. They’ll be able to express their personal style while supporting their school.

High School Fundraising Ideas

39. Battle of the bands

Find out which of your high schoolers are going to be the next big music stars with a battle of the bands fundraiser. Student musicians get the perfect venue to share their passion with classmates and compete with other bands.

Charge groups a fee to participate (or audition), as well as an admission fee on the big night. Consider offering a grand prize to the winning band, such as the opportunity to represent your school and create the music for future events (like a school theme song to play before morning announcements).

40. Car wash

This fundraiser is sure to make a splash in your community. Set up a car wash in the high school parking lot or partner with a local business during a late-spring weekend, and have students take shifts cleaning cars. If you have an online donation page set up, you can accept card payments and text-to-give in addition to cash.

41. Dog wash

Nobody wants to wash their own smelly pup, and groomers can get so expensive! Offer a more affordable solution with a dog wash fundraiser. Encourage students, parents, teachers, and community members to bring their furry friends to be bathed by student volunteers for a reasonable price.

Find an empty parking lot (like the school on a weekend) or a park to set up shop in, and make sure you have all the supplies you’ll need— a few kiddie pools, hoses connected to a source of water, dog shampoo, and tons of towels.

42. Prom dress drive

Shopping for a big dance can be intimidating. There are so many choices, and a nice dress can be quite pricey. Make the pre-prom season a blast for everyone with a prom dress drive.

Whether you plan this fundraiser around homecoming or prom season (or both!), you’re sure to get a big turnout. Ask community members and alumni to donate old formal dresses, which you’ll then sell at a discounted price to your students.

43. Walk- and jog-a-thon

The classic walk-a-thon can work for all ages, but you can boost engagement with high school students when you add a little twist. Consider taking your event to the next level with a theme, such as a color run or a zombie run (great around Halloween!).

Using peer-to-peer fundraising strategies, students can invite friends, classmates, and relatives to sponsor them as they walk or jog a certain number of laps around the school track. Each student can use a unique online donation page to raise funds and build up a pre-jog buzz.

44. Chore auction

This fundraising idea is perfect for parents who have a hard time persuading their busy teenagers to get their chores done.

Host an event and invite the whole community. During a live chore auction, your audience will bid on students to complete errands or other mundane chores. Teachers can task students with cleaning classrooms, parents can have their driveway shoveled, and classmates may enjoy seeing their friends clean their lockers—for a price!

45. Summer sports camp

Student athletes love to share their hard-earned skills and expertise with their community. A summer sports camp gives them the chance to do so for a good cause. They can teach younger kids a new skill and give parents some time to themselves during busy summer days.

Have members of your high school sports teams donate their time to host a community sports camp during the summer. Children can pay a fee to learn from the greats, with all the money going back to your school. Consider hosting a few camps throughout the summer so eager mini-athletes can practice football, basketball, and baseball.

46. Art auction

Partner with art classes to find student artists willing to donate their time and talents to support their school. You’ll be amazed at the art that is produced, and community supporters are willing to pay a good price for beautiful artwork that goes to a good cause.

47. Video challenge

High schoolers dream of going viral on the internet. Start an online campaign encouraging students to film themselves partaking in a challenge (such as eating a super hot pepper or being submerged in a bucket of freezing ice water).

Students then post their videos to social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, and nominate several friends to complete the challenge themselves. The goal is for the challenge to spread rapidly throughout the internet— and that each participant makes a donation to your online fundraising page!

48. Candy grams and carnations

These are especially successful fundraisers around Valentine’s Day, but can also work for other special days like Christmas and Halloween— just make sure to customize the treats for your holiday of choice.

High schoolers jump at the chance to send a sweet treat or flowers to their loved ones, romantic interests, and good friends alike! Just set up a station at lunch to accept pre-orders with payment, and the treats are delivered later to recipients’ classrooms.

49. Powderpuff game

Hosting a powderpuff football game is a great way to get students excited about fundraising. In this twist on the classic American sport, cheerleaders make up the football teams, and the football players become cheerleaders rallying supporters from the sidelines.

Charge a small fee to play, sell team t-shirts, and sell tickets and concessions on the day of the big game. You’ll have a great turnout!

50. Flapjack fundraiser

As a simple, sweet, syrupy breakfast item, pancakes have nearly-universal appeal. Partner with a local restaurant to host a special pancake dinner. For example, Applebee’s has a pancake fundraiser program where they provide the food, supplies, and a cook. It’s your job to gather student volunteers to host, take orders, and bus tables.

Invite families and community members to join you for this pancake party and sell plates for a chosen donation amount. A delicious meal for the price of helping a good cause!

51. Discount card fundraiser

Discount cards are popular product fundraisers for high schools because of the value they offer. High school students can sell these cards to their family members or neighbors. The cards are typically $10-$20, and in return, the donor receives deals and coupons to use at local businesses and restaurants, saving customers hundreds of dollars.

In these fundraisers, you engage local business owners and residents alike in your efforts to help your school, creating a greater sense of community involvement.

52. School dance

School dances give high school students the chance to let loose and create cherished memories with their friends. In addition to your annual prom and homecoming dances, offer students the opportunity to attend a dance with a fundraising purpose, where their ticket funds are contributed right back to your school.

Give the dance an intriguing, yet simple, theme, like a Masquerade Ball, a glow-in-the-dark rave, or Winter Wonderland. You don’t want to blow all your fundraising money on paying off a photo booth or purchasing an expensive disco ball, so be sure to task your planning committee with the goal of finding inexpensive but elegant decorations.

Are you ready to plan your best auction yet?

Student Group & College Fundraising Ideas

53. Dorm decorating contest

It’s hard to spruce up a cramped space, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. Encourage students to decorate their dorms (either the entire room or just the exterior), and compete against friends and neighbors for best decorated.

Have residents pay a small fee to enter their dorm in the contest. Choose a theme or let residents run wild with their imaginations. You can do this fundraiser several times a year, especially around major holidays!

54. Beard challenge

Perfect for social clubs or fraternities, a beard challenge is a fun way for guys on campus to raise money for their organizations. Participants get sponsors to donate toward their beard-growing endeavor. The more money you raise, the longer they have to wait before shaving, and the bigger the beards!

55. Head shaving challenge

Quite the opposite of the beard challenge, students raise funds towards a set goal. If they hit their target, they have to shave their heads! Encourage participants to take before and after pictures or videos of the endeavor to promote on social media to boost the cause.

56. Cook-off

For this fundraiser, students will have to get out of the dining hall and into their kitchens. Cooking in a dorm-sized kitchen only adds to the excitement of the challenge!

Charge students a fee to enter their best dish in a themed cook-off (think: chili, baked goods, or burgers). Consider charging a small fee to be a taster, and set a jar near each submission. Guests vote for their favorites with their wallets; the entry with the most donations wins!

57. Lip sync showdown

Performers might not actually be singing or playing instruments, but this fundraiser still requires a lot of talent! Students pay to form teams to participate in a lip-sync showdown and “belt out” their favorite hits, and audience members pay a small entrance fee to witness the showdown.

Have the audience pick the winner by their applause, or ask esteemed members of your campus community to be the judges.

58. Engraved bricks

Legacy-style fundraising ideas for colleges and universities give students and alumni the chance to have a lasting impact on their alma mater. Offer students the opportunity to have their name and a short message engraved on a brick, to be placed in a prominent walkway or courtyard on campus.

You can charge per brick, per word, or per line of text. Time this fundraiser around graduation, so soon-to-be alumni have a way to leave a lasting mark.

59. Jailhouse

There’s no better fundraiser to get everyone on campus involved! Students pay to have friends thrown in “jail” at the center of campus. To get out of jail, the individual must match the initial donation.

Make this more fun by posting a “most wanted” list of notable campus figures, each with a bail amount that they must meet if caught. This is an exciting and interactive fundraiser that feels more like a game than a campaign.

60. Clothing swap

Based on the philosophy of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” encourage students to dig through their closets to find piles of used clothes to donate to a used clothes drive fundraiser. On the day of the event, you can choose to collect funds via an entry fee, a charge per bag, or by selling individual items for discounted prices.

61. Auction off a parking spot

What is every college student’s nightmare? Parking on campus! Nobody wants to deal with circling the parking garages and ultimately missing valuable class time. Host a live auction to sell a reserved parking spot in a prime location and see how high your students are willing to go to avoid the everyday parking struggle.

62. Polar plunge

Daring students collect pledges from friends and family as they prepare to be submerged in ice-cold water for as long as they can withstand. Pledges may come as a flat rate, or a set amount per second the participant lasts!

This is a great wintertime fundraiser; just be sure to bring the hot cocoa to keep your participants and viewers warm and cozy.

63. Benefit concert

Find a local musician or even a big-name artist that is willing to put on a concert for your fundraiser. You can even boost school spirit by bringing in an alumni performer.

Students will love having a night out at a concert for a discounted price. Choose a fun venue that’s big enough to hold your crowd, and set up concessions for a better guest experience and a boost in revenue.

64. 50/50 raffle

In this simple fundraiser, individuals purchase tickets for the chance to win an undefined sum of money. When a ticket is sold, that money goes towards the jackpot. At the conclusion of the raffle, the money is totaled and a ticket is chosen at random. The winner with the matching ticket receives half the sum of money, while the school gets the remaining half.

This is a great fundraiser to host in cahoots with another event, running simultaneously during a sports game, gala, or concert!

65. Used textbook sale

Following the end of each semester, there are thousands of students left with textbooks they will never use again. Some students keep old textbooks, give them to friends, or sell them back to the bookstore— but many throw these old books away.

Set up a used textbook drive after the conclusion of classes and encourage students to drop their unneeded books with you. Then, you can sell these books back to the bookstore or to other textbook re-sellers for a profit.

66. Pet contest

College kids love showing off their fur babies. You can capitalize on that by hosting a competition to find your school’s cutest pet, with a small fee to enter the competition. These contests can either take place on campus to see some well-behaved furry friends in a socially-distanced environment or online so pet parents can upload photos from the comfort of their own homes.

67. Book swap

We’ve all been guilty of buying a brand-new book and letting it collect dust on our bookshelves, or holding tight to our childhood favorites for longer than we should. A book swap is a great way to give these volumes a new life.

Host the exchange in a central campus location, and charge visitors an entry fee to access the swap. Make sure they also bring along a book (or books) to trade. Swap attendees can bring home some new reading material and know that they’re helping a good cause, too!

68. Karaoke night

Karaoke nights are entertaining, often hilarious events that college students love. This is an inclusive activity as well because anyone who’s been to a karaoke night knows that you don’t have to be a talented singer to put on a good show. Charge performers a fee when they put their name on the list and watch as students belt out their favorites and embrace their inner star.

School Fundraiser Ideas with No Selling

69. AmazonSmile

Amazon.com offers a program called AmazonSmile that gives 0.5% of the price of Amazon purchases back to a designated charity. That percentage may not seem like much, but it’s a great way to earn extra money for your school on top of other fundraising efforts. Plus, it’s a fundraiser that requires hardly any effort from students and parents who already shop on Amazon!

You just have to register your school with AmazonSmile first to become a registered charity, and then inform your community to shop through AmazonSmile instead.

70. Box Tops challenge

Traditional box tops fundraisers involve students and parents searching household items for box tops, clipping and collecting those tabs (each one representing a 10 cent donation), and bringing them to your school.

You may still find paper box tops clips on food packaging, and those will still be honored. However, this classic fundraiser is getting a makeover: the program is shifting to digital-only! Instead of clipping tabs, users only have to scan receipts with participating items on the Box Tops app, making the fundraiser more efficient for both parents and the schools they support.

71. Restaurant fundraiser

Partner with a local restaurant that is willing to host your fundraiser for an evening and contribute a portion of their sales back to your school. Chick-fil-A and Chipotle are popular chains that host these events, or you can choose a local favorite. Make it a spirit night by asking students and parents to come all dressed in their school garb— and remind diners to mention your fundraiser at the register!

72. Shoe drive

Almost everybody has an old pair of sneakers lying around that aren’t worn anymore. Ask students, families, and community members to donate their gently worn, new, and used shoes to a shoe drive.

When you partner with a shoe drive organizer, they collect your pile of shoes at the conclusion of your fundraiser in exchange for a check for your school!

73. Junk drive

A junk drive fundraiser collects items that many consider to be garbage and sells them back to recycling companies for a profit. You may be tempted to throw away things like broken cell phones, empty ink cartridges, and old electronics as they reach the end of their shelf lives. Ask your students and families to collect these items instead, as they can still be worth quite a bit.

74. Penny war

For this fundraiser, you must first establish teams. You may decide to pit classrooms against each other, or maybe you want to go by grade level instead.

Each team gets a jar and is encouraged to bring in coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters) for their own jars. Each coin counts positively towards the team. Things heat up when students drop dollar bills in their opponents’ jars, who then have to subtract points from their total. The competitive factor will drive students to give more to win the game!

75. Coin jar

For this fundraiser, you’ll want to partner with a local business that agrees to keep a small jar at the registers. The jar should be visually appealing and include a quick background describing who and what these donations are for. You might be surprised at the number of people willing to drop loose change in your jar.

76. Wishlist drive

If your school is in need of specific new items such as laptops, books, gym equipment, or classroom supplies, a wishlist drive is the perfect way to deliver these items directly to those who need them within your school.

Create a wishlist of products on an online retail site such as Amazon and promote the list to your school community. Supporters can purchase items and have them transported right to your school so they can immediately be put to use.

Best Practices for Ensuring Successful School Fundraisers

These are all excellent school fundraising ideas, but they won’t succeed in a vacuum. Ensure your school has a plan in place to guide your fundraising efforts from beginning to end with a clear strategy. This encourages your team to stay on track and makes it quick and easy to track your fundraising successes over time. Here’s what we recommend:

Create a detailed school fundraising plan.

Define your needs.

Why are you fundraising? The idea of “school fundraising” can be so vague, it’s hard to tell what you’re even raising money for. Where does the money go— Does the football team need new uniforms? Does the robotics club need funds to travel for a competition? Tell supporters which programs require funding so they can understand the need on a more personal level.

Understand your audience.

Your main audience is comprised of students’ families, although you can expand your reach to include community members, alumni, students’ distant relatives, etc. As you get to better understand your audience, it’s beneficial to know their values, motivations, lifestyles, and passions.

This is where having a dedicated constituent relationship management (CRM) platform can come in handy. Your CRM stores all relevant supporter data so you can segment out your audience and conduct targeted fundraising efforts that pinpoint those who are most likely to give. For example, your CRM contains information such as wealth indicators and supporters’ past giving history, allowing you to identify and reach out to those with a higher capacity and affinity to give.

Investing in a CRM for your school’s supporter data will boost the return on investment of your fundraising events because you’ll be able to engage reliable donors who will donate more to your campaigns.

Set concrete goals.

Before you begin fundraising, define a specific financial goal you hope to reach. Consider the acronym SMART— an effective goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. You’ll have an overall fundraising goal for the year, but it’s also helpful to create smaller goals for how much you plan to raise from each event or campaign.

As you set your goals, a fundraising thermometer can be an engaging, effective way to demonstrate your progress to your audience. With a fundraising thermometer template, you can input your goal and the current amount you’ve raised to date to create a visual representation of the headway made and how far is left to go. These thermometers inspire more donations by conjuring a sense of urgency and a desire to see the goal accomplished.

Create a timeline

You’ll likely be fundraising year-round, so it’s good practice to establish a timeline of events in advance to keep things on track. Decide how many fundraisers you’ll need in a year to meet your goals, and then spread them out throughout the school year so as to not tire out your generous families and donors.

Distribute tasks

No one person can reach the fundraising goal by themselves. Delegating tasks at the beginning spreads out the workload among faculty, staff, parents, and volunteers and allows each person to fulfill their own responsibilities.

By following these steps, you’ll have a carefully crafted fundraising plan to set your school up for success! When you do the prep work ahead of time, you’ll thank yourself later when your campaigns are running smoothly and you exceed your fundraising expectations.

Build out a comprehensive school fundraising toolkit.

You’re not likely to have a successful fundraiser without the right tools in your pocket. There are many moving pieces to keep in line, all while managing students, teachers, parents, and volunteers. But with a well-developed fundraising toolkit, you’ll have all that you need to make fundraising easy and fun.

These are some key fundraising tools to look for:

Online donation pages

Taking your fundraiser online is crucial to spread the word farther than your neighborhood and make it possible for family members across the world to get involved. Additionally, these online donation pages offer flexible payment options including debit/credit, Paypal, and Apple Pay, so you’re not held to the limitations of cash or check.

When parents and supporters choose to give through your handy online donation pages, make sure to also provide the option to set up a recurring donation right there. Securing recurring gifts is the best way to ensure a steady flow of fundraising revenue year-round, even when you don’t have a campaign running.

Text-to-give software

By providing a streamlined donation process, you boost the number of donations that come through. Text-to-give options take only a few minutes to set up for first-time donors and then seconds for repeat donors!

Donor management/CRM

Having complete access to your fundraising and donor data provides valuable insights over time— for example, who is giving to your school, when donations come through, and whether you have recurring donations set up.

Auction software

Several fundraising ideas on this list include an auction of some sort, so you’ll want to investigate your options for auction software to prepare for these events. Look for a software option that can handle ticketing, online and mobile bidding, and the check-out process. Top choices keep the payment process secure while encouraging participants to make additional donations.

Event management software

Many of these fundraising ideas involved virtual or in-person events.

A dedicated event management software system can help you plan for these events more effectively to engage the widest audience possible.

Search for fundraising event software that allows you to manage ticketing, online registration, event data tracking, and marketing. Placing all of these planning aspects under one roof helps your fundraising team save time and ensure everyone’s on the same page.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Take a multichannel approach to promote your school fundraising ideas.

To get the greatest turnout at your school fundraisers, you’ll need to get started with the promotions as soon as possible. For maximum impact, use a combination of both traditional and digital marketing methods to get your message across.

For example, consider these channels to spread the word:

Social media

Facebook is likely the most-used social media platform among your target audience, but Instagram and Twitter each offer their own unique set of benefits. Use a combination of platforms to get the word out about your upcoming fundraiser and encourage students, parents, and teachers to share your posts as well.

With Facebook, your supporters can even create their own Facebook fundraisers to solicit donations for your school using their personal social media pages. Be sure to promote these opportunities to your school community and provide instructions for starting a Facebook fundraiser.

School newsletters

Do you send out a school-wide newsletter to your families, either in the mail or via an e-newsletter provider? This is a great opportunity to promote your fundraiser, as those reading are already interested in hearing what’s going on in your school community.

Personal reminders

Especially for younger students, sending a note home in a student’s backpack is a great way to communicate the details of your fundraiser with parents. Additionally, many teachers today use text services like Remind to chat digitally with students’ families.

School website

Make sure to keep your school’s website up-to-date with information about your upcoming and current campaigns so that parents can quickly search and find everything they need to get involved.

If you’ve noticed your school’s website is in need of an update to be a more effective information platform, check out some of the best school website examples for details on how to make your website more visually engaging and user-friendly.

Morning announcements

Get your students excited with promotions on the morning announcements! Do something out of the ordinary to grab kids’ attention and put the focus on your fundraiser— like bringing the principal on the news wearing a funny costume.

Flyers

Ask to hang your flyers in local businesses, restaurants, churches, youth centers, etc. to get the word out about your fundraiser. Hand out flyers at school events, like meet-the-teacher and open house.

Boost school fundraising engagement with strategic incentives.

Motivating students to get involved in your fundraising efforts can be a difficult undertaking. Students ranging in age from kindergarten to college provide unique challenges concerning their engagement in the fundraising process. Yet once you have students on board, they will be your greatest fundraising tool to boost awareness and harness community support.

How can you increase participation in your school-wide fundraisers? Incentivize engagement with your fundraiser by implementing gamification elements and rewarding top participants with school merchandise and prizes. Here’s how you can put these ideas into action:

Gamification

Use tools such as a fundraising thermometer or leaderboard to track your progress and encourage students to donate more to fill up the thermometer completely. You can even set goals for individual grade levels or classrooms and give each their own thermometer to try to reach the goal faster than the others and win a prize. Students will be way more excited and motivated to get involved when they know they’re competing against other grade levels or against their friends.

Tangible incentives

Give out your school’s t-shirt to boost school spirit, or create fundraiser-specific merchandise to commemorate the event. If your school partnered with a local business or community organization, you can reflect that organization’s purpose or work in the design of your merchandise.

Other fun rewards can take the form of exclusive experiences instead of merchandise. These experiences could include a pizza party or taking a ride in a limo to a local movie theater or amusement

center like a trampoline park.

Rewarding individuals who excel in their fundraising efforts is a great way to take advantage of a competitive edge between students. Sometimes the honor of being crowned winner is even more motivating than the prize itself!

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Set yourself up for long-term fundraiser success.

Fundraisers are a great way to boost support for your school. However, constantly planning and hosting elaborate events is not always a sustainable practice. Strengthen your school’s partnership with your community by encouraging additional donations outside of individual campaigns or events.

Your school fundraisers have already taught your students how effective online fundraising can be when information is shared in a clear and enthusiastic manner. Encourage students and families to keep the momentum going through these methods:

Follow up with supporters.

Send out heartfelt thank-you messages to all who donate to your fundraisers. Recognizing donors with letters of gratitude goes a long way toward retaining their support for future funding efforts.

Students can also encourage the individuals who contributed to their personal fundraising pages to maintain their support by continually updating loved ones on important school and fundraising milestones. Keeping donors in the loop ensures they stay invested in your school’s activities and know when annual fundraisers roll around. Be sure to emphasize the value of recurring donations!

Provide donation opportunities at school.

Keeping fundraising jars in classrooms can provide students with a place to donate throughout the school year. Students, especially younger ones, may not be able to give much. So when you promote the idea that every little bit matters, you’ll see an accumulation of funds and students will see their own impact on their school.

Leverage your school website and donation page.

Make sure that students, families, and community members know where they can donate and get involved with the school so that they can continue their support— and encourage others to do the same. Ensure your donation page is accessible to all users, mobile-friendly, designed with user experience in mind, and equipped to accept multiple forms of payment.

Encourage engagement through volunteerism.

Find a group of dedicated parents to take part in fundraising efforts and volunteer at various school events throughout the year with an established parent volunteer program.

And students can help out too! Having students participate in a fundraiser by manning booths at events or accepting payments at baked goods or yard sales is a great way to introduce them to the important work happening in their school and community.

Seek input for upcoming school fundraising ideas.

Whether you had outstanding success or you didn’t quite reach your fundraising goals, be sure to ask your supporters what they thought went well and what areas could be improved going forward. When students and parents see that you value and incorporate their feedback, you strengthen those relationships and lay the groundwork for better future fundraiser ideas.

Motivating students and parents to give and also promote further giving among their families and friends are several ways in which you can ensure that the community enthusiasm surrounding your school doesn’t wane after the initial fundraising event.

With preparation, reflection, and a group of engaged students, you’ll be able to boost donor retention based on the success of your initial fundraiser and encourage your students and families to continuously get involved in your school.

By implementing unique, intriguing school fundraising ideas this year and solidifying your plan for continuous fundraising success, you’ll set your school up with a strategy to bring in more funding for years to come. You’ll invigorate not only your school community but the wider community at large through your engaging, compelling fundraising appeals.

These 75+ fundraising ideas are just the start. If you’re ready to take your school’s fundraising strategy to the next level, here are a few key resources to help brush up on your fundraising knowledge:

Virtual Fundraising: The Complete Guide. Due to the pandemic, schools have turned to virtual fundraising to raise necessary funds without the assistance of in-person events and activities. Check out this guide for top tips on how to make virtual fundraising work for your school.
Fundraising Events: 75+ Ideas to Raise More. Organizations are taking on a mix of virtual and hybrid fundraising events. Find out how your school can maximize its approach to fundraising events with this guide.
3 Rules for Working Smarter, Not Harder, on Giving Tuesday. It’s never too early to start thinking about your school’s Giving Tuesday strategy since it’s one of the biggest fundraising days of the year. Dive into these tips to help you make the most of your Giving Tuesday campaign.

The post School Fundraising Ideas: 75+ Top Fundraisers (& Pro Tips) first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

5 Types of Nonprofit Startup Grants to Fund Your Mission

Snowball Fundraising — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:38:22 +0000

You already know that starting a nonprofit takes dedication and hard work. The entire process of registering and funding a brand new nonprofit organization might feel overwhelming, but there are plenty of resources out there to help guide and support you through the process.

Startup grants are one major source of support for new nonprofits. In the for-profit business world, these grants are akin to seed money from investors.

Grant-giving foundations, government agencies, and other funding bodies support the work of both established and new nonprofit organizations. This support allows nonprofits to pursue their missions and contribute to a more philanthropic world.

In this guide we’ll cover the main sources for these kinds of grants, plus some extra tips for finding startup funding:

Corporate giving programs for nonprofit startups
Grant-giving private foundations
Federal nonprofit grant programs and endowments
State- and municipal-funded grant resources
Bonus nonprofit startup grant tips

Understanding each primary source of nonprofit support will go a long way toward getting your nonprofit up and running.

Before You Get Started, Make Sure You Have The Basics In Place.

While starting a nonprofit isn’t easy, having strong initial support is key to laying the groundwork for long-term success. Yes, startup grants can be great, but they’re not 100% guaranteed. You need additional funding sources that are reliable, accessible, and highly effective.

Using resources like online donations software is important because it sets your nonprofit up for growth and shows grant-giving institutions that you’re thinking through the practical aspects of running a nonprofit. You’re in it for the long haul!

The right donation tools also make the giving process easier for your supporters. Look for technology that allows for complete donations in a few clicks, and that makes it just as easy to set up recurring donations— which are crucial to long-term engagement.

Corporate Giving Programs for Nonprofit Startups

Corporate philanthropy is a major part of the nonprofit world. If you’re unfamiliar with the key types of corporate philanthropy programs, now’s the time to change that. Your nonprofit will almost certainly be interacting with them in the future.

These are the three main types of corporate giving programs that support nonprofits:

Matching gift programs. Companies financially match the donations made by their employees to eligible nonprofits. Raising awareness for these programs and collecting donor employment information will help you to capitalize on these programs.
Volunteer grant programs. Companies will financially match the time that employees donate to your organization by volunteering. Similar to matching gift programs, many volunteer grants can be quite generous.
Other donation requests. Many companies happily support nonprofits through other programs or individual policies. These are where your new nonprofit should focus to secure initial or early corporate startup grants before you’ve grown an extensive donor or volunteer base.

You’ve already put in all the hard work to complete your 501(c)(3) application, but now it’s time to conduct even more research. If you want corporate support for your nonprofit organization, you’ll need to identify companies that might be interested in helping you pursue your mission.

For example, Home Depot’s Framing Hope program focuses on supporting nonprofit and community-based rebuilding efforts by donating materials. If your new nonprofit’s first major project involves construction in any way, this corporate giving program is definitely worth exploring.

Check out Double the Donation’s guide to corporate donation requests for more examples of programs like this one.

Individual corporate giving programs and nonprofit startup grants vary widely by company. Some are topic- or region-specific, and others provide either financial support or in-kind donations to help get your projects started. This means you’ll need to research your options and determine which corporate giving programs might be the best fit for your nonprofit.

Grant-Giving Private Foundations

Private foundations and grant-giving endowments are probably what most people think of when they hear the term “nonprofit startup grants,” and for good reason! Many privately funded foundations exist solely to better society by supporting nonprofit organizations.

If your nonprofit is just starting out, though, it can be tricky to know where to begin— especially when you don’t yet have a major program of outreach or engagement events established yet. This is when it can be extremely useful to familiarize yourself with the major grant-giving foundations that operate in your region.

For instance, here are some of the top grant-giving foundations in Georgia. Let’s say you just started a nonprofit in Atlanta. Beginning your startup grant research with this list would be a smart move. Even if you don’t immediately find a grant that aligns with your mission, you’ll have a better idea of the kind of support available from local grant-giving foundations.

Many foundations will happily provide startup funding to new nonprofits. You’ll typically need to approach the foundation first, and it will then determine whether supporting your startup aligns with its own mission. It’s helpful to have some materials already prepared, including:

A cover letter to inquire about startup funding
A business plan for your organization, or other structural plans
A description of your mission and the need your nonprofit will address
Projected budgets and financial needs to complete initial programs

Offering key materials in a condensed version enables the foundation to quickly make a decision about startup funding and, if interested in your mission, the foundation will likely request that you submit a formal proposal for funding.

Check out our grant proposal template for more guidance on how to present a case of support to a funding body. Identifying private grant-giving foundations that specifically provide startup funding for new nonprofits can be a trial-and-error process, but the effort could pay off immensely.

Take a Personalized Tour

Schedule a demo with one of our fundraising consultants. We’ll show you how the Snowball platform has benefited other nonprofit organizations, and how it can help you.

Federal Nonprofit Grant Programs And Endowments

Federally funded programs are another major source of initial support for new nonprofit organizations, and the first place to look for these federal grant resources is the comprehensive database at grants.gov.

This official database requires a somewhat in-depth registration and application process, so be sure to set aside some time to work on it. Access to this information can become invaluable as your nonprofit grows, so it’s worth it to put the effort in now.

Two of the largest, most active grant-giving federal bodies are national endowments devoted specifically to supporting nonprofit projects. These are:

The National Endowment for the Arts, also called the NEA, serves to fund individual or nonprofit projects that create new American art or increase access to art-based activities for communities around the country. The NEA awards several major grants annually, each focused on different types of artful engagement.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, also called the NEH, offers a wide array of support to organizations that focus on social, historical, literary, and educational topics. These grants are typically awarded to larger institutions, established scholars, and public media outlets, but the NEH also operates councils in each state that can provide resources, support, and guidance to smaller organizations.

Even if your organization is starting very small, these federal endowments can be great places to start your research. As hubs of the country’s nonprofit network, they’re excellent resources for learning more about grants, especially in conjunction with the federal grant database above.

Always explore your grant options when seeking initial funding. At the federal level, this support will typically need to be connected with a specific programming proposal, but more general startup grants and support are certainly available if you search for them.

Either way, it’s usually a smart idea to have specific programming plans in mind even at the earliest stages of your nonprofit’s development. As noted above, it’s smart to have the groundwork laid for receiving support via a full set of online fundraising tools down the line. This way, you’ll have everything you need to begin growing your footprint in the community!

The competition for federal startup and program grants for nonprofit organizations can be intense, so remain focused and dedicated to your mission. Increase your odds of securing financial support by showing that you’re committed to your goals— and that you have the tools, systems, and software in place to meet them

State- and Municipal-Funded Grant Resources

It can be a great idea to narrow the scope of your search when seeking startup grant opportunities for your new nonprofit organization. Although grants at the federal level can be great sources of funding for growing nonprofits, don’t forget to explore grant opportunities at a more local level. After all, state and city governments, regional commissions, and smaller foundations are often quite eager to invest in the growth of nonprofit networks in their areas.

This means that the opportunities to secure startup or program-specific funding for your nonprofit are fairly diverse at this level. They might include:

Your state or city government’s website. This should be your first stop as you research state-level nonprofit startup grants.
NEH State Councils. As described above, the NEH councils in each state regularly offer resources and grants to nonprofits.
Databases of philanthropic foundations. Searchable databases that allow you to filter by region and state are a great way to identify private foundations, community-based groups, and corporate giving programs.
State government agencies and endowments. Most states have their own arts and/or humanities endowments too. Be sure to research every state-level opportunity.
Regional and municipal commissions. These groups can be invaluable resources not only for finding new funding opportunities for your community- and social-issue-based mission, but also for familiarizing your new nonprofit with the local landscape.

The grant writing process isn’t just a huge part of starting a nonprofit, it’s an extremely important element of keeping an established nonprofit running.

Remember, when looking for funding for your new nonprofit organization, you can search for general startup grants or grant funds with more specific programming requirements. Federal- and state-level grants typically have more specific requirements about how nonprofits will use awarded funds, but more general startup funds can often be solicited. Don’t be afraid to reach out to any funding source for more information.

Bonus Nonprofit Startup Grant Tips

As you solicit startup funding and inquire about nonprofit startup grants, your organization needs to focus on its mission and be willing to conduct exhaustive searches for the right opportunities.

Here are a few helpful tips that might help guide you in this process:

Find an established nonprofit similar to your own. Reach out, introduce yourself, and ask their team about its early days. Looking to your professional peers and fore-bearers in the nonprofit space is a great strategy for focusing on what’s already worked. A successful nonprofit can likely point you to the resources it relied on when first starting out.
Don’t wait until you’re completely official to get started. There’s no way of knowing how long it could take to receive your nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, so don’t wait to start pursuing your mission and securing funding. The IRS has special tax policies in place for organizations in this situation. Start building relationships and growing support as soon as possible.
Practice your grant-writing skills. Grant writing is incredibly important to most nonprofits. Unless yours is a national-level institution, much of your work and major projects will depend on grant funding. Study each section outlined in our grant proposal template to learn the ropes, and remember that a lot of the process involves trial and error.
Diversify your nonprofit funding strategies. You don’t want to rely solely on grant funding to bankroll your operations. Instead, securing revenue from many different funding sources is a great way to ensure your mission is fully funded and has the resources it needs to succeed. Specifically, you might want to consider individual donations, corporate partnerships, event revenue, and fees for service in addition to the startup grants you’re looking for.

Securing initial startup funding for your nonprofit can play a crucial role in the organization’s future growth, so be sure to focus your efforts now. Make sure your nonprofit is building the strong community and professional relationships that are necessary for success.

Your nonprofit’s team needs to be able to effectively and persuasively communicate the value of your mission to relevant funders. This is especially true when soliciting support in the form of a startup grant, although it remains relevant concerning individual contributions as well.

Funding a nonprofit organization is hard work, but it’s worth it. Knowing where to find available resources and opportunities to further your mission is key! For more information and tips on starting your nonprofit and applying for grants, check out these additional resources:

6 Tips for Writing a Perfect Nonprofit Mission Statement. Honing your mission statement is the first step in starting your nonprofit organization. Check out what makes an actionable and lasting mission statement with our guide.
The Perfect Donation Page: How to Raise More Money Than Ever. Besides funding from grants, online donations are crucial for the success of modern nonprofits. Does your online donation page have the features that will engage donors?
Free Fundraising Software: Our Top Suggested Providers. Don’t forget about your non-grant based funding, so check out our 15 favorite free software providers to boost your fundraising revenue alongside your grant writing efforts.

The post 5 Types of Nonprofit Startup Grants to Fund Your Mission first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

Using Your Business to Give Back: 5 Fundraising Tips

Snowball Fundraising — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 20:38:12 +0000

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a term that’s gained traction among business owners in recent years. This phrase refers to any policies or management practices that business owners implement to create a positive impact in the community.

As a business owner, you might be interested in starting up a CSR program of your own or incorporating nonprofit partnerships into your business plan. Perhaps there’s an organization that’s dear to your heart that you’d like to support through a virtual fundraiser. Or, maybe you’ve learned about some of the benefits your business can receive from CSR programs, including a positive boost to your public image and better engagement with customers.

But at the end of the day, you’re a business owner, not a fundraising professional. That’s why we’ve compiled a few tips for using your business to give back. Whether you run a kennel, flower shop, or dance studio, these insights will help guide your philanthropic efforts.

1. Choose a cause that aligns with your business principles.

If you’re serious about getting involved with philanthropic causes, it’s important to seek out nonprofits and other charitable partners that align with your business’s mission. This will lead to a more sustainable relationship because you’re working toward a common cause.

For example, a dog daycare business that is familiar with animal welfare issues might seek out animal advocacy organizations to be the beneficiaries of their fundraising efforts. This type of partnership is advantageous for both parties, as the nonprofit will receive financial support and insider knowledge, and the business will improve its brand reputation and connect with potential new customers.

2. Consolidate your online fundraising approach.

You know how to attract customers to your business and keep a steady stream of revenue flowing. But you may not be as well-versed in the ins and outs of conducting a fundraiser to benefit a nonprofit.

Here are a few basic virtual fundraising channels to help you get started:

Mobile giving: Mobile giving platforms make it simple for donors to give to a cause using their smartphones, tablets, or other mobile devices. In particular, text-to-give services enable organizations to solicit donations with a quick text message. This convenient giving experience can encourage more people to give to your chosen nonprofit.
Email giving: Email is another frequently used messaging platform that’s effective for fundraising campaigns. With an email campaign, you send mass messages to your audience members with a link to an online donation page where they can contribute.
Crowdfunding: NXUnite defines crowdfunding as a fundraising tactic in which nonprofits and other charitable organizations create donation pages that supporters share with their peers, typically via social media, to generate many small donations. To support these campaigns, share crowdfunding pages with your network of employees and customers to get them directly involved in fundraising.

Choose a platform that you can easily implement. For example, if you already have a solid email presence with a weekly newsletter full of updates from your business, you can easily include a link to a nonprofit donation page as a part of your letter to inspire readers to give. On the other hand, if you have a sizable social media audience on your business’s pages already, a crowdfunding campaign might have the most success and raise the most money for a community organization.

3. Offer employee matching gifts and volunteer grants.

Having a comprehensive CSR program isn’t only something that customers expect from your business—employees increasingly seek out jobs that offer opportunities to get involved with charitable giving. In fact, 58% of employees say it’s very important that their company offers a corporate matching gift program, one of the hallmarks of a quality CSR program.

To adopt a matching gift program, your company would need to financially match donations made by employees to eligible nonprofits up to a specific amount. Most corporations match gifts on a 1:1 ratio, but some also choose to triple or even quadruple the size of employee donations.

Volunteer grant programs are similar to matching gift programs, but instead of matching employee monetary donations, your organization would contribute a donation in exchange for a certain number of hours volunteered by one of your employees. For example, you might choose to offer a donation of $10 for every hour volunteered by your employees for up to 50 hours a year.

By incorporating matching gift and volunteer grant programs into your business structure, you can help your employees feel more personally fulfilled and connected to their community, give a nice funding boost to a worthy cause, and strengthen your reputation as a business owner in the process.

4. Get your employees and customers involved.

If you’re looking to engage both employees and customers in charitable giving, empower them to become fundraisers themselves.

With a peer-to-peer campaign, you can recruit volunteer fundraisers to create and share their own fundraising pages and encourage their friends and family to donate. Donations are usually collected in a specific period leading up to an event or throughout the event itself. These donations all help contribute to an overarching goal set by your business, and by the end, your business will be able to write a sizable check to a nonprofit or another community partner.

Some top peer-to-peer event ideas for your business might include:

5K fundraiser: Invite supporters to register for the event and raise money until race day. Celebrate your fundraising success on race day, and be sure to offer prizes to winners! You can also host a virtual 5K and encourage participants to find a trail or path to run the race remotely.
Auction: Encourage volunteers to fundraise in the weeks leading up to the event, and ask for item donations from other local businesses (and be sure to contribute several items from your business, too!). Reward top fundraisers at the event and use the time to get your brand name out in the community by placing your logo on all event marketing materials. Alternatively, you can host an online auction and allow participants to put in their bids over a longer period, such as a week.
Festival: Ask volunteers to fundraise using their networks, and use the funds to put on the event and make a gift to a nonprofit partner. Incorporate food trucks, live music, and activities for kids to engage the entire community in your fundraising event!

When your fundraising efforts culminate in an exciting event, you can support and engage your local community while getting your business’s name out in the local area.

5. Launch a merchandise fundraiser.

Depending on your business, you may already offer merchandise to customers in your physical facility or online store. If that’s the case, you can easily put some of your merchandise funds toward a charitable cause or create new items to sell through a merchandise fundraiser.

Start by designing basic items like t-shirts, mugs, and pens with your business logo and your nonprofit partner’s branding. Then, promote the fundraiser across your social media pages, email newsletters, and website, stating that a portion or all of the sales will go toward charity.

If it’s within your budget, you should also consider using an automated solution like Gingr’s pet business software to boost revenue with online and in-store retail sales tools, including barcode scanners, online shopping carts, and inventory trackers. With each sale, you’ll raise funds for a good cause while increasing brand recognition as supporters use your merchandise in their day-to-day lives.

There are plenty of ways for your business to give back to the community and develop a CSR program that engages employees and customers on a deeper level.

Check out all the resources available to help you solidify your online fundraising approach, develop opportunities for employees and customers to become fundraisers themselves, and leverage the power and influence of your business to reach your fundraising goals.

The post Using Your Business to Give Back: 5 Fundraising Tips first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.

The 5 Best Strategies for Reeling in More Major Gifts

Snowball Fundraising — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 18:14:18 +0000

Your nonprofit receives gifts of all sizes. Some of your supporters like to give in small amounts every year or every month, while others give larger gifts periodically. You can sort these different-sized gifts into different giving levels—low-level, mid-level, and major gifts.

Major gifts are typically the largest gifts your nonprofit receives, and they have the potential to fund your nonprofit’s biggest campaigns or to make up a serious chunk of your annual fund.

Major gifts also require a different kind of fundraising process than lower-level gifts do. Cultivation of major givers is a much longer and more personal process than soliciting lower-level gifts. However, major gifts are worth the effort they require because of the potential future efforts they support.

While it might feel challenging to begin soliciting major gifts (or to fine-tune your current approach), knowing some practical strategies can increase the success of your major gift program and boost the number of major gifts that your nonprofit secures. Our top five favorite strategies are:

Conduct prospect research.
Segment your supporters by interests.
Create supporter societies.
Analyze your major gift cycle.
Offer compromises.

When you combine these best practices with the unique techniques and strategies that your nonprofit has used to build special relationships with your community, your nonprofit staff is bound to find success in the future. If you’re ready to learn more about reeling in major gifts more effectively, let’s get started!

1. Conduct prospect research.

The first step to building an effective major giving cycle is to ensure that you start with valuable cultivation prospects. First, ask yourself what constitutes a major gift for your organization. This number will vary between nonprofits based on your fundraising capacity and size, but it’s a crucial starting point.

Once you know what a major gift is for your organization, it’s time to start building a prospect list. According to Averill Solutions’ planning and feasibility study guide, you can do this at any time, but for a larger campaign like a capital campaign, you’ll generally start researching prospects during the planning phase.

A prospect list is the database of people in your community who could be cultivated towards giving a major gift. Your prospect list for major gifts will look different from your lists of mid-level and low-level gifts.

Your prospect list should include the following people:

Members of your contributor community who have the capacity to give a major gift. Check out supporters who respond consistently to your annual fund appeal!
Individuals who have given to nonprofits with similar or adjacent missions. Look at other organizations’ annual reports for major contributors.
Individuals who have given to political campaigns with similar causes. Political giving is public knowledge, so take a look at those databases for relevant issues.

These will be the people that your major gift officers should get to know and cultivate for a major gift for your organization. But how do you find out what drives these people as individuals?

The key lies in conducting thorough prospect research and leveraging the right prospect research software. Prospect research is a technique used by nonprofits all over the world to learn more about the affinity and capacity that an individual may have for giving.

Affinity indicates that someone enjoys philanthropic giving and has a history of charitable behavior. Affinity can be determined by using prospect research software to look for indicators such as:

Previous charitable giving to political campaigns and nonprofits
A history of volunteering or attending charitable functions
Board membership for a nonprofit organization

If someone has a history of philanthropic behavior, you know that they are open to contributing to a nonprofit and therefore could contribute to yours. You can also take this a step further by determining what missions or issues drive them to give.

Capacity is the ability of someone to give at a certain level. This can be determined by wealth indicators, which include:

Real estate ownership
Stock holdings
Business affiliations

By analyzing these indicators, you can generally gauge an individual or family’s level of income, and therefore the level that they might be able to give at.

Combining these factors—affinity and capacity—will help you build an effective prospect list for your upcoming major gift cycle. Instead of spending time trying to solicit a major gift from someone who has neither capacity nor affinity for your cause, you can start in a better place by cultivating someone who can give a major gift and may be moved by your cause.

If your prospect list is full of individuals who have proven affinity and capacity, your major gifts team will be able to move forward confidently.

2. Segment your supporters by interests.

In order to more effectively create personal connections between your organization and your potential major givers, your major gift officers should learn as much as they can about your prospects’ interests and then use that information to segment your prospect list.

Step one of this strategy requires only that your major gift officers work hard to cultivate your supporters. As they get to know them (and track the prospects’ interests in your major giving CRM), your officers will have a better idea of what drives your prospects into action.

Once you have a solid understanding of your prospects’ primary motivations, it’s time to split your prospect list up.

Segmentation is a strategy used to separate your whole community (or, in this case, your major giving prospect list) into smaller, more manageable groups based on commonalities. In this case, the commonality would be what inspires your prospects’ philanthropic behavior.

Then, once you have your smaller groups, you can create more targeted, individual cultivation opportunities such as luncheons, events, volunteer opportunities, and more.

What do we mean by “segment by interests”? Let’s go with an example, and then you can apply the principles to your own nonprofit.

Say that you’re a nationally recognized nonprofit with a mission of lessening the suffering caused by cancer. Your mission attracts a lot of different people for a variety of reasons. Use those common reasons to create three common segments:

Those passionate about children’s causes.
Those passionate about scientific medical research.
Those passionate about lessening the burdensome costs of healthcare.

Your nonprofit has some impact on all of these issues because they fall under the purview of your overarching mission. As you get to know your major gift prospects, separate them into segments based on their internal values.

Those who are most passionate about your children’s causes and efforts should be cultivated with this in mind. Give them tours of children’s hospitals that you work with, introduce them to the children that you’ve helped, or host an informational luncheon where you discuss the numbers and stories of the children involved in your nonprofit’s missions.

Assess your nonprofit’s fundraising statistics to determine which of your causes are the most popular, and use those as a starting point for trying to create a connection. Because you target your cultivation strategies to what your prospects are invested in, you increase the chances that you successfully solicit a major gift from them.

3. Create supporter societies.

Supporter societies are a great fundraising strategy for any level of giving, but they’re especially helpful for converting mid-level supporters into major givers.

Supporter societies are a type of membership program for nonprofits where you split your supporter population into levels based on their previous level of giving. For example, a politically-minded nonprofit organization might create a system of supporter societies that look like something like this:

The Representatives: Those who have given between $1,000 and $5,000 in the past two years
The Senators: Those who have given between $5,000 and $20,000 in the past two years
The Presidents: Those who have given more than $20,000 in the past two years

Then, the members of each society receive different perks based on the society in which they currently are active. To continue this example, the Representatives would get a room named after them in a new building. The Senators would get an eponymous room and a plaque on the front wall. The Presidents would get a room, a plaque, and a photographic portrait in the front hall.

The perks and tiers will vary based on your nonprofit, but the message remains the same. And how does this strategy tie into major giving?

When you notice that someone is approaching the high end of your mid-level giving tier, approach them about giving a major gift. They’ll be more likely to give one if their gift earns them a place in the major giver society, especially if the perks include something that provides value to them.

4. Analyze your major gift cycle.

When your nonprofit decides to focus on major giving, it doesn’t always mean that you have to start from scratch. If your organization already has a major giving strategy or program, it may just mean that it’s time for a tune-up in your tactics.

Consider your major giving cycle. Most cycles of fundraising, regardless of giving level, look something like this:

Identification
Qualification
Cultivation
Solicitation
Stewardship

These five steps are used as the foundation for most fundraising strategies. Find people who might like to give, research them further to determine if they’re a qualified prospect, build a relationship between them and your organization, make the ask, and then maintain a strong and healthy relationship with them after the gift is made.

In order to improve your major giving cycle, you have to quantify success and use those metrics to determine where your cycle is weakest.

Use your existing major giving and supporter analytics to determine at which step of the process your prospects usually drop out of the process. Are you having a difficult time finding qualified prospects? Or do you get all the way through the cultivation process and then are unable to seal the deal?

Once you analyze where your prospects are dropping off in the process, you can take a hard look at your strategies for that step and fine-tune things until you’re satisfied that you’ve fixed the leak. This isn’t a one-and-done process, however—don’t ignore your data from this fundraising cycle. Keep an eye on your prospect metrics to determine where you’re losing interest.

Improving the drop-off rate in your major giving strategy will increase the number of successful solicitations that your major gift officers can make.

5. Offer compromises.

If you find that your prospects are dropping off most severely during the solicitation process, it might be time to take a step back and reconsider your ask. The issue might not be that your major gift officers aren’t delivering an effective presentation—it might be that your prospects just aren’t willing or able to give that type of contribution right this moment, and don’t know that they have any other options.

If you want to increase your rates of successful solicitation, adjust your fundraising plan and offer your supporters different options. All roads lead to your nonprofit earning a major gift, but they all offer your supporters a different approach.

Some common alternatives or compromises to the traditional major gift include:

Breaking up a large gift over a period of months or years.
Deciding on a planned gift later instead of a major gift now.
Asking for a matching contribution if your team raises a certain amount in other gifts.

These options may be more attractive to your prospects or may make them more comfortable with giving such a large gift in smaller amounts than all at once. Your nonprofit still benefits from this approach, and it frees up your major gift officers to pursue other opportunities later.

Major gifts are important for the success of any nonprofit, so revitalize your major giving strategy by incorporating these fresh tips into your toolkit.

To take your major giving program to the next level, you should also consider working with a fundraising consultant. A consultant can help you take a critical look at what is working and what isn’t, and help you determine the best way forward.

Happy fundraising!

Author Bio

Bob Happy brings nearly 35 years of experience providing expert leadership and direction to clients across the not-for-profit sector to his current role as President of Averill Solutions. Before forming Averill Solutions, Bob served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the nation’s largest fundraising firm. He has mentored hundreds of professional fundraising practitioners and many have joined him at Averill Fundraising Solutions.

The post The 5 Best Strategies for Reeling in More Major Gifts first appeared on Snowball Fundraising.