The Greatest Paradox of FUNdraising: Money

Raising money requires MONEY?!

Raising money requires money? That’s right. Fundraising is a bit of a Catch-22. You’re trying to raise funds for some cause, yet in order to raise those funds you need to have funds on hand to cover your expenses. And if you’re got a $0 budget, that idea seems daunting.
Sometimes, you have to host a fundraiser for your fundraiser. Something small, just to get a start-up cash inflow, so that you can pay for things like advertising or ticket printing. Some great ideas that have been tried and true are baked goods sales, yard sales, or home-made craft sales. Here’s a huge alphabetical list of some other ideas that may work for your organization or cause. The main goal for these fundraisers is that you spend as little as possible so as to bring in 100% of the proceeds to put in the budget for your other fundraiser.  If everyone in your organization volunteers to bake some cookies, then all of the profit from your Bake Sale can go into your budget and no one is required to spend a large amount on start-up expenses.

Effortless FUNdraising

Have you ever considered fundraising without actually meeting people face-to-face?

Some charities have explored the use of social media for fundraising, and their ideas have been very successful. Take charity: water for instance. Charity: water is a non-profit that seeks to raise funds to build wells in developing countries in order to bring fresh, clean drinking water to the people that need it the most. How do they do it? Well, each well cost around $5,000, and people register on charity: water’s website to raise the $5K to build a well. Most people are raising awareness and funds through online donations, using Twitter as a huge advertising and promoting tool.

In my social media class, we have joined charity: water’s efforts and are trying to raise money for a well in Africa. We have tried some face-to-face events, but we are hoping to use our Facebooks and Twitter accounts and blogs to promote our cause and direct people to our charity: water webpage. Through our online efforts, we can easily raise our $5K goal and send the money off to build a well.

But the donations don’t just stop there. Charity: water has made it possible for donors to track their money and watch the construction of their well, and when it is finished, a placard with the donor’s name will be placed on the well. How cool is that?!

So what’s the take home point here? FUNdraising doesn’t have to involved a lot of preparation, hard work, and effort, but rather it can be as simple as posting an eye-catching video and asking your neighbors to lend a hand. So why not? Everyone needs clean water, and you are just the right person to make that difference in the world. Make your difference here.

Mapping Out a General Calendar

Hopefully your To Do list will be a little more detailed than this!

Once you’ve appointed some people to lead your committees, it’s time to start mapping out your event. An easy way to start this is to set out a calendar of tasks that need to be accomplished from now until the day of your event. To do this, you may assign each committee some broad goals, and then  let each committee decide how they will reach their individual goals.

This initial planning step may be difficult if it’s the first time you’re planning an event. The inaugural events are always the hardest to map out and plan, because you have no prior guidebook to help you think through all the aspects of the event. But with close attention to detail, you can still put on an incredible event!

With my Pancakes for Parkinson’s event, I started from scratch.  No one at UGA had ever hosted Pancakes before, so I had to lay a very solid groundwork that others could use when hosting the event in the future. So, after recruiting volunteers to lead my four committees, I mapped out a basic calendar for us to follow:

Jan-Feb: OUTREACH & FUNDRAISING. Lots of sponsorship seeking in the Athens community and trying to get the word out about our event. “Planting the Seed” is what I called this phase.

Feb-Mar: OUTREACH & FUNDRAISING. Continued sponsorship seeking from businesses in Athens, also starting to seek donated items/supplies for the event.

Mar-Apr: ADVERTISING & continued outreach/fundraising. We needed to launch our advertising campaign the week after Spring Break, which gave us about four weeks until the event to get the word out to family, friends, students, Athens residents, alumni, etc.

Apr-Event: OUTREACH. Planning all the last minute details, seeking volunteers for the day of the event and assigning tasks to each volunteer, getting all of the decorations and supplies for the event.

Now of course our calendar became more detailed then that, but for a general guide, this is what we hoped to accomplish in the long run, and as time went along, we filled in a LOT of planning details. Sometimes starting very basic and general is the best way to get into planning, because otherwise trying to think of all the little details ahead of time would drive you crazy! You’d have a huge To Do list that would intimidate you out of trying to plan the event! So start small, and as always, WRITE IT ALL DOWN

What is the Hardest Part of Event-Planning?

YOU TELL ME!

What do you think is the most difficult aspect of event-planning? Leave a comment with your response!

Which do you think is most difficult?

1. Generating an idea.
2. Delegating tasks to committees.
3. Asking people for donations and/or sponsorships.
4. Designing fliers, logos, decorations.
5. Selling tickets and getting the word out to the masses.
6. Fine-tuning all of the last minute details.

Jump Into the Planning Process: Part II

Now with budget, calendar, and idea in hand, it’s time to start looking for some help. That’s right, it’s time to delegate.

Committees are an easy way to distribute tasks

First, you’ll need to create committees that will be in charge of a certain aspect of your event plan. For Pancakes for Parkinson’s I created four committees: Fundraising, Advertising, Outreach, and Operations.

Next, you need to create job descriptions or assign duties for each of those committees. This makes it easy for the committee members to know what they are responsible for. If this is your first attempt at planning your event, then the original committee description may be a rough draft, and may be edited as you progress further through the planning process. For Pancakes, here are my committee descriptions:

FUNDRAISING: in charge of all monies, sponsorships, ticket sales, and small fundraisers.

ADVERTISING: in charge of creating slogan, logo, designing fliers, tickets,  t-shirts, decorating sponsors banner, and managing advertising campaign.

OUTREACH: in charge of going into the community to seek sponsorships and donated items and designing thank-you cards.

OPERATIONS: in charge of all day-of-event duties, making sure we have all items and supplies for event, seeking volunteers, creating volunteer schedule, decorating on day of event, and booking entertainment.

Then, it’s time to find people to lead these committees. These people will be your private council, the ones you meet with regularly to make sure their committees are accomplishing goals and tasks. For some leaders, the idea of assigning tasks to other people sounds wonderful, but for other leaders, the idea sounds dreadful. If you think you can do the job better than anyone else, I encourage you to challenge yourself to delegate tasks. If you try to do everything on your own, it will much more stressful, and depending on the size of your event, you may not be able to handle it all. So look for some people with a shared interest in your cause, and see if anyone will volunteer to be a committee chair. If the people volunteer to lead a committee, then you know that they are committing themselves to the group. When you choose someone, they are less likely to be passionate about the committee.

Once you have your committees and leaders, HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE for their responsibilities. You don’t need to be doing everyone’s work! You’ll find it a great blessing when people help out. DON’T FORGET TO THANK EVERYONE FOR THEIR WORK AND EFFORT all the time, because it keeps the morale up and makes people more willing to take on responsibilities. Good luck, and thanks for reading this post

Jump Into the Planning Process: Part I

So now that you have your goals hammered out, it’s time to start working to achieve them. What’s first?

Well, if you need approval for your event, I say that is most important to attain.

My event is being hosted through the Undergraduate Neuroscience Organization at UGA. As a student organization, we must comply with all rules and regulations of the Center for Student Organizations, which means that all fundraisers must be approved by the CSO office. So, I submitted an application for fundraiser approval over Winter Break in hopes of being approved by January.

It’s really important to go over the rules that you must abide by, so that your idea doesn’t come to a crashing halt a couple weeks before the set date because you didn’t realize serving food was not allowed. Sometimes I like to say ask for forgiveness, not permission, but in these cases, it’s IMPERATIVE that you make sure you’re in the clear.

Keep a Calendar or Planner with Tasks to do and Tasks accomplished

Once permission has been granted, it’s time to come up with a rough outline and budget. Think of what needs to be done between today and the day of your event, and decide which things are most important, what will take the most time to implement, last minute details… and create a calendar based on that. It’s better to overthink than to underthink the details! This also applies to a budget – think about everything that you might need to buy for the event. Research pricing of the items, reservation fees, etc, and put all of the information into an excel spreadsheet. Come up with a budget assuming you have to pay for everything. Then think about which items on that list you could possibly get donated, and make a list of places to contact for those donations.  Could you have a zero-budget event? Maybe! You can also calculate a budget with your “potentially donated items” factored in.

For my event, I was fortunate enough to have received a materials list/budget from TEAM FOX. I personalized it and created both an all-expense budget and one with donated items factored in. My event is budgeted with some donated items at $800.

 

My Goals

Goals, Goals, Goals... Write 'em Down!

After a personal brainstorming session – yes, I did draw one of those web, mind-maps on paper – I finally came up with some ideas to start planning the fundraiser.

First, I created some goals. Well, not only created, but I wrote them down. Writing down my goals was not easy! In my head I knew why I wanted to plan this fundraiser and what I wanted to accomplish, but when I tried to put my goals into clear and concise statements, I realized how vague my ideas actually were. Forcing myself to think through the details helped me to create concrete and tangible goals for my event. You may also find the process of goal-writing to be difficult, but when you sit down and think it through, you will produce very clear aims that will be easier to achieve and easier to measure your success with.

And now, drumroll please, here are my goals for the Pancakes for Parkinson’s fundraiser:

1. For the Undergraduate Neuroscience Organization to donate $5,000 to TEAM FOX.

2. For the event to raise awareness of Parkinson’s Disease in the Athens community.

3. For the event to honor those affected by Parkinson’s Disease.

4. For the event to become an annual tradition.

These goals are overarching ideals that I hope to accomplish through my event. As I become more involved in the planning process, I will create many smaller goals to accomplish along the way. But for the big picture, this is what I hope to achieve by Sunday, August 17, 2011 (the day after my event)!