Discussion Forums
Sat, 06/05/2010 - 07:51
We have done fundraising for the last couple of years. We have done garage sales....that's a lot of work. People were so gracious to donate items! We always made sure we had lots of signs.."Benefit Garage Sale" and I always had Lilly dressed up soooo cute to show off! hahaha! I even put up posters to explain Lilly's diagnosis and what we were raising the money for. And then we had a donation jar. If someone bought $2.50, I'd ask them if they would like to round up to 3.00 and it would go in the donation jar. Always did o.k. and some went really well and sometimes the donation jar was more $ than the sale!
Right now times are tuff. And I firmly believe people want to help children and families like ours even now. My sister is a stylist and she and some of her friends have done Free Haircuts. We usually do a couple Sundays. Advertise with friends and family. People get haircuts(which they have to get anyway...) and then they donate the cost to Lilly. I try not to advertise to strangers b/c I don't want people coming in we don't know and giving a buck for a haircut! You never know! But, if you can find someone that provides a service, no cost involved, that people still have to have even in hard times....there you go!
One way to use the internet to raise funds is events pages on facebook. We started this last fall. During Thanksgving and Christmas, we baked pumpkin rolls. I created the page, sent it out, asked friends to send it out and the first day sold 60!!! We ended up selling 320 rolls and about 3/4 came from fb! Just finished chocolate rolls and sold 100. That was by choice....I can only bake for so long! : ) You can use their events page for just about anything....advertising garage sales, benefits, anything!
Hope this helps someone have a light bulb moment! Good luck!!
Wow, Tara, that's a LOT of baking! But a great idea---a school group here has a Sub Sandwich sale every year...so that's an alternative to baking.
We've done Penny drives at schools and local businesses. Or ask schools (esp where your special needs child's sibs are) to do a hat or jean day...the kids pay $1.00 to wear a hat that day (or chew gum, or wear jeans or whatever!) I always offer to come in to do a talk about Simon's syndrome or something. This year the High School did a spare change jar in every class room and asked the HS students to drop their spare change in during the week.
We sell silicone bracelets with our cause on it.
A member in NY just had a poker tourny. Me and another mom did a Superbowl pool. You could do that for other sporting events too. Next year I'm going to do an Indy race one as well.
We did a cookbook. We've done Tupperware and Avon. Most consultants are very happy to do a fundraiser. One member had a ballet performance. Another does a scrapbooking day.
You could do a bowling night also.
I'll keep thinking :)
I don't know about you Tara, but just reading all that Gretchen does makes me tired. WAY TO GO Gretchen!! Those are great ideas.
Gretchen did you end up going and speaking at the school?
In 2009 we made over 500 long stem chocolate roses for mother's day. I got friends to take orders at work. We sold them for $5 a piece or $25 for half dozen.
Well, I didn't personally do ALL of them :) I spoke to the entire middle school. I made a few minute introduction of Simon and PKS to the high school student body and talked to the 2 kindergarten classes at Natalie's school.
We've done a few fundraisers. First of all though just mentioning it on Facebook to friends and family has generated thousands of dollars! There are very generous and caring people out there!.
So one thing I do is run marathons. And I look to people to sponsor me in a marathon or other race just to support our son's cause.
We also started a non-Profit organization so that they can have a Tax write off as well.
We also did a Poker Tournament that was great fun. It generated a couple thousand just from 40 people.
We hired on a Grant Writer to request donations from other orgaizations who contribute to non-profits using a Grant Proposal process. This can generate $500 - Thousands!
We approached Kohl's Retail stores who have a 500 dollar program to help kids in a fundraiser. They even sent 2 people to be at our fundraiser to help us that night.
We recently hired on an event coordinator to help us have a larger fundraiser. Another larger poker tourney is in the works.
We have hired on a Internet marketer as well to work on the marketing of our website www.helplucasmove.com to generate donations that way as well.
We know of a friend that does silent Auctions annually where she get's all of these donated items and sells them for huge dollars. She's made 15-25K in one night, but it's a lot of work. she allso does a benefit concert for her son, and a block party to benefit him.
We're thinking bigger now because all of the smaller events take just as much time as a big event with less return.
So good luck to you all!
Great site to use for fundraising is http://www.giveforward.com/
Our son is having surgery in a few weeks and a friend recommended this site to help with raising money. She herself used it to raise money for her cousin who has cancer. They raised 10,000! Check it out. http://www.giveforward.com/goomarigo