Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

Well the heat wave continues this summer. It makes me think of the importance of clean water in order to cope. Check out my previous blog entry on Schools for Water Charity event starting this month.

Take a deep breath because September is a busy month.

September is :
Childhood Cancer Awareness Month
World Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month
National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month
National Osteopathic Medicine Month
Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month
National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month
Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month

Weekly Observances:
5-11 Suicide Prevention Week
19-25 Deaf Awareness Week
19-25 Prostate Cancer Awareness Week

Daily Observances:
Sept 6 Labor Day
Sept 8 International Literacy Day
Sept 10 Stand Up to Cancer Day
World Suicide Prevention Day
Sept 13 National Celiac Awareness Day
Sept 17 Yom Kippur
Sept 18 World Water Monitoring Day
Big Whopper Lying Day
Sept 19 International Talk Like A Pirate Day
September 21 International Day of Peace
World Alzheimers Day
September 25 National One Hit Wonders Day
Spetember 26 World Heart Day

Our last post was about back to school fundraising ideas. Lets turn that on its head with schools doing the fundraising.

Charity water is starting a campaign for September called Water for Schools. It challenges schools to come together to fundraise for schools in developing nations. The need for clean water and sanitation is accute in the third world. A lot of kids who are school age are spending the day helping their parents getting food and water so the cycle of uneducated children continues.

Money collected will go towards clean water, clean sanitation and education. You might want to think about getting involved to whatever degree you can on this project. You can improve entire communities with your effort.

Go over to the water for schools page and read up on the project. It’s worth your time.

You might also want to consider fundraising for water with our products. We have water fundraising ideas that can help your school or class raise money for this cause.

For some parents this will be a wonderful time of year ( for kids this will be a time of biblical levels of pain. Sorry gotta be done kids…).

Many schools face strict funding restraints and parents are asked to provide more and more of their childs supplies. This is a squeeze on many schools and low income families. As parents you want to provide the best opporuntities for kids to learn and experience new things.
For some parents this is an added burden.

School fundraising plays an important part of providing the basics as well as giving the kids the extras. Library funding, computers, school sports, band, trips all rely on fundraising help.

The community can throw a school supply drive to gather the essentials for kids. These events can collect pencils, pens, rulers, calculators, textbooks. You can even ask for clothing items to provide gym clothes or winter jackets, hats and mitts.

Once school gets going you can ask The PTO and PTA’s to do a brainstorming session for ideas. Get the kids to participate in the fundraising. Asking them what they would like to fundraise for makes sure they are motivated to get it done.

You Can Help Out
justfundraisings list of fundraising ideas.
adoptaclassroom. You can sponsor a class or pick by different states or teachers.
Join ptotoday and keep up with what others are doing for their school.

What other ideas have you come up with for back to school fundraisers? Post your responses so others can learn.

The concept is the same as iTunes, Amazon MP3 and PlayDigital but with a built in charity component.

You can download and listen to your favorite music through fairsharemusic and half of the money generated goes to charity. The have over 8.5 million tracks to choose from. The service is British so they’ll charge you 79p for a track, which is roughly $1.25. A few of the charities they donate to are:

World Wildlife Fund
Oxfam
Amnesty International
British Heart Foundation
Centrepoint
Friends of the Earth

Fairsharemusic, which was founded by Jonny Woolf, a former commercial director at Warner Music, and Lee Cannon, a one-time A&R director at Mercury, estimates that if every legal song and album purchase made last year had been carried out through their site, charities would have received more than £9.5 million in donations.

Check out fairsharemusic listen to some tunes and help out.

Wow what a year 2010 is turning out to be. Catastrophe after catastrophe. It’s a rough year for sure.

take a deep breath… on to the next.

Check out this latest news report on the Pakistan flooding here.

You can make your donations at:
Red Cross
www.globalgiving.org
Let me suggest our scratch cards that you can get to help out those affected by the floods in Pakistan.

I think social media for charities and fundraising is still in its early stages.  Online platforms like facebook and twitter etc. are still jockeying for position. The only qualifiying yardstick for this should be effectiveness, which can be HUGELY different from popularity. We still haven’t seen what will turn out to be the fundraising media center on the web yet. Lets see what Jumo can come up with when it’s online.

When people think about an online campaign they think facebook causes and I see the logic. Facebook has TONS of traffic plus a cause page for every charity. That’s great and everything but the effectiveness of facebook for fundraising isn’t great.

According to the 2010 Social Media Bookmarks Study :

Only a small fraction of the 180,000 organizations on Facebook have raised more than $1,000.

Popular..YES
Effective..No
Not slagging facebook. What they do, they do very well. I’m merely stating that there are more effective ways to generate money for your causes.

Ok so where should you go to spread your impact on the web?

Razoo
100% of the money raised gets passed to the charities. Non Profits can start their own page and Razoo has a portable widget that you can port to other websites.

With twitter being ( argueably ) the next most influential social media outlet,Twitpay helps you generate money through retweets. Twitpay has a good system for generating donations, it’s quick, easy and has proven successful. The only issue I have with this service is their paystructure. I quote:

Twitpay only charges a percentage of the donations actually paid including a small per transaction fee.

Are they charging two fees here? Seems a little mysterious on this. I really think they could have been a more upfront with numbers on this.

Crowdrise
Our buddies at crowdrise do a fantastic job of gathering people at the grassroots level. This site is designed with the fun connectivity between people that makes facebook fun. Non Profits will find it easy to set up their presence as well. Crowdrise takes 7.5% for their expenses.

Those are just a few that I’ve taken a look at. What other systems have you tried and where do you fundraising through social media headed?

Well after a couple of quiet months August is very busy!

August is :
National Immunization Month
National Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month
National Water Quality Month
Childrens Eye Health and Safety Month
Psoriasis Awareness Month
Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month

Weekly Observances:

World Breastfeeding Week 1-7
Rock for Life Week 4-7
Weird Contest Week 15-20

Daily Observances:

1- Friendship Day
- Girlfriend Day
- Respect for Parents Day
- US Air Force Day
- Sisters Day
4 – National Chocolate Chip Day
5 – National Underwear Day
6- Hiroshima Day
7-National Mustard Day
8- Assistance Dog Day
10- National Duran Duran Appreciation Month ( yeah no kidding! )
12 – Vinyl Record Day
13- Blame Someone Else Day
15- Assumption of the Virgin Mary
21 – Hug Your Boss Day
- National Homeless Animals Day
- Senior Citizens Day
27 – Global Forgiveness Day

Scott Colby, a Texas personal
trainer, bootcamp instructor and fitness professional has pulled together 18 fitness trainers to give advice on muscle building and fat loss in exchange for a donation to the Amerian Cancer Society.

Says Scott:

Two weeks ago, I lost my uncle due to cancer.

It was a short battle – he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a couple months prior and it spread rapidly.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to go through a long drawn out battle with a lot of pain and suffering.

Over a decade ago, my father battled prostate cancer, but luckily was able to beat it.

In my dad’s case, they caught the cancer early and used some pretty innovative new treatment to cure him.

He’s been cancer-free ever since.

My family and I were very blessed that they caught it early and were able to successfully get rid of the cancer.

Which brings me to the question…

Do you know anyone who is battling cancer – maybe a friend or a family member?

Perhaps you’ve had a loved one pass away from this terrible disease.

In any case, I wanted to do something about it – to help fight the war against this disease.

I’ve put together a tele-fundraiser to help raise money to fight
cancer.

You can check out his page for the seminar at fitprosagainstcancer.org .and make a $20 donation to fight cancer. Although the live portion of this is over you can still buy the downloadable MP3′s with all the info.

I was thinking of the most common excuses you get when fundraising for charity and ways you can get around them.

I don’t have any money
I’m not asking for much Mr._____ I’ll even take a donation for $1. However if you make a donation for $5 you can have __________

Charities waste money
All charities need money in order to run. Office space, phones lines, heat and light have to be paid in order for a charity to survive. Some charities do spend a lot on administration but we only spend ______ .

I’ll look into it later
I understand that you are busy Mr._________ It’s just that in todays world people tend to get sidetracked and might not get around to it. I have a little pamphlet I can show you and explain where and how your donation will be spent.

My donation won’t amount to anything
Well Mr.______ even a donation of $3 to $5 can go towards _______. That’s roughly the cost of one latte at Starbucks. Helping our fundraising effort can benefit MANY people!

I already donate to a charity
Good for you Mr._________ ! Thank you for your support in helping out. I’m sure the other charity is happy to have your support. We can use your support as well and would gladly accept any size donation you can make. Don’t forget that we can issue tax receipts for any contribution over _______________

Those are the most common ones I’ve come across. What other reasons have you heard and how did you get past them?

Fundraising is important work and we give you help, encouragement and techniques when you work with us.

I just found gogreentube.com the environmental equivilant of youtube. You go to their website, register and every video you watch you receive a carbon credit.

GoGreenTube LLC was founded in March 2008 and was launched in June 2008. GoGreenTube strives to be the destination for the world to share and view green videos online that help provide important information about our environment, green technologies, innovations, products, and services so we as governments, corporations, organizations or individuals can “Go Green” using the most effective means possible.

The videos on the site are largely environmentally focused with categories from sustainability, green transportation, global warming. They also have a large collection of cooking videos and tips for home theatres. If you have ideas you can add your own videos to the collection.

ok, that’s it for the environment for awhile. I’ll post some fundraising stuff next. What would you guys like to talk about?