Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

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.

Here’s an idea for getting involved for fundraising with whatever skills you have.

Jade Sims has a great idea with crafthope. People enjoy making crafts and it brings them peace, why not channel that into contributions for worthy causes. Quilting and craft volunteers fromthe United States, Germany, Australia, UK and Canada have sent in items for projects. Interested people go about creating scarves, pillow case dresses, quilts, bean bags etc for the project. Their efforts benefit a wide range of people and places around the world. A small sample of the causes they have donated to so far are: Little Heroes PreSchool Burn Camp, Liberia Orphan Education and the Miracle Foundation. They also have been active in helping Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. Their crafts are sometimes created for the recipient or sold to raise money.

Craft hope has a flicker group that shows their amazing work and the quantity the volunteers produce.

The next project that Jade is adding to is helping the animal victims of the BP oilspill. The crafthope group will work with The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, The Audubon Nature Institute and The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge to help clean the animals covered in oil.

So here is what we are going to do… They need hand towels and wash rags to clean all of the nooks and crannies of the dolphins and sea turtles. They only need small hand towels and wash rags, no large towels please.

If you can sew, knit, or crochet this project is for you. We are asking that you create sets of hand towels and/or wash rags to send. Preferably in sets of 10 or 20. These do need to be handmade since we are ‘Craft Hope.’ If you are crocheting or knitting, please send whatever you can. You don’t have to send a set unless it is something you are up for.

For more information check outh the crafthope website. Ladies and Gentleman grab your knitting needles and get to work!

If you want to go about fundraising for the oil spill or any other activity in a different way check out our products that you might want to use for a campaign.

There is a fantastic site called The Green Music Group comprised of musicians, music fans and music industry people who are trying to bring more sustainability to the music and touring scene. There has been criticism the past couple of years with the amount of power and co2 pollution concerts and touring groups produce.

Green Music Group is a project of

Reverb, a 501(c)(3) environmental organization founded by Guster guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner and his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan. Since 2004, Reverb has greened over 80 major music tours while conducting grassroots outreach to over 10 million music fans.

The goals of the environmental group are:

1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.

2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.

3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.

4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

The green group targets music venues, transportation, waste reduction and enery offsets to minimize the damage a tour may due.

Dave Mathews, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, Bonnie Raitt, Bare Naked Ladies, The Roots, Guster and more are involved in the project. The bands are hoping to inspire a shift in your environmental thinking as well. The Green Music Group have contests every couple of weeks to help motivate you. The latest one involves picturing yourself commuting in the most sustainable method you can think of. The industry would like you to get involved and keep in touch by signing up with an email list.

All in all a solid effort by this group to help think environmentally and get the audience involved.

The Make a Wish Foundation are real life heroes who help out people with life threatening illnesses. For thirty years they have been granting wishes, pulling from a network of 25,000 volunteers and people from every trade. Elton John, Beyonce, Michael Jordan, Jeff Gordon, John Cena are a few of the celebrities who take part in this foundation.

One of Make A Wishs’ latest adventures involved Electron Boy! After some dastardly shennigans in Seattle involving Dr.Dark and Blackout Boy, Eric Martin received a call from Spiderman himself and was called into action as ELECTRON BOY!

If your excited about Electron Boy check out his facebook group. It would be nice to see a comic for the continuing adventures of Electon Boy. Just putting that out there.

The Make A Wish Foundation International has chapters in 36 countries. All told the number of wishes granted maybe just short of 500,000! They are always looking for people who would like to volunteer so if you can spare a few minutes, you too could ease suffering, change a life and become a super hero.

I’ve got another great charity idea for you.
How about drinking coffee? Yup, it’s that simple, Maxwell House is brewingsomegood with it’s marketing campaign geared toward charity.

The Maxwell House Brew Gooder ( gotta love that! ) team gives out coffee samples and donate to good causes. They  accept submissions from charities ( not sure if these are international organizations or just Canadian ) to be sponsored.

Here are some of the latest commercials from their Brew Some Good Campaign:

Hats off to Maxwell House. It’s nice to see such a big organization stepping up to the plate and helping out in such a big way. I’d also like to include us in that category www.justfundraising.com helps supports charitable organizations.

Next time your looking for a cup of coffee pick up Maxwell House. It’s a simple way to feel like a superhero for saving the world by drinking coffee.

Brew some good..and watch the goodness grow.

The video says it all

Well that’s funny isn’t it? No sooner do I do a post about Cate Blanchett’s SolarAid charity and mention that I’m a big Indiana Jones fan, then he’s in the news.

Harrison Ford combined his fascination for flying and a willingness to help out by personally flying out medical volunteers and supplies to Haiti from the Dominican Republic for the charity Operation Smile.
The organization provides reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate. I didn’t know that the severity of the condition can leave some kids unable to even eat. For a more in depth look at the oranization check out this page

I’m not trying to take away the spotlight on Haiti nor the hard work and little publicity that the doctors and volunteers get who are already there, but I am happy to show people I’m interested in do help out.

I have chosen…..wisely.

All right we’ve survived 2009. I’m sure a lot of you are glad to see it over. You’ve had to work three times as hard for the same flatline results for your fundraising. You might have to chaulk that up to a victory this year. Things look better for 2010 though.

Charities have had to work harder to maintain what they’ve got let alone add new services. They’ve had to battle less impulse giving from donors and little movement from ceo’s. Maybe the slow moving ceo’s have a point, maybe you have to watch and wait for the right time to put new ideas on the table. One thing is for certain it builds a lot of frustration from your fundraising team asking more of them and giving them less to do it with.

Maybe it’s me….I think we all need to take some time off and come back in 2010 with renewed enthusiasm!?

What trials and tribulations have you and your team faced this year and how did you get past it?

What are you and your community service club or charitable organization looking forward to in 2010?

Onward and upward I guess….

Ok so I’m not really on a Matt Damon kick but as I’ve said before I talk a lot about clean water, and do does Mr. Damon. I posted a blog last month on Matt’s shalle we say unique fundraising “technique.” You don’t say no to Matt Damon when he’s out looking for contributions!

Anyway this video outlines that it’s tough for people who don’t have clean water but it also mentions that there’s hope. Nothing can stand in the way of people with the will to change the situation. All barriers must eventually fall before willpower. But action is required.

Do you think we could find 10 people (or more) who would be willing to raise funds next year to help sponsor well drilling? Do we have any takers on that? Do you have any questions on that? It’s just an idea that I’m putting out there to see the amount of interest that could be generated.

Tell me what you think

So I was reading through some questions on yahoo answers and came across a really good one. A high school student was wondering why he should volunteer, which got me thinking of the benfits of volunteering. I mean lets face it it’s hard to sometimes to put in the effort and it’s not exactly evil to get a benefit out of helping someone else. Sometimes it’s what volunteering gives you that makes it worth while.

I then started thinking about the work experience part of volunteering. When you go for a job interview they can always turn you down one of two ways: No courses /No Experience.

I’ve always subrscribed that experience beats theory any day of the week. Now I’m not putting down studying but volunteering , especially when it’s related to your chosen field can be well worth your effort. If you are willing to donate a few hours a week there’s a cause or organization that would take you.

There are a lot of kids out there who would like to help animals or spend time in a hospital. This of course benefits the animal or patient and gives the kids real world credentials, plus networking and social skills. By the time that they are applying for jobs can you imagine the strength of their resume!

If you are out of work in this economy and looking for new opportunities then it really pays to volunteer. It opens new doors, gives you new experiences and can take your mind off of your self. Volunteering gives you leadership and organizational capabilities. Some positions even give you visibility with administrators and managers. People give big money to schools to develop these skills. It may be high time to consider getting them for free and helping others in the meantime.

That’s me just ranting….what are your thoughts?