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.

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.

Ok so I’ve spent post after post recently telling you fundraising tips and new ideas in charties. Well the training wheels come off today boys and girls! It’s your turn to pick what you would like to support and get to it. Fly …. be free!

I’ve read about internet sources that help you raise money for causes that are important to you. I’ve come across one lately that I really like called crowdrise

Created by Edward Norton (yea the incredible hulk guy) and Shauna Robertson crowdrise helps people create fundraising projects and raise money for their causes. Create your profile and update it with stories, videos and pictures of what you are doing in your charity life. You can sign up with specific causes or vounteer opportunities to join other peoples.

It’s free to use and users can wind prizes like hats, t-shirts, along the way for donations. Crowdrise charges a 5% deduction from donations to stay in business so it’s very reasonable. The only small print that I saw is that it’s currently only donating to US charities. I would like to see this changed in the future when this business concept takes off. However I understand the legal complications of such an endeavor would be HUGE!

The Crowdrise brand is all about answering the call to service and having the most fun in the world while you do it.

While your working away at your fundraising don’t forget us at justfundraising.com maybe we can help you out along the way.

Now off you go and tell us what you’ve signed up for in the comments.

Raising money for Charitites, Schools, Sports teams and Churches can be challenging work. Fundraising professionals and volunteers are being asked to do more miracle work with fewer resources. This pressure over a prolonged time can lead to burnout and stress.

Here are a few symptoms and tips to recognize and prevent fundraising burnout in your vounteers or you.

If your approaching your next fundraiser and you:
- Lack of motivation
- Irritability
- Problems sleeping / changes in appetite
- Reduction in work

Take these steps:
-Take care of yourself which means getting plenty of rest and eating healthy food.

- Delegate tasks. Have a team of people around you that can run a portion of the campaign.

- Re-examine your goals. Are you shooting for the stars? You might have to consider lenghting the campaign or realistically altering the financial goal.

Preventing Volunteer Burnout

Actively seek ways to develop new leaders, pick someone and tell them they have shown the potential to do this job. Communitcate clearly with them what the position needs and check up with them frequently. This creates new blood in your organization plus gives the volunteers of your group, who are the pillars, a breather.

Keep a watchfull eye on your MegaVolunteers. Those people who volunteer for everything. They are the people who have the potential to show signs of fatigue. If you have to pull them off a team just explain diplomatically that you are keeping them in reserve and you would like to see other people step up and participate.

Thank your volunteers repeatedly for their service. Since they are there to help free of charge and you probably don’t have the funds to pay them, show the benefits of their effort. Let them know the improvements they have brought on throught their work.

Send Thank You notes or make a quick phone call to thank those people who have given of their time. If your able to maintain solid relations with your workers the chances are good they will return for more when they are asked.

Tell us how you’ve overcome your Fundraising Burnout in your and your organization.

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.

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

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Phillips has raised more than $75,000 for cervical cancer research in the past 10 days, just by posting a YouTube video.

I think of several things when watching this video. Strong family bonds, and the real reason people donate. Charities can show people all the charts and stats in the world but people donate because of an emotional connection. It’s because of this connection that the video has gone viral and people are passing this along.

Watch the video and if is strikes a cord consider making a donation

Chris Hughes one of the co-founders of facebook is coming out with a new site that focuses on linking people to the non profit world. 

“What I want to do is reach a point where people can’t say, ‘I want to help. I don’t know any good, meaningful opportunities to do so. What can I do?’” he says. “I want to create a world where that statement is no longer possible.”

The site is currently under construction so I’m unsure how this is going to be accomplished or if this is just another site where Charities and Non Profits are going to have to come to  explain what they are doing. Will this just add to their work load or finally connect them to their audience? 

“People have a genuine desire to engage with the world around them in a meaningful way, but the Internet just hasn’t yet caught up with that desire yet,” Chris said in an interview. 

I just wanted to let you know about my new startup called Jumo. We’re announcing today that we’re building an online platform to connect individuals and organizations working to change the world. We believe we can leverage the participatory web to foster long-term engagement with the issues and organizations that are relevant to each individual. Jumo has the potential to unlock a great deal of time, skills, and financial resources previously unavailable to organizations around the world.

When you get a second, take a look.

We’ll be launching the site with full capabilities this fall, but I wanted to let you know that we’re officially getting underway. If you know anyone who may be interested in working with us, please send them our jobs page to get in contact with us.

Talk to you soon,

Chris

P.S. I’d love for you to forward this email to friends, become our fan on Facebook , and let your friends on Twitter know. The more people that know about what we’re doing, the stronger the team we’ll be able to build.

http://www.jumo.com is in the development stage but plan to open their doors in the fall. Watch for it, I’m sure it’ll make a huge impact. We at http://www.justfundraising.com wish Chris the best of  luck, but with his track record I’m sure he’ll be ok.