6 Ways to Motivate Your Fundraising Group

Motivate your group with prizes, prizes and more prizes. Here are a few ideas to help you motivate your members and maximize your sales.

1. Intangible Prizes:

These ones have no cash value but are proven motivators and provide great entertainment. A few examples include:

a) allow the participants to throw cream pies at the organizers’ faces if the goal is reached! (not sure if you’ll like this one but it usually gets the money raised)

b) have the principal sleep on the roof of the school or the group leader(s) sleep somewhere awkward if the goal is achieved. Set an even bigger goal to extend the number of days they must sleep there.

c) let the group have an activity of their choice instead of the normal schedule (for example: a free afternoon of sports activities in the school yard instead of class)

2. Raffles:
For each achieved mini goal (ex. for every 10 units sold or $100 in sales reached) the participant gets their name put in the raffle for various merchandise. The more they sell, the more times they can have their name put in the raffle and the more chances they have to win.

3. Top Seller Grand Prize:
Give a Grand Prize to your top seller. It may be a computer, a bike, movie tickets, cash or anything else that inspires your group members. Don’t get carried away and offer something your group can’t afford.

4. Top Class or Team Prizes:
This is a great way to motivate the kids and get them working as a team- perfect synergy! If you’re a small group, you can create teams by putting your members in groups of twos, threes or fours. If you’re a school you can do it by class and if you’re a league simply do it by team. You can offer the best selling group a free pizza party, a field trip outing to the place of their choice.ask them what they’d like.

5. Individual Completion Prizes:
Individual completion prizes are very good because they are risk-free for your organization. Once your member raises a certain amount THEN they receive their incentive gift.For example: Receive $10 cash for every $100 of product sold. Other completion prizes may be a gift certificate to a music, video, book, or sports store.

6. Early Bird Prizes:
You can offer early bird prizes to the first, second and third person who reaches a specific objective by a certain deadline. For example: if you launch the fundraiser on Monday, you can say the first three people that generate $100 in sales or more by Friday will receive a $15 gift certificate.
Also Remember:

Solicit Sponsors for Prizes
You can get many prizes for free by simply soliciting the local restaurants, sports, book and music stores, as well as other local retailers. Tell them what it’s for and offer to mention their name in the parent letter and at the campaign launch.

Get the Right Prizes
What could be worse than no incentive prizes? Investing in incentive prizes which simply don’t motivate your members! Make sure the prizes you get are relevant to your member’s age group and interests. Ask them what they’d like to receive as incentives given a certain budget.