Non-profit fundraising is all about multiple streams of income, so how do you make more money for your organization?

Simple. When you put together your annual plan, you need to include as many ways to raise money as possible.

So, you’re probably thinking: ‘That’s easy for you to say, but how exactly do I go about it?’ Easy! You just have to be “smart” about it, with a well thought-out plan that doesn’t make too many demands on any one facet of your organization.

Every fundraiser that you conduct places various demands on your volunteers, your supporters, and your leadership. Those demands can be time consuming, expensive, and stressful.

The more large-scale fundraisers you conduct in one year’s time, the greater the load you place on the people you depend on.

You need to be ’smart’ in how you go about your fundraising.

Four Keys to Non-Profit Fundraising:

Think Smart
Plan Smart
Work Smart
Be Smart

Non-Profit Fundraising – THINK SMART
Thinking smart means taking the time to review past results and strategizing about how to do better this year.

If you don’t spend some time brainstorming some new and creative ideas to increase your bottom line, how are you going to rise above last year’s results?

Define your three best income streams. Now, daydream a little about what changes or enhancements you can make that will add additional volume to those streams.

Non-profit fund-raising is all about reaching more people with a compelling message that inspires them to take immediate action to assist your organization.

How can you reach more people? By exploiting two things – personal networks and personal motivators.

Your non-profit fund-raising has to be structured to achieve maximum leverage of everyone’s self interest by providing sufficient incentives for giving time or money to your cause.

How can you make your message more compelling? By giving it ’story-like’ visual imagery that speaks to your supporters emotions.

Decisions are made on an emotional level, not a logical one. A ’story’ allows people to visualize their contribution having a positive impact on what they’ve visualized.

How can you inspire a higher percentage to immediate action? By combining your story with a call to action.

A call to action leverages the immediacy of the emotional reaction to your story with a request to help now BECAUSE their contribution will have a positive impact.

Everyone wants to help. They just have to be properly coached about your situation and motivated to act now.

Non-Profit Fundraising – PLAN SMART
Planning smart means taking concrete action to put your ideas into an annual business plan. Yes, I did say ‘business plan.’

No self-respecting, non-profit fund-raising organization should be without a written business plan to guide their fundraising efforts.

Your plan should spell out roles and goals along with detailed instructions on how you’ll get there. It should be grounded in the past and targeted at the future.

Each non-profit fund-raising activity should be broken down into the necessary action steps that will produce the highest level of results with the most cost-effective effort.

Everyone should know exactly what’s expected of them. A well-organized team where everyone understands their role is able to execute their mission flawlessly.

Everyone should know and be able to state your group’s value proposition.

If they can’t articulate, in two sentences or less, a convincing reason why you are raising funds, then you need a plan that helps communicate your message more effectively.

Non-Profit Fundraising – WORK SMART
Working smart means taking your plan and putting it into action with an eye towards getting the most bottom line results from every facet of your organization.

You’ll get the best long-term results if you stay focused on not overburdening your volunteers, your supporters, and your leadership. Overworking volunteers will ensure that many will not be around to help next year.

Too many demands for small donations will alienate your group’s supporters. Structure your non-profit fund-raising requests to two or three campaigns in a year’s time, no more.

Size those non-profit fund-raising campaigns to get the most from each time your supporters are asked to make a contribution.

Continuous fundraising will wear out your leadership as well. Your key personnel will be spending most of their time on organizing and conducting campaigns.

You want to keep everyone fresh and motivated. Do that by having a well thought out plan that maximizes the value of everyone’s time, energy, and contributions.

Non-Profit Fundraising – BE SMART
Being smart means taking the time NOW to begin a ‘Get Smart’ effort about your non-profit fund-raising efforts.

Start the brainstorming process now.

Get a small journal and start recording any and all ideas you have, day or night, about improving your fundraising. Some of them will be duds, but others will be gems.

Sure, the gems will be rough and will need polishing, but you won’t have any gems at all if you don’t let your creative juices run wild.

Just write them down as they occur to you and keep adding to the ones that make the most sense in the light of day.

Hey, if it worked for Edison and Einstein, it can work for you.

Start writing down all the ways that you can think of to create multiple streams of income for your organization.

Get your non-profit fund-raising planned and organized, then watch the money flow in.

Fundraising Ideas For Your Next Fundraiser is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

Never allow door-to-door sales without direct adult supervision. Period.

In a sad case, an 11-year-old boy selling candy for a PTA fundraiser came to the door of a 15-year-old boy who was home alone at the time. The youngster was invited inside, sexually molested, and then murdered.

This is not an urban legend. The murder happened in Freehold, New Jersey on September 27, 1997 and it raised the fundraising safety issue to national prominence.

I’m not usually an alarmist, but I included the example above to heighten awareness of the safety topic.

I am by nature a trusting person, but not when it comes to my children! Nothing is worth such devastating consequences.

Develop An Appropriate Safety Focus
So, how do you build the appropriate safety focus into your program?
You start by stressing safety from the top of your organization to the bottom. You have to make sure that safety is a focal point in all your communications.

1) Use written selling guidelines
Put it into writing that all selling should be supervised. Your organization needs this as a protective measure and so do the children. If an adult cannot commit to accompanying a child, the child must not perform that type of sales activity.

Make sure that each child’s parents are aware of these guidelines. Get the message to them that their children are not being encouraged to sell outside their comfort zone by your group.

Tell them that they should focus on their core contacts – family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers of parents. In other words, e safe by selling only to individuals who know your parents.

2) Repeat the message
Put up fundraising safety posters at convenient locations to remind young sellers. Make them friendly, but firm.

Example: “What’s the last thing you do in a fundraiser? Sell without an adult present.”

Print a safety message on all of your sales literature. Look for this from a quality supplier. Put the “Keep It Safe” message on all communications.

Repeat the safety message at every opportunity. Cover it in your kickoff meeting, during sales brochure distribution, in the take home package, etc.

If your fundraiser is school-based, have teachers reinforce the safety message in the classrooms.

3) Put safety into practice
Don’t encourage inappropriate behavior such as risk taking, unsupervised sales, shopping center sales activity without prior approval and adult supervision.

Your group’s policies and procedures may vary from this approach.

The important thing is to develop a written policy and make sure those guidelines are followed.

Summary

The best way to avoid an unsafe situation is by not going there. Many other youth programs also carry a strong safety message. Make sure yours does too.

Fundraising Ideas: Keep It Safe is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

1) Increase community awareness of your need

2) Increase community awareness of your offering

Everybody reading this instantly thinks, “Yep, we’ve got that covered. Everybody in our group knows what we’re doing.”

Let’s take a closer look and see, shall we?

Creating Awareness Of Your Fundraising Need:
1) Can your need be expressed in a single sentence?
2) Has everyone in your group memorized that sentence?
3) Is expressing your need a part of your approach to all supporters?

Test your group from top to bottom.

Randomly ask individuals to tell you why your group is raising money.

I absolutely guarantee you that you’ll be surprised at how weak the various answers are.

In many groups, more than 50% of those involved with the fundraiser will not be able to tell you in a single sentence the specific reasons why they are raising money.

What about outside your group?

Can you honestly say that you’ve exhausted every possible approach in getting the word out to the community about your fundraiser?

Does everybody know why you need money?

Have you done each of these?

Flyers
Posters
Press release
Roadside signs
Newspaper coverage
Public service radio announcements
Pre-kickoff letter, postcard, or email campaigns

Or, are you assuming that all you have to do is tell someone that you’re doing a fundraiser and that they’ll be glad to help?

Two problems with that approach. One is that most of your group can’t effectively communicate your need.

The second is that you are already assuming that your group has more than enough prospective supporters to meet your goal.

Both these problems limit your potential results.

Consider these three points:

One, if your need isn’t communicated clearly and concisely, it will not be understood and internalized as a deserving cause by your prospective supporters.

Two, if your sellers don’t really understand your group’s need, then they won’t push as hard to meet that need.

Three, if your need isn’t general knowledge in your community, then your fundraising job will be that much harder.

Think of “getting the word out” as being similar to softening up the beachhead during the Normandy invasion. If you don’t do the advance prep work, you’re much more likely to meet a hostile response.

Creating Awareness Of Your Fundraising Offering
The second fundraising fundamental goes hand-in-hand with creating an awareness of your need.

Creating an awareness of your offering is just as important as telling people why your group needs money.

Your fundraising need and your fundraising offering should be closely linked in all your communications.

At the same time you are getting the word out, you need to make sure the message gets through on exactly what your group is doing to raise funds.

Just as with expressing your need, everyone in your group should be able to sum up your fundraising offering in a single sentence.

That sentence should also reinforce the emotional foundation that is derived from recognition of your need.

So what in the heck does all that mean?

Put simply, if someone believes your need is real and agrees with the value proposition of your offering, they will help you.

And what’s your fundraising value proposition?

It’s a summation of your offering, combined with a reminder of your need, that’s expressed in a way that informs each prospective supporter of what’s in it for them.

In other words, your prospect needs to:

1 – Be aware of your need
2 – Be linked to it on an emotional level
3 – Be in agreement that your offer has real value in it for them

Getting your need and your offering across to as many potential supporters as possible is the essence of fundraising.

Take the time to develop single sentence statements for your fundraiser covering both of these fundraising fundamentals.

Teach everyone in your group how to communicate these basic value statements when they talk to prospective supporters.

Conclusion

Executing well on these fundraising fundamentals — communicating your need and communicating your offering — ensures that your fundraiser will be a smashing success.

Fundraising Fundamentals is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

There are a lot of different ways your youth group can raise the funds they need. In this article, I will explore some of those with you and try to help you avoid some of the pitfalls. I will let you benefit from my experience and I will help you avoid some of my mistakes.

Let’s start right off with candy. I have tried to use candy as a fundraising tool on more than one occasion for more than one youth group.

Pros and Cons of using candy as a youth group fundraiser.

Pros: Candy is cheap and can be sold for a great profit for your youth group. Everyone likes candy, so it’s a fairly easy sale, especially if you go with name brand candy. The candy is cheap enough that most people have enough money in their pocket to purchase it.

Cons: Candy melts. Trust me on this. Candy melts and when it does, your profits melt with it as you try to clean whatever it melted all over. The members of your youth group eat Candy and when the parents have to pay for all the candy YOU let their child eat, you get phone calls. Trust me on this. You get a lot of phone calls. Candy smells. Trust me on this. Wherever you store the candy will smell like candy forever. Bigger children steal candy from smaller children and again parents end up paying for the candy and you get the phone calls.

Coupon Books are another commonly used Youth Group Fundraiser.

Pros: Some coupon books are filled with free stuff and everyone loves free stuff! Your youth group can raise as much as $10 per coupon book so they need to make less sales to reach their goals.

Cons: Everyone still has last year’s coupon book. None of the coupons have been used. They never have it with them whenever they go somewhere they might have been able to use it for. I have been to a door to sell coupon books and had a guy hand me 7 unused coupon books as his donation. He said if I resold those, I would be able to raise more money than if he just bought one again this year. Coupons expire. They usually have a cost of about $10 to $15 per book, but of course the children in YOUR youth group will never lose any of them and their parents won’t be calling YOU, like with the candy.

Basically, every fundraiser your youth group takes on will come with responsibility and they all have their pros and cons. However, if you look for a product that has the following features, I believe you will have a more successful fundraising opportunity for your youth group.

1. Choose products that do not melt, expire, rot, or otherwise perish.

2. Choose products that do not have a large cost per unit, no matter what the profit.

3. Choose products that everyone uses and will get a lot of uses from. Something they will remember being very useful will get them to continue supporting your youth group.

4. Choose products that do not require a lot of storage space.

5. Choose products that are popular like things with the donor’s favorite major league baseball or football team logo on them.

If you follow those simple rules, your youth group fundraiser will be easy to manage, you won’t end up stuck with a lot of leftover product to store, your storage area won’t smell, you won’t need to clean up messes, and best of all, the parents of your youth group participants won’t be calling you.

Fundraising For Youth Groups is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

The backbone of any fundraising campaign is the appeal to donors for contributions. The problem many organizations run into during this phase of their fundraising efforts is that they have neglected to keep their donors engaged with their organization since their previous appeal for support. The donor no longer feels engaged by, or attached to, your organization in any meaning way. What distinguishes your organization or non-profit from the next?

We advise all of our clients to develop strong relationships with their donors and supporters. In the non-profit sector, these relationships play a significant role in the success of any given campaign. In some cases, these relationships can make or break an organization. Keep in mind that appeals for support are not always of the monetary type. Organizations of every type need support staff, and your donor list is an ideal place to search for new recruits.

One of the most important elements of fundraising is strategic planning, and your donor list can provide you with a lot of useful information. For instance, a well organized donor list can provide you with information about the types of causes a certain individual tends to support. By studying the types of initiatives an individual supports, you can make relatively educated guesses about their receptiveness to your current efforts. By organizing and tracking this data, you can save your organization valuable time and resources that could be used more effectively in another area.

A number of organizations purchase their donor lists from a third party. While this may be the most convenient solution, it is certainly not the most effective. It is imperative for any organization that is serious about fundraising to develop a proprietary donor list. This is a significant point that is often overlooked. By building your own donor list, you become engaged with the people in your community. These are the people that will support your organization over the long term, and the ones most likely to get involved.

Fundraising and the Business of Relationships is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

In fundraising, you need to consider two things. First, you need to understand what the percentage of sales you will receive through the fundraiser. This information should be in writing and put right in front of you before you start with the company. Simply, how much are you going to make off of each sale that is made?

Secondly, you’ll need to insure that the products that are being sold as a fundraising tool are worth it. Perhaps they are marked up some to help you get your profits, but they still have to be some type of product that people need if you want them to purchase it. For example, you may want to have a fundraiser that provides Christmas purchases at that time of year. Or, in the middle of winter, a fundraiser could be hot chocolate, candies and candles. When the product is something that the individuals will want, they will be more than likely to make a purchase.

How you present the information is important as well. Make sure to tell your prospective customers that you are raising money for the Boy Scouts or you are helping to afford the school a new computer. When they know what the money is going towards, people are more generous as well.

By taking the time to plan well for your fundraiser, it can be more successful than you realize. If you plan to do fundraising, do it with your best foot forward every time.

Fundraising, Successfully is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

Candle fundraisers are your basic order taker fundraiser. You need to do more than just show pictures of candles. Showing fragrant samples will dramatically boost your candle fundraiser’s results.

The basic concept is the same as all order taker fundraisers. You equip your sellers with a brochure, an order form, and a basic sales script.

The brochure describes the various candle selections and provides details on color, aroma, size, shape, weight, and container type. Price points are usually on the order form itself.

Unlike candy or cookie dough, it’s easy for your sellers to carry samples. Their non-perishable nature makes them a great fit for weeklong sales efforts.

One of the great things about candle fundraisers is how the aroma of your samples makes the selling process so much easier. Most buyers will sniff several samples and imagine how the candles will fill their homes with their pleasant smells.

Perennial favorites are french vanilla, bayberry, apple, pumpkin spice, apple cinnamon, holiday pine, melon burst, and citrus breeze.

Candle sizes range from small two-ounce votive candles all the way up to giant three-pound ball or bell-shaped versions with multiple wicks.

Several fundraising companies have candles in decorative shapes like various fruits, animals, wizards, trees, and figurines. In addition, large rectangles, cylinders, half-rounds, and tapers are always readily available.

Some companies also offer container-based candles which burn more slowly and safely. They also avoid messy cleanup problems. Popular styles are Mason jars, jars with handles, jars with screw tops, and square glass containers.

Profitability
Most fundraising companies offer their candles at a 50% discount. Some suppliers also offer a larger discount for higher volume sales.

The average seller makes five to seven sales. Many of these sales are multi-unit buys, so they average about $80 in revenue. That translates to roughly $40 in profit per seller, which is quite good.

Factors affecting your candle fundraisers profitability include freight charges, quantity discounts, quality of the brochure, number of available candle choices, the motivation level of your sellers, and the duration of your fundraising activities. And of course, the most important factor is having fragrant samples in the hands of your sellers.

This product works well for both elementary school and high school fundraising.

Larger groups can easily earn a quantity discount above 50%. As always, do an RFQ fax quote to the candle supplier list and lock-in your best possible discount up front.

Fundraiser Candles for Your Group is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

To keep everyone’s interest from waning, make sure that you include fun in your fundraiser each step of the way.

Ten ways to put fun in your fundraising:
1- Do fun things
2- Use fun incentives
3- Take pictures
4- Show appreciation
5- Give out fun merchant prizes
6- Build in fun goals
7- Blend fun, food and fundraising
8- Create fun completion activities
9- Say thank you
10- Have a cast party

Do fun things
Don’t make it drudgery to be a volunteer or a participant. Remember that they’re giving up their free time to help.

Plan fun things to do during each stage of the process that will reward everyone. Not only will it be a more rewarding experience for everyone involved, but you will keep your participants and volunteers eager for the next fundraiser.
And we all know there will be another one sooner rather than later!
Make sure they remember the fun, not just the hard work.

Use fun incentives
Offer a Cream Pie Attack party to all sellers or participants reaching a certain level. Have a fun day where key organizational figures do funny things for meeting goals.

Extreme examples include shaving their heads or dyeing their hair blue.

Some safer, less long-lasting examples could be wearing a funny wig, dressing like a clown, risk the dunking booth, and so on.

Be creative and use an idea that is appropriate to your group.

Kids and adults love these types of incentives and they don’t cut into your hard earned cash.

Take fun pictures
Everybody loves to see themselves in a picture. Take plenty of candid shots. Have everybody pose and ham it up for a group photo.

Be sure to post them where everyone can enjoy them. You could even reward your picture posers with prizes for the best smile, the goofiest pose, or the worst dressed.

Ask volunteers to take pictures throughout the fundraising process so there will be a variety of photos and you can be sure that everyone will be included.

If possible, have a “movie” made of your group during each phase of the fundraising process and show the movie at a wrap up event.

Show appreciation
Show your appreciation to all levels of your organization and supporter base. Be sure to do fun things that aren’t fundraisers.

For example, line up discounts on tickets to athletic events, go on group outings, provide goodies for volunteers during working sessions.

Give out fun merchant prizes
Work with local merchants for great prizes that mean the most to
your group.

Work deals for movie passes, merchandise discounts, gift certificates, miniature golf, or IMAX theater trips for your top performing participants.

As always, make sure there is something in it for the merchant, otherwise you are just another stranger begging for their money or services.

Build in fun goals
Do an event based solely on having fun. Have key organization members commit to doing crazy things once certain revenue goals are reached, in whatever increments are most appropriate for your group and goals.

Let things build to the climactic moment where the head cheese does the ultimate “fun thing” as a way to reward the group for all their support.

A fond memory in the making is for the coaching staff to stand on their heads and sing “Row, row, row your boat” in rounds.

Blend fun, food and fundraising
Remember that you can blend fun into even the most traditional fundraising events.

Everybody knows what a bake sale is, right? Use a cake walk to sell a large portion of your donated sweets.

Kids love it and you’ll get more for the desserts than if you sold them outright. Consider having awards for the various submissions and then auctioning off the best dessert.

Create fun completion activities
These will motivate your sellers and volunteers as much or more as winning actual prizes.

Think about low cost fun events that you could tie to completing certain tasks, for example:

Top sales group gets a water balloon fight, all volunteers play in a Powder Puff touch football game, or an ultimate Frisbee match.

Say thank you
You can’t say thank you often enough to your supporters and your participants. Show your appreciation with heartfelt words and deeds.

Have a cast party
Have one for all volunteers at conclusion. Get together at someone’s home or in the fellowship hall with everyone bringing potluck.

It’s a nice way to build goodwill and reinforce a sense of community for future recruiting.

Conclusion
In remembering the fun in fundraising, be sure that each activity, prize or reward is age and group appropriate.

Also, remember the other volunteers… the parents and other adult volunteers that make it all happen. Be sure they are rewarded directly, even if it is a simple remark of recognition and thanks.

Print simple awards on the computer and present them at your wrap up event. Individualize each one: “The Go-To Guy Award”, “The Worker Bee Award”, “The Daddy War Bucks Award”, and so on.

Remember: Make it fun and everyone will come back for more!

Fun Fundraising Activities is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

Here are three time-tested projects to raise some fast cash:

1 – Car Wash
2 – Yard Cleanup
3 – Community Cleanup

Car Wash Fundraiser
Car washes have proven to be great fundraisers in virtually every community. All you need are willing volunteers, a high-traffic location with good visibility, and some attention getting signs. You can put your car wash fundraiser together on short notice.

Here’s what you need to do:

1 – Line up a location with good main road frontage
2 – Ensure it has water access
3 – Assemble supplies list – hoses, buckets, wash towels, dry towels, squeegees
4 – Assign each volunteer an item from the supplies list
5 – Make 8-10 poster board signs in high-contrast colors
6 – Arrange your volunteers in 2-hour shifts
7 – Wash cars for six hours (Saturday preferred)
8 – Have dual lines so you can wash two at once

Your car wash fundraiser’s success will of course depend on the weather. If you can wash 12 cars an hour (one every 10 minutes in each line), you can easily raise more than $500 in one day.

Remember to put together a quick flyer that includes the reason why you’re raising funds and clearly states the price. You can even offer some extra services such as Armor-All tire treatment or interior vacuuming for an additional fee.

Alternatively, you can advertise a free car wash and just ask for donations for your cause. Often, this can raise more cash than stating a specific price, because people will see a group of volunteers working hard and having a good time, and may pay more than you would hav asked.

Keeping safety in mind, be sure to get volunteers to hold and wave signs toward passing traffic, not just volunteers to wash cars. If you have time, advertise your car wash event in the local newspaper, and post signs a day or two in advance.

Yard Cleanup
A yard cleanup fundraiser is extremely fast and easy to put together. Simply create a set of instructions for your group detailing what to offer, what to say, and how much to charge.

Like most fundraisers, the target market is family, friends, and neighbors. Depending on the age of your participants, your offerings can range from simple lawn care all the way up to mulching flower beds or pruning tree limbs. In many climates, autumn is a great time to do this fundraiser, because leaf clearing is always a needed service during those months.

Create a flyer describing your fundraiser and clearly list your prices for the various cleanup options. Assign a fundraising quota to each participant.

Offer some individual and group performance bonuses. There’s nothing like a team pizza party or movie passes to motivate a youth sports group.

Community Cleanup
A community cleanup, also known as a trash bag fundraiser, performs a valuable community service while also providing a significant revenue opportunity. Organizing a community cleanup project is a way to raise funds and send a positive message about your group at the same time.

This type of one day or weekend fundraising event is very similar to the Athlet-A-Thon or Fun-A-Thon concept. Here your group’s participants solicit pledges from the usual suspects – family, friends, and neighbors. Have local businesses donate trash bags and recruit parents and relatives with trucks to haul what you collect.

Pledges are tied to a specific attainment goal such as the number of pounds of trash collected or the number of road miles cleaned of debris. You’ll need to create a one-page overview of your cleanup program and a pledge signup sheet.

It works best if your overview specifies a suggested range for donations, say anywhere from a penny to a dime a pound for a large project. An amazing amount of garbage can be collected from a local stream or illegal dumping area, so it’s not a bad idea to also put a maximum limit on pledge amounts of $20.

Have local businesses donate trash bags. Recruit parents and relatives with trucks to haul what you collect.

Do the math. You’ll be surprised at how much money you can generate. Assuming 50 participants, each of whom has five pledges of a penny a pound, if you collect a ton of garbage, your group will raise $100 per participant or $5,000.

That’s not bad money for a free fundraiser! You’d be surprised at how easy it is to collect a ton of garbage.

Each of these fundraisers is fast, easy to put together, and a reliable revenue generator for your group. As with any youth group event, an adult should be in attendance at all times for safety purposes. Get started on your free easy fundraisers today!

Free Easy Fundraisers is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com

Coffee fundraisers have been massively successful in the United States and beyond. It should come as no surprise, mind you. Everyone loves coffee, especially really good coffee. It is estimated that over 200 million people in the United States alone drink coffee on a daily basis. At approximately one dollar per cup, you can imagine how staggering the profits can be. Organizations have an excellent opportunity to tap into this market, and to brew up massive revenues for their respective ventures.

The difficult part of doing coffee fundraisers, is convincing people to compromise their morning coffee routines. It may sound absurd, but many people feel very passionately about the coffee they drink. From what I have been told by some of our readers, Canadians are absolutely fanatic about Tim Horton’s coffee. The challenge for people involved in fundraising, is to convince people to try something new. We have to appeal to their thoughtful side. It is for charity, after all.

One of our friends has had tremendous success by putting a new twist on the traditional coffee fundraiser. Instead of offering people unimpressive gift boxes of coffee, why not consider selling bags of Fair Trade Coffee? If you are not aware of the Fair Trade movement, you should be. It is essentially an effort to ensure that farmers in developing countries are properly compensated for their labor and their products. The movement also tries to address issues regarding the environmental impact of certain farming practices, as well as local economic sustainability.

There is a significant percentage of the population in America that truly cares about what is happening in the world today. The environmental movement has been going strong for decades now, and people have become both active and aware of the issues that affect citizens in America and beyond. These conditions create a wonderful opportunity for fundraisers, as we can give people an opportunity to support two wonderful causes; the Fair Trade movement and your organization! Let your conscience guide you in your fundraising efforts, and help make trade fair.

Fair Trade Fundraisers is a post from: Finance Blogs | Sobrunei.com