creative WAYS TO RAISE MONEY

Transcription

1 creative WAYS TO RAISE MONEY Alumni Organizations: Call your own college or university and ask them to place an ad in the alumni newsletter asking for donations. Answering Machine Message: This will alert everyone who calls you at home that you re up to something special! Let them know that you need their support! Art show: Hold an art contest where you and your friends enter up to three pieces of their art at $5 per entry. Try to get a local gallery owner to donate space for the event and recruit local celebrities as judges. You could also sell this artwork and donate a portion of the proceeds to your favorite organization. Ask your local bartender to donate a portion of one day s tips: Ask them to donate tips from one night. You can create a sign for the bartender to place on the bar stating that "All tips collected tonight will go directly to cure diabetes." If the patrons see that sign they may be willing to dig a little deeper in their pocket! Ask your local restaurants to place a money jar at the front of the restaurant: Check with the restaurant manager. They may be willing to place the jar in a high traffic area so lots of patrons can see it. Ask your local waiter/waitresses to donate a portion of one day s tips: Ask your local waiters and waitresses to donate a portion of their tips to your cause. Auction Off the best parking space at your work Auction Off yourself to work for someone for a whole day Baby sitting: Offer up your services and let your friends have a nice, quiet night out! Bake sale: Everyone's favorite! Include baked foods from around the world. Bartend: Ask your favorite bar if you can play bartender for the night and keep all your tips. Birthday donations: On birthdays students can ask parents, friends and grandparents to make a donation to a special organization instead of buying a gift. Students can do the same for other people's birthdays. Make up a card for the birthday person explaining that a donation was made in honor of his/her birthday to a local organization. Explain how the organization works. Block Party- Have a block party in your neighborhood.. sell food or charge admission. Book Sale Everyone has books that have been sitting on shelves or in the attic in boxes or in the basement collecting dust. Ask your friends, family and neighbors to donate whatever they ve got and set up a little weekend book sale in your front yard. Boss for the day!- Auction off the role of being boss for a day (with the bosses permission, of course) Bowling Nights: Plan a fun night of bowling at your local lanes. Ask the owner to waive the cost of bowling and you can collect that money. Candy: sell candy (chocolate bars, etc.) at school, to your sports team, or to your neighbors, family, and friends. Cards: If you re creative or good with graphic design, create holiday cards to give away for pledges. Casual Day: Have employees pay a fee to be able to dress casually for a day or week. Caps for a Cure: A JDRF mainstay! Students donate $5 to wear a hat to school on the designated day. Participants are given a button or sticker to wear, as proof of their paid participation.

2 Car wash: Hold a weekend car-wash to raise money or make yourself (and friends) available to run errands, do yard work, or walk dogs, etc. Make up fliers to advertise your services and explain where the money will go that is earned. Christmas gift pledge: This is a tough one for those of us who love to open up gifts during the holidays but it s an easy way to reach your goal Christmas Tree Ornaments: Get creative (and ask some friends to pitch in) and make some ornaments for the holiday season. Sell them at a local bazaar or fair. Church Bulletin: place an advertisement in your Church bulletin letting the congregation know what you re up to! Community auction: Ask families, friends and community businesses to donate their specialties - including skills - to be auctioned off. Be creative! People have had themselves auctioned for a day of baby-sitting, or a day of museum-gazing with a small child, etc. Teachers have made videos of their classroom over the course of the year and auctioned them off to parents. Restaurant and theater owners can donate dinners and seats to shows. This takes some organizing but can raise lots of money for your cause and will alert the community and get everyone involved as well. Create posters, canvas the neighborhood for donations, etc. Company Vacation Days: Ask your boss or human resources director if they can swap one of your vacation days for a day s pay. Concert: Ask a popular local musician or band to perform a benefit concert. Cookbooks: Ask employees to send you their favorite recipe, create a cookbook, and sell them to office employees. Corporate matching gift: Ask your company to match the amount of pledges you receive from your fellow co-workers. Costume ball: Hold this event around Halloween. Charge admission. Creative Friends: Find a local artist or ask a creative friend if they would donate a piece of art or some jewelry that you could auction off. Curse Jar: Place a Curse Jar in your office and whenever someone says a bad word they have to open up their wallet, grab a dollar and put it in the jar. Cutest Baby Contest: Have employees submit their baby pictures, and set up donation jars. The jar with the most donations wins a prize. Delegate: Give 10 of your friends 10 pledge forms each and ask them to help raise money for you. Dimes for Diabetes: Similar to Extra Change in my Pocket, only geared toward schools. Make it a contest. The classroom that raises the most money gets a prize (pizza party, etc.), paid for out of the proceeds. Dinners- Be the host of a pasta dinner, fondue party, large sub party, etc. Dress Down Day: Ask your company to allow an official Dress Down Day. For the privilege of dressing down, employees pledge $20. Also works well for schools with a uniform or no jeans policy. ebay.com: Remember the garage sale idea? How bout rounding up the goods from your friends and putting it all in Ebay.com to be auctioned off? Envelopes at Restaurant Tables: Ask local restaurants if you can put donation envelopes at every table. Have waitresses check the envelopes after each seating. Errand Service: Offer to run errands for your family and friends, if you have time of course!

3 Extra Change In My Pocket Box: Create these little boxes for your friends and family and have them place it on their dresser. At the end of the day they can drop that spare change in the box. Fast: Give up one meal a week or give up junk food for one week and donate the money to a cause. Get your school involved by going around to other classes and explaining where their money will go. Place large containers in each classroom in which students can place their change. Flowers and Plants: Sell corsages before a high school dance, rose bouquets, or household plants. Fraternities and Sororities: Contact the National Chapter of your college Fraternity or Sorority and ask them to make a donation. Fundraising Dinner: Ask your favorite local restaurant to host a Fundraising Dinner. Game night: Get out those board games and start playing! Charge per game played. Garage Sale: Know all that stuff that s been hanging out in your garage in your attic in your basement? Gather it up and ask your friends to do the same. Put it in your front yard and sell, sell, sell! Golden Globes & Oscar parties: Same concept as the Superbowl party except this time put together a sheet of all the nominees for all categories and get everyone to select who they think will win. The person with the most correct entries wins the pot. You can do this as a party or even as an office pool. Good Karma Tipping Jar: Ask local businesses to put one of those jars near the register or on their front counter. Tape of picture of yourself and a short explanation of why you re raising money. Gym: Ask you gym to place a Pledge Jar at the front desk! Leave a stack of pledge forms at the counter, too. Hair Salon: Ask your barber or hairdresser to donate $2.00 of every haircut they complete over one weekend. Have a read-, dance-, or walk-a-thon: Collect pledges from family, friends, and neighbors for each hour or mile you walk or dance, or for each book read. Host a poker game: call your serious (or not so serious) card-playin friends invite them over for poker night. House sit: Friends going out of town for awhile? Maybe they need a warm body to stay in their place in their absence! House Warming Party: Are you moving anytime soon? If so, ask your friends to make a pledge instead of purchasing a gift for your new place. Inspirational Book Marks: Create them and sell them to your friends and family. Karaoke Night: Who cares if you can t carry a tune? Spend a Friday night at a Karaoke Bar and sing your guts out! Have the announcer tell the crowd that you re singing for pledges! Lawn Service: Mow lawns in your neighborhood in return for a pledge Lunch Time: Prepare and sell lunches- BBQ, subs, pasta salad, Local Stores: Ask a local store manager what the hot selling item is these days and THEN ask if they d be willing to donate a % of the sales from that particular item. Local theater to donate tickets to a performance: Ask a local theater to donate a couple tickets to one of their plays or musicals and auction them off. Meet the Press: Does your company distribute a newsletter? Does your company have interoffice ? Take advantage of these! Movie ticket donation: Ask your local movie house to donate several movie tickets. Sell them and put the money toward your pledges.

4 Mow-a-thon: Get your kids involved in this weekend activity. Check ahead of time with all your neighbors and ask them if you can mow their lawn for $ Neighbor: Write to all your neighbors on your block (or in your building). Attach a letter stating what you're doing and ask them to make a donation. Neighborhood Chores: A lot of your neighbors would probably rather pay you than someone else. Place signs around your neighborhood advertising your services (i.e. watering gardens, cleaning roof gutters, sweeping the driveway, fixing an easy plumbing problem, painting a room, etc.). Neighborhood flea-market: Kids and their families can get their books, used clothes, or hand-made crafts together to sell. Newspaper: Write an article for your local newspaper about JDRF and your fundraising. Office Fundraising Challenge: Speak with everyone in your office and get them to challenge each other to raise the highest amount. Give the "winner" a prize. Other Parents: If your kids play on soccer leagues or any other sports teams distribute your pledge forms to the team. Pancake Breakfast: Host a pancake breakfast and invite all your friends and family. Penny Bomb: A play on Dimes for Diabetes. Pennies are positive points. Nickels, quarters, dimes and bills are negative points. Students put pennies in their own jar, and bomb other class s jars with silver coins and bills. The classroom with the most points wins (pizza party, etc.). Personal friend matching gift: Ask a friend to see if they can investigate getting their company to match pledges. Pet sit: Are your neighbors going away and they don t want to leave "Spot" at the boarding facility? Again, offer up your services and charge them what they would have had to pay at the facility! Picnics National Holiday Picnics are a great place to raise some pledges! Poetry reading: Hold a poetry reading in your favorite cafe. Pass the hat and ask diners to contribute. Explain where the money will go. Try to get local news coverage for your event --- this will also appeal to the restaurant owner whose establishment gets free advertising! Raffle: Hold a raffle for items donated by local businesses! Seasonal celebration: Hold a seasonal pot-luck dinner. For instance, in autumn ask participants to bring a seasonal dish. Eat outside under colorful trees. Organize simple games and activities to attract children to the event - leaf rubbings, scavenger hunt, story-telling, autumn poetry readings, etc. Charge admission. Silent Auction: Ask local businesses to donate items. Set minimum pledge limits and set a time limit for the auction (ex. One week). Student-faculty play-off: Compete for the benefit of others. Choose a sport -- volleyball, basketball, etc., -- and invite the rest of your school as well as parents to watch and cheer. Sell tickets or charge admission at the door. Super bowl party: Instead of the usual betting squares, combine Super Bowl revelry with a little fundraising. Sell betting squares such that 50% of the money went into the pot and 50% went towards the fundraising goal. As an added bonus the person who won the pot might choose to, graciously, donate her winnings. Talent show: Hold a student-faculty talent show at your school. Sell tickets. Advertise the event. Donate the proceeds.

5 Talented Friends: Do you have a little piano bar in your neighborhood and a talented piano playing friend? Ask the owner to let you bring some friends in one night for a cocktail and piano night. Charge anyone who attends and let them know that it s a fundraising event. Television show finale party: Remember when Ross married Rachel? Remember when Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer ended up in jail? How about when Niles and Daphne sped off in an RV on the "Frasier" finale last year? It d be fun to gather a big group and friends to tune in to watch a big season or series finale. Of course, charge em at the door and put the $$ toward your pledges. Theme Party/Dinner: Hold a theme party for 10 (or more) of your friends. Donation: $50.00 per person. Spend no more than $20.00 per person on the food and you ll have $ (or more) in pledges by the end of the night. Universities and Colleges: Contact your local schools and ask if you can put an advertisement in their school newsletter asking for donations. Valentine s Day pledge: It s always sweet to get a dozen roses from your sweetie but it ll be even sweeter for your sweetie to write you a sweet little check and put it in a card addressed to you. Waiters- Ask your waiter/waitress friends if they will donate one day s tips. Water the Garden: Offer to water the garden or do other chores that you would normally do for free for your family, neighbors, or friends. Wine and Cheese Party: Host a party at a local restaurant and ask the owner to donate the wine and cheese.