Fundraise while you have excited children.

Primary school children and always excited to see parents involved and parents are more connected with the school and your fundraising could be the way to make some money for your school and to build the school community.  A great fundraiser might include a way to include to children, they will have fantastic pester power and why not use it to your advantage.  After all our children do it to us, so why should other parents not get the same joy.

Unfortunately by the time children get to upper primary school or high school, parents are considered very uncool and being involved is an embarrassment to your children, so the effort-to-reward ratio is much less favourable.  In fact it unlikely parents will even get the note to come to the meeting if the adolescent has their way.

Parents in primary schools tend to be more connected as they often walk their children into the class and waits for them after school, which encourages conversation, involvement and participation.  Don’t call a meeting by sending notes, stand outside the classes and catch the parents as they wait for the children, introduce yourself and ask them to come to the meeting.

Another tip is to not only ask them but also ask them bring one or two other people that they know.  This has two advantages, the first is they know at least a few people, and you get more people to your meeting.  It’s important that when you have these volunteers to make them feel welcome and involved in the process.  Everyone has something to offer, some people have time, and others might just know the right contacts.

Volunteers are just people that have not been asked to be involved yet.  The quiet person may make a spectacular volunteer if they are made welcome, their efforts are valued and they join the team.

Make sure you are covered so the entire time but sometimes having too many people is worse than having too few.  People might feel tired at the end of the shift is you have too few people but nobody likes to feel they have wasted their time.  I’m not saying you should plan to have too few people but make sure they all have a real job.  “I don’t know just help Helen” is not a job.  Even their children’s pride will not be enough reward for parents who feel their time has been wasted.

There is many websites to give volunteers a fundraising resources for schools, clubs and community groups.  There is any number of great promotional products available for fundraising as well as the old favourites such as walk-a-thon, quiz nights, raffles and discos. While traditional fundraisers are still popular they are now being replaced by more sophisticated fundraisers.

A well-run state primary school P&C in a prosperous area with 500 families can generate more than $150,000 annually from fundraising whereas a smaller school in a less prosperous area might struggle to make $10,000 per year.  While the money may be important to meet the financial goals, the social goals of community building may be just as rewarding for the fundraising team.

What a Great Find!

Last week I was asked to help my local school fundraiser.  I really don't need another box of chocolates or donuts but I do like to help out if I can.  So what is the fundraising product this time?  I was pleasantly surprised, nothing for my waist and but something my hip pocket.  It is membership to an innovative little mobile web site.  For only $39.95 I got access to the site and with that I’m told more than 52000 offers from more than 3000 businesses across Australia.  I live in Perth and have family in Melbourne and both metro areas have more than 600 businesses providing exclusive offers to MyPhoneVouchers members.  

My second surprise was that the offers on the mobile site were well represented across a number of categories rather than being just restaurants.  Don’t get me wrong, I love food but to be honest my waist does not need it.  What was in there was tradesmen, car mechanics, and beauty services and yes some food places that sound like places I would like to go.  I have purchased a paper based voucher product called the Entertainment Book in the past however I found that I always forgot the book and also it was difficult to find discounts near me.  This is where the MyPhoneVouchers.com really excels.  Just click the “Use GPS Location” button at the top and when I then do searches it orders them by how far they are away from me.  Brilliant!   

The “Find Location” menu item also allows you to “Fake” where you are so you can tell the application where you are going to be latter today or next week to find places in that area that is going to give you a discount.  I was able to plan an outing for next week and best of all I’m getting it for half price…

I got in touch with MyPhoneVouchers to see if they could help our son’s football club, for wish I got roped into becoming the secretary, and I was beyond impressed.  While they were more than willing to help with the fundraising product they were also interesting in supporting us in other ways and all for free.  First we were given advertising in the community information section of the mobile site so members of MyPhoneVouchers.com that want to find a local football club will be able to find us.  Some groups like dance schools etc. actually offer a discount that would also appear but that’s not for us.  The second freebie that they gave us was free access for our volunteers, committee and staff.  We don’t have any haha and I had already paid at the school but I think the sentiment and idea is nice.  MPV want to help us reward those that are helping us and all for free.  The last thing that was for free is actually free accounts that we can give to anyone we like as prizes in other fundraising events, events or just give them as thank-you’s at our presentation night.  They also have a three step process to help us get our supporters to become MyPhoneVoucher members.  The first step is a free trial (obviously the school decided not to run this phase), the second phase just gives the club (or school) additional revenue for the first year which is $30 of the $39.95 (I’m sure the school did take account of this phase  ...smile…) and the final phase is the usual revenue splitting at $20 of the $39.95 which is more than fair when compared with other fundraising products.  We are in so if you would like to support us or other groups, charities or schools you can go and purchase it from their site.