Fundraising for Non-Profits

Non-profits, by their very definition suggests being part of a noble endeavor, having the courage to operate, with low overhead costs, no profits to distribute and is required to make itself relevant to its audience, seeking funds though out the year.

As it is, It is tricky to ask for funds from an elementary school parent population who also feel entitled to receive free education for their families.

What are some of the learnings in this space as we see it, first of all the 80-20 rule. There will be a regular set of parents (lets call them the 20%) who will donate year-on-year, who understand the public education system, know they are privileged to earn good salaries, believe in the cause of education, and will donate. They will be your primary donor pool and to whom you target your messaging. I will detail later on how they will fund the 80%, but before that, what kind of fund raising request do we start with. The most easy and accessible would be via 'an Ask' called the Direct Donation.

A successful and fast mode of collection aka the Direct donations (DD) give the non -profits the required initial cash collection boost and an important sum accumulation at the beginning of the year. The direct donation drive can be done via donation request envelopes given to each student. The success in a good DD would be in the donation request letter. It has to be a readable and relatable material for an average donor who may or may not be involved in the PTO (Parent Teacher Organization).

By including a pie chart with a $ amount for technology depreciation, staff hiring and so, it may hit a less sounding bell than writing about how the money is being used, such as a Science fair, Talent show, Bingo night or competitive exams, different kinds of clubs and PE and Art teacher recruitment.

The distribution of this envelope/letter/flyer can be done at key school events that are held to kick start the year such as curriculum nights, coffee with the principal, and/or meeting your teacher, thereby these can be times and places which can be leveraged for this drive.

Ending the flyer with an action line item, gives the required impetus to the collection drive. The action could sound like, please bring in your checks tomorrow, or there will be a square machine in the lobby on Tuesdays where you also can chat with the principal from 8-9 am.

As a non-profit organization that is in charge of collection and disseminating funds, you as a volunteer will have the 'curse of knowledge'- what that means is, you will have more knowledge about the non-profit compared to your fellow donors (parents), and hence you may be surprised to hear questions from donors such as why do you collect money when the institution is receiving federal or corporate funding, or all the employees and staff are government employees and are paid good salaries and enjoy great benefits, why do they need money and so on.

It will be at this time, that your answer to help them understand the nature of the funds collection and the ability to control and enjoy the funds for the student will come into play. We need to make sure that we understand the kind of questions that will come our way and the responses that we will need to have handy.

Once the Direct donation drive is complete, we must expect to have earned around 30% of our expenditure for the year. The Direction donation drive though is technically complete, there needs to be an online link that is made available throughout the school year and it needs to be publicized at the bottom of every newsletter. The monthly newsletter from the PTO organization needs to contain the earnings of the year along with details of the expenditure.

Note that you may have reached a lull in parent engagement around Thankgiving-Christmas time, and its a good time to re-assess your collection and strategy for the remaining part of the year.

Some schools use these fundraising opportunities in community building exercises by meeting once a week at a restaurant with the school receiving 30% of the restaurant earnings. However, the amount of engagement required to get parents to these events felt like a lot of effort for the returns received.

So we stuck to the second part of the fundraiser which is a fun school event, it can be any - THON, such as read-ATHON, Walk-ATHON.. There are multiple ways that one can garner interest for this 'school carnival' like event, some ideas that worked were having a specific t-shirt sold for the event, keeping the food stalls to popular foods with coupons being sold at the gate for both games and snacks. The silent auction is another interesting piece as it gives opportunities to bid on experiences with staff. The games, food, auction, all contribute to 20% of earnings at the carnival, the most important collection would be the pledge that the parents make at the beginning of the -THON, it could mean a parent pledges 'X' amount for his/her kid to read certain number of books, it is a great start and because of teacher and staff engagement, there is a lot of chatter behind these statistics and it works to get the numbers rolling and brings it the funds.

The carnival and the direct donation together should ensure the majority of your non-profit earnings for the year. There will be still a gap, that should be achieved by corporate funding, employee matching, volunteer hours. If 20% parent directly donated and decided to contact their employers for a match to their donations, we get a 40% donation at that point. There are times when corporates do a 200% match during the end of the year, it could be a good time to do a mini donation drive.

I hope this write up helps you in your fundraising efforts, its important to study the donating patterns of your audience to leverage them. Being present, engaged and transparent, are the qualities that will reap great benefits and build trust with the donors.