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Posts Tagged ‘fundraising’

Looking for low cost political fundraising tips? It’s obvious that the campaign fund raising system is badly in need of reform. This article covers a dozen ways political candidates can raise money quickly and easily online.

Getting elected to any type of local, state, or national office is hugely expensive. As a result, most politicians are beholden to special interest groups who contribute heavily to fund their election and reelection campaigns.

There are plenty of ways that political candidates could raise money the right way, but that requires work and quite frankly, a lot of them take the easy way instead.

If they’d only use their brains and build grass roots fundraising organizations, leverage the power of the internet, and avoid wasting money on ineffective advertising, they could get elected without compromising their beliefs.

Remember how Howard Dean shocked everyone in 2003 with his fundraising prowess? Well, that success is a huge arrow pointing at new ways to raise funds online.

12 tips for online political fundraising:

Website name capture
Your candidate website should be designed to capture the names and email addresses of as many visitors as possible. Use the technique known as name capture that presents a special page to visitors asking them to be added to your mailing list. That way, you can add as many as 50% of your site visitors to your follow-up autoresponder messages.

Offer RSS feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) distributes new website postings to everyone who’ve signed up to receive your info. This is great for getting media coverage, creating a lot of links back to your website, and keeping supporters updated.

Blogging
Add a blog to your website explaining your positions on the issues. Blogs are all the rage these days and having one will get you additional exposure within the political community. Be passionate in your postings! Allow visitors to add comments, but set them to be approved.

Podcasts
Doing podcasts explaining your positions on important issues is another great way to push information out to the public. Create multimedia presentations for others to view such as speeches, hot topics, requests for donations, etc. You can get setup to podcast for under $100.

Position papers
Post detailed position statements on your website on how your views contrast with opponents. This will attract people searching for information on the issues.

Press kits
Provide summary info on your website in PDF document format for press kits to increase media coverage.
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Looking for tips on planning a charity golf tournament? There are many factors to consider, so I’ll stick to the four main ones for this article. The success of your charity golf event revolves around maximizing player turnout, increasing pledge sizes, obtaining sponsored prizes, and planning tips.

Player Turnout
Your success depends on how many players your golf event draws and how actively you have your players solicit sponsors for their own rounds.

To maximize turnout, you need to get major publicity for your event. That means putting out multiple press releases, getting local media coverage from newspapers and television stations, and placing ads in the sports section of the local paper.

For the best results, put your press releases out through PR Web. Appoint a spokesperson to handle all media contacts and follow-up. For more tips, read my article on fundraising publicity.

Charity Pledges
The key is getting each player to collect a certain amount of pledges. I recommend a minimum of $100 per player in pledges. I’ve also played in tournaments where that number was $250 per player.

Obviously, you want to motivate the participants to raise as much money as possible. Some groups offer incentives for the top pledge getters. Others seek corporate sponsorships for that firm’s players.

Pledge amounts determine the success of your charity golf event, so get input from experienced golfers and golf pros in your area.

Top Golfer Prizes
Generally speaking, you’ll draw more golfers if you have great prizes for longest drive, closest to the hole, hole in one, lowest team score, lowest actual score, and best adjusted score (handicap).
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Fundraising with pizza is a great idea for most any size group. It provides your buyers with something everyone wants, and can be very profitable as a fundraising idea.

There are three different types of pizza fundraisers:

Sales of pizza by the slice
Sales of pizza fundraising discount cards
Sales of pizza supplies – make your own kits

Each of these fundraisers varies in effort, requirements, and profitability. Let’s take a brief look at each one.

Pizza Fundraising By The Slice
This is a quick and easy profit source for just about any type of youth sports team. You purchase your pizzas at a quantity discount and have them delivered piping hot to your event.

Papa Johns and Dominos both offer the delivery service from any location. Of course, you’ll need to pay cash when the pizzas are delivered.

Sell the individual slices at close to 100% markup so that your team receives $2 for every $1 in cost.

That markup covers any unsold or damaged slices.

Tips: Don’t overbuy, reorder instead. Also, sell them fast before they cool off. Plain cheese is the most popular followed by pepperoni.

Pizza Fundraising Discount Cards
A pizza fundraiser card is a discount card with an offer tied to a single merchant, usually a national chain. It often provides a two- for-one offer on every order and is tends to be priced at $10 for a card good for a one-year period.

Offers vary with most being tied to either a single location or a small group of outlets for a national chain. Pizza Hut cards are good for eat-in dining while most others are aimed at the take-out or delivery market. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have children still attending school, then you probably know all too well the feeling you get when you receive a flyer stating the need for yet another fundraising event! That horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that says you’re going to have to contribute in some way, either buying something you really don’t need and really can’t afford, or by donating hours of your time, hours that you don’t have either.

But do not despair. Life for fundraising people has got easier because of the Internet, and with computers in general, as you can use the computer to make your life easier in many ways. You can document the jobs needed to be done by volunteers, you can email volunteers to keep them all informed of meetings, jobs and the like, and computers can help you keep track of donors, donations, and so much more.

The trick with fundraisers is to find something that people want to buy from you, either a product or a service, and that you want to sell and promote. And of course, if the event is because you are fundraising for your school, ideally it should be something that will inspire as many students as possible to participate.

That rules out the good old favourite bake sale, as it is hard to devote the time to helping preschoolers bake for a bake sale, but with so many food allergies around, and fear of food contamination, I think those days are over. I remember how awful I felt when I baked for the school fundraiser, only to find that my daughters had bought the goods so they could see what mommy’s baking tasted like! I must admit, baking didn’t happen very often because of a shortage of time, but I didn’t realize my family felt so deprived!
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