The fundraising letter is an excellent way to raise funds on your own. It helps if you are doing something extraordinary on behalf of the fundraising to let your potential donators know that you are really serious about raising money for your charity.

Who do you send your letters to?
Start with those closest to you and move outward from there. After sending letters to family and friends, start thinking of the next layer of people who know you including work colleagues, ex-work colleagues, neighbors, friends of your family, businesses you frequent (including dentists, doctors, etc), and friends of your spouses. Next consider clubs that you or your spouse belong to (many clubs publish adress lists). How about high school classmates (is there a book of names that has been published for your high school?). How about post secondary acquaintances or high school teachers you had?

In the photo section is an example of a successful fundraising letter.

Other Tips:
- You will get more donations if you ask them to make checks out to the charity's name rather than your name.
- Send a thank you letter or postcard for each donation.

Bonus Tip: When the deadline is near or just past, send a postcard or note to those who have not donated, and this will generate extra funds.

Letters are your main weapon to raise money, but if you only have their email address, go with an email. Use the same wording in the email as the letter.

As with any donation, follow up with a thank you email.

Bonus Tip: Use email to keep all your potential donators informed of your progress. This will keep your cause in their minds so that they won't forget to donate.

Ever wonder how those people outside of Walmart got permission to ask you for a donation as you walk past? They just asked! Bucket shakes can net a few hundred dollars for several hours of work.

Call the manager of the local Sams Club or Walmart (or Kroger or other local store) and ask them if they allow bucket shakes at their store. If so, ask when you could stop by and drop off a letter as you are doing a fundraiser

Tips:
- Some stores only allow one or two bucket shakes a month, so ask as far in advance as possible so that you can reserve your spot.
- Have numbers to call on your letter so that they can verify you are fundraising for a legitimate charity.
- Bring kids with you to the bucket shake as people have a harder time saying no to kids.
- You cannot just sit behind a table with a jar in front of you. You must stand up (sitting just doesn't work), smile, and ask people if they want to donate as they walk past.
- Be creative. Have something going on at your spot to attract people's attention.

Bonus Tip: Some Walmart stores will match how much you make. It is worthwhile finding out which stores do this and target these stores first.

The basic premise behind a raffle is that you have one or more desirable objects to give away. You sell tickets for the raffle to as many people as possible and then draw one or more names that win the prizes.

Some ideas for prizes include:
- Friends and Family that have artistic ability and are willing to make something.
- Your company or other business contacts that are willing to donate merchandise.
- Call and solicit local businesses for gift certificates or other items.

Who do you sell the tickets to:
- If you belong to a club, see if the club is willing to hold the raffle at one of its meetings. If needed, split the $$ from the raffle between the club and your charity.
- People at work.
- People in your neighborhood.
- Friends and Family that do not normally donate through your letter writing campaign.

Give a discount on the raffle ticket price if they buy multiple tickets. i.e. $2 per ticket or 6 for $10.

Bonus Tip: Work hard to get one premier large item to give away. This will help attract a lot of people to the raffle who would normally not donate.

A garage sale is an excellent way to raise some funds. Here are the recommendations on how to hold a sucessful garage sale:

- Start early asking everyone you know to begin saving items for the sale.
- Hold the sale over the weekend at a house that is just off a busy street. Have the sale when the weather is as mild as possible.
- Put a large 4' by 6' sign on the busy street pointing cars to the sale. Put as little information on the sign as possible. For example, put "Yard Sale Today" with a large arrows. Make the words as big as possible.
- Unless you are holding the sale with a couple of other people, putting an ad in the paper will probably not pay for itself. Being on or near a busy street is more important.
- Some people have had success by letting everyone know that the sale is for charity, and instead of putting prices on the items, they just ask for donations.
- Things that sell the best are hardware items and furniture.
- Have one large item available. You never know if it will sell, but if it does- $$$$!

Bonus Tip: At the end of the day on Saturday or Sunday, drive around the neighborhood and ask people at those other garage sales if they are willing to donate their un-sold items. Hold another sale the following weekend to double your $$.

Office pools are those gambling pools set up to bet on winners of various sporting events. While the office is one convenient place to find people to enter pools, friends, neighbors, & club members can also be recruitment sources. An example of an office pool is writing down the names of the 64 teams in the March Madness NCAA Div. I woman's basketball tournament. For $10, a person can draw one of the 64 team names out of a hat, and if their team wins, they get $$ or a prize. Some suggestions for running pools are:

- Split the money from the pool 50/50 with the winner and your charity.
- Find a great prize to offer to the winner so all the money collected goes to the charity.
- The idea behind this fundraiser is not to go after your friends and family (who you have written letters to), but to go after friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. who would not normally donate to the charity that you are raising money for.
- Further below in this lens is a book giving information on how to run an office pool if you have not been exposed to them before.
- The events to do an office pool for are nearly unlimited. Big ones include the NFL playoffs/Superbowl, World Series, NBA playoffs, Indy 500, World Cup Soccer, & March Madness. Others include the 4 Golf Masters Tournaments, Tour de France, NHL playoffs, Tennis Masters (Wimbledon, etc.)

Bonus Tip: Take advantage of the popularity of NASCAR to do one large pool for the series championship or many smaller pools for the various races.

A party is always a good excuse to raise some money for your charity. The most common fundraising party is centered around some of the premeir sporting events (see above list for office pools), but other occassions include some holidays (St. Patrick's Day & Holloween) or local events. Some ideas for the theme party include:

- Round up friends & family to provide the food for the party.
- Call around local restaurants & stores asking for donated food.
- The idea here is to tap into a pool of people who would probably not donate if you sent them a letter. You invite neighbors, friends of relatives, friends of friends, distant in-laws, etc.
- Find a big house with a wide screen TV if the event is a TV sporting event.
- Ask for a donation at the door to get into the party.

Bonus Tip: don't be afraid to combine fundraising events. You have a large group of people present, so why not have a raffle or a pool that they can enter also.

Most cities have used book stores (or half price book stores) that will buy back books for $$ and then re-sell them to the public.

This is a fundraising idea that works well towards the end of your fundraising campaign. By this point, you have written letters to everyone you can think of, and nearly everyone who can or will donate $$ already has. Here is what you do:

- Ask everyone to gather up their used books and take them into the closest used book store.
- Offer to pick up the books or to have people drop them off at your place if that is more convenient.
- Do some research and find out where the closest used book store is to everyone you ask (even the out-of-town people).
- The idea is to make it as easy as possible for people to take their books in.

Bonus Tip: The more books you bring into the used book store at one time, the less they will offer per book. If you end up with a large batch of books, use multiple vists with smaller numbers of books so that you end up with more total $$.

Obviously, you must work with the restuarant owner and/or manager. Pick a time when they are not likely to be busy and ask to speak with them. You might have to come back one or two times before you can catch them.

There are two ways to generate money using restaurants. One way is to work with the owner/manager and pick a day for the fundraiser. Then, you hand out flyers to people listing this fundraising day. If people bring in these flyers when they order their meal on that day, you get a percentage of the sales (anywhere from 10% to 20%). Experience has shown that this kind of fundraiser is hit or miss.

A second way to generate money is to find a restaurant (such as the Outback) that will put together a fundraising lunch. You sell tickets to the lunch for whatever amount you decide upon (say $10), and you get to keep all sales! This kind of fundraiser will definitely generate more money.

For example, for the first fundraiser, say you hand out 500 flyers. Maybe only 30 people will bring them in on the day of the fundraiser. If they purchase $10 worth of food per person ($300 total), you will raise $30 to $60 (10% to 20%). However, if you do the second fundraiser where you get to keep all the sales, you only need to sell 20 tickets to generate your $200. Sell 40 tickets at $10 each, and you have $400, and so on.

Bonus Tip: Have a raffle at the restuarant if they allow it to generate more $$, and ask the restuarant to donate a gift certificate for the raffle.

Instead of doing a lot of smaller fundraising events, you can always consider doing one very large event. If you plan on raising money for your charity every year, this may be the way to go. Don't think that it will be less work though. One large event will be as much or more work than doing several smaller events. Tips include:

- Possible large events include: golf tournament, music concert, poker tournament, & run/walk/bike event.
- One of the biggest costs for these events is the venue cost. Now is the time to use connections that can get you access to an appropriate location free or at a reduced cost.
- If you do a music concert, find bands/musicians that are in different generes (i.e. pop, rock-n-roll, country, folk, etc.). This will attract the greatest number of people.
- Below are some books that may help in the planning.

How about selling your body parts. The idea is that someone would buy your arm or leg and they get to write (in permanent marker of course) anything they want on it.

Another idea is to collect money or issue a fundraising challenge and get your hair shaved off as the reward.

The idea here is to contact parent's and offer to host a kid's party for a donation (such as $10 per kid). Basically, you are becomming a baby sitter for say 4 hours. The parent's get some time away from the kids knowing that they are having fun. Where do you take the kids? You can do it at your house or take them to McD's or of course there is always Chucky Cheese.

Here are some other ideas:

- Some businesses will give you a kick-back if you sell their gift certificates. For example, Mike's Carwash will give your charity $2 for each $7 car wash ticket you sell. This idea works best when done by large groups unless you want to go door to door selling gift certificates.

- Enlist your family and friends to ask their extended family and friends. For example, ask your close friends and in-laws to forward your letter to their immediate family asking for donations.

- Carry something on you that will elicit questions. For example, wear a hospital band on your wrist. Many people will ask you about it.
This opens up an excuse to tell them that you are wearing it because you are fundraising for a charity. Keep letters with you to give to out when this happens as you never know who might eventually donate.

- Do you already use E-bay? How about using it to help fundraise? To do this, use your imagination or buy the book listed below giving tips on how to fundraise on E-bay.

- Have any others? Email them to me: obeewriter@hotmail.com