Fundraising Ideas.PMD Ideas
User Manual: Fundraising-ideas
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Fundraising ideas for your voluntary or community group Prior House 6 Tilbury Place Brighton BN2 0GY Tel. 01273 606160 Fax. 01273 673663 e: info@resourcecentre.org.uk www.resourcecentre.org.uk This sheet aims to help you work out the best strategy for raising money for your group. We also have information sheets on Organising fundraising events, Planning a funding application, Writing a funding application and Fundraising from local businesses. Why raise money? Fundraising is always more successful if you know what you are raising the money for, and have a clear idea of how much you need. The Resource Centre’s information sheet on ‘Budgets’ will guide you through the process of writing a budget for a specific project, or for all your organisation’s activities in the coming year. Raising money can tend to become an end in itself – if you don’t have a specific reason for raising money, it might be a good idea to think about whether you need to do it at all. Sometimes having money can cause problems for a group as well as solve them. Before you start trying to raise money for a project, an event, or general running costs for your group, you need to break down the likely costs to form a budget. Keeping accurate accounts can help you work out how much you have spent on similar activities in the past. If you need the money to start something new, make sure you have done some research to find out how much each aspect of the project will cost. Using your budget, you can arrive at an overall fundraising target. This will help you decide best how to raise the money. You will also need a target figure and a specific budget for each fundraising activity. Fundraising techniques Once you have an overall fundraising target, you need to think about how to raise the money. There are several ways to do this: Updated January 2013 Page 1 • Selling badges, cards, t-shirts or other merchandise • Collections, donations and raffles • Applying for grants or awards • Organising your own fundraising events Which route you decide to take depends largely on how much money you have to raise, and how many people you have available to do the work. PTO Page 2 Fundraising ideas You may choose to combine several approaches. Some grantgiving bodies are much more likely to help you if you can raise some money yourselves. Letters to local businesses can produce a rich crop of raffle prizes to make your summer fete more successful. Selling badges, cards, t-shirts or other merchandise You can design and make your own badges or cards (e.g. Christmas cards) at quite a low cost and sell them to supporters to raise money. Some groups also print t-shirts and information booklets, record CDs or DVD’s, or make earrings and other items to sell to supporters. You can also have items made, such as baseball caps, stickers, pens, or keyrings. The Resource Centre has badge machines for hire. We also have printing facilities which may be useful to you. Before doing this it is worth thinking about where you are going to be able to sell your products, and who you are going to sell them to. Are you going to have a stall at your own, or another group’s, event? Are you going to rely on personal contacts? Some supportive shops may take some to sell – but they may ask for a percentage of the ‘profit’ for doing this. Remember that, whatever you are selling, you are bound to end up with some left over, so allow for this when you decide on a price. Collections and raffles The Resource Centre Information Sheet on ‘Licensing and Regulations’ gives guidance on any legal requirements. There are many ways of collecting money from supporters, but there are often rules and regulations that affect how you carry them out. Here are a few ideas: Collections In Brighton contact the Health and Safety Licensing Team on 01273 294429. If you are having a stall at an event it is always useful to have a collection tin for members of the public to make small donations to your group. You can also organise a street collection. You will need a permit from the local council for this. You can make your collection more imaginative and appealing to the public by dressing up, having musicians or performers with you, having information about your group available, or having stickers to give to those who donate. If you are having a collection at your own event, or a larger event, you could: • Have large labelled buckets • Have groups of people shaking blankets • Use a paddling pool or water feature to make a ‘wishing well’ Page 3 Fundraising ideas • Create a ‘Coin Painting’. As people donate coins a group of ’artists’ could create pictures on the ground or on a large board, using the coins. 100 Club The Resource Centre has Ticket Wizard software, which enables you to create attractive numbered tickets with details of you event and prizes. 100 members pay £1 or £2 per month into the club. Each member is allocated a number, and each month one or two numbers are drawn to find the winner. 50% of the cash collected would go to your organisation, and the rest would be used for prizes. It is a good idea to have quite a small regular prize, then larger prizes (e.g. £100) once or twice a year. Raffles You could hold a raffle at an event, or even on the coach if you are going on an outing. For this kind of raffle you can buy books of cloakroom tickets from a stationery shop. Alternatively you could hold a draw over a longer period, and print draw tickets. You can ask local businesses to donate prizes, for example, a box of chocolates, a meal for two, a food hamper, or a haircut. Donations and membership fees Membership You can ask supporters of your group to become members, and charge a small membership fee. This can give your organisation a small regular income, and lead to members identifying more closely with you. You could have a small fee for individuals, and a larger fee for other organisations. You could print membership cards, where you record members' payments, and the date their membership expires. However, asking people to pay for membership might deter some of them from getting involved, so discuss this carefully before you go ahead with it. Membership fees are probably more suited to sports, arts or social clubs where there is a clear benefit to being a member. Standing Orders You could ask supporters to pay a monthly Standing Order directly from their bank account. You just need to give supporters your group's bank details (account name, number and sort-code) so that they can ask their bank to set up the standing order. Ask them to tell you that they have done this, so you know where the money has come from when it appears in your bank account! People often get confused between standing orders and direct debits, so it is useful to remind them that they control the standing order - they can contact their bank to amend or cancel the standing order whenever they like. PTO Page 4 Fundraising ideas Payroll giving For more information about Payroll Giving see the website at www.payrollgiving.org Payroll Giving enables employees to give to any UK charity straight from their gross salary (before tax is deducted), giving immediate tax relief on those donations. This means that £10 donated each month costs only £8.00 for employees paying standard rate tax (£6 for higher rate taxpayers). GiftAid For more information about GiftAid see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ charities/gift_aid/basics.htm Charities and Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASC's) can claim the tax back when people make donations to them. Therefore, if somebody makes a donation of £10 to your charity, you will receive £12.50. To use GiftAid you need to register with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), ask all donors to sign a Gift Aid declaration, and keep accurate records. Community shares Sussex Community Internet Project have put together a useful list of websites that will collect on-line donations for charities and CASCs at www.scip.org.uk/news/ taking_donations_online_options If your group wants to raise money to, for example, save your local pub or community building and run it yourselves, a way of doing this is through community shares. For more information, visit: www.communityshares.org.uk. Online donations for charities There are several websites that provide a service for collecting GiftAid donations for charities and CASCs. Most of them charge, but they also carry out some of the admin tasks and make the claim to HMRC for you. If your group is not a charity you can set up an account with Paypal, Google Checkout or Worldpay. You will need to register with them, and give them your bank account details. Your supporters can then make donations directly to you, or you can put a 'Donate' button on your website. The registration process can take a while and be a bit confusing. If you are not a charity you will not be able to register as a 'Not-for-Profit' organisation, and will have to register as a Sole-trader instead. Fundraising appeals It is possible to raise a lot of money with a well thought-out fundraising appeal, and it can be useful to combine this with other fundraising activities. For example, if you organise some fundraising events such as a music night, a pub quiz, or a sponsored walk, you will send out a clear message to your supporters that you are aiming to raise a lot of money. You may then receive some individual donations from people who cannot attend your events. If you combine this with a well worded appeal you will probably get more donations. Page 5 Fundraising ideas A good appeal will give clear information about why you need the money, what you will use it for, and how people can make donations. For example: The Resource Centre information sheet on Media Contacts has details on where you could send your news release to, and our News Release information sheet will give you tips on how to write it. The Resource Centre has Information Sheets on ‘Fundraising Applications’ and ‘Fundraising from local businesses’ The Resource Centre has several books with lots more ideas and information on how to organise events. • Our monthly running costs for room hire, refreshments and transport are £160. We are asking 80 people to make a monthly donation of £5 by standing order to cover these costs. We can then concentrate on providing fun, interesting and stimulating activities for the children. • Each meal provided by our Meals on Wheels service costs £6.50 (for the ingredients, kitchen facilities and transport costs). A donation of £52 would provide an elderly person with a hot meal twice a week for 3 months. • The cost of redecorating our community room is £1,500. We plan to do the work in November so the room is ready for the children's Christmas party and pensioners' Christmas lunch in December. We have already raised £900 during the year at our fetes, jumble sales and bingo nights, and are asking for donations to make up the difference. We really appreciate all donations please give whatever you can. You could send your appeal to members and supporters by post or email, distribute flyers at events, or get it published in local newsletters, newspapers or on the local radio. Pledge fundraising Pledge fundraising is when you ask people to make a promise of a donation, and you collect this donation at a later date. This kind of fundraising is for a specific appeal or project, with a set target amount you want to raise. Generally, pledges are made so that donations are only actually collected once you are sure you will collect as much as you need. So, if you need £2,000 to buy a new minibus, there’s no point in anyone making a donation until you have commitment from enough people to know that you will be able to buy the minibus. Only then do you actually collect money. The easiest way to do this is to produce pledge cards or forms. People use these to write down their contact details and the amount of money they pledge to the group or project. They then hand this in to you, and you can contact them to ask for their donation once you have received enough pledges. It is important that you clearly state what the money is for, and that it will only be used for that purpose, e.g. buying a minibus. You can include wording that if the fundraising for the specific appeal fails, the donation will be used for a similar purpose unless the donor declares otherwise - i.e. they do not want to donate to you group unless you use their donation to buy a minibus. PTO Page 6 Fundraising ideas When collecting people’s contact information: • keep them safe and secure, in line with the Data Protection Act • Make it clear why you are collecting this information (e.g. so that you can contact them in future for them to make a donation) • only ask for details you actually need • get rid of the details once they are no longer needed • don’t pass the information on to any other organisation Crowdfunding is a form of pledge fundraising, but via the internet. There are sites that your group can set up a crowdfunding page on, and collect pledges of donations from people online. It’s a good idea to have a few target contacts for this kind of fundraising - people you know who will: a) have the money to donate; b) be sympathetic to your cause. Remember also that people tend to donate to projects and groups that they are familiar with and they recognise, or are located in their local communities. The Resource Centre has information sheets available on Planning Funding Applications and Writing Funding Applications The Resource Centre has an information sheet available on Organising fundraising events. Applying for grants or awards This involves writing convincing applications to grant making trusts, your local council, businesses, or the lottery. Although this may appear to be the easy option, it can be very time consuming, as you will need to: • do some initial research to find suitable organisations to apply to • collect together information about your group and activities for the applications • prepare budgets • plan ahead as many funders consider applications on a 3 monthly or 6 monthly cycle. Organising fundraising events Events such as summer fairs, kareoke nights or gigs can be really good ways of raising money. Page 7 Fundraising ideas Further information The Resource Centre has a range of Information Sheets on all aspects of running a group. The following ones are particularly useful for fundraising: • Organising fundraising events • Planning checklist: for fetes, fun days, parties and other events • Licensing and regulations: essential information for event organisers • Fundraising from local businesses: where to get small amounts of money or raffle prizes for Christmas parties, fun days, outings or other small projects • Planning funding applications • Writing funding applications • Budgets for community groups • News Release • Media Contacts Our reference library has sections on: • Health and safety • Publicity and campaigning • Sources of funding • Applying for funding • Fundraising events and games We have a wide range of equipment for hire including: • Money making side shows • Play equipment • Badge machines • Digital and video cameras • Data projectors, OHP, slide projector, laptops, PAs and megaphone • Collection tins and money aprons
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