A Themed Gift Basket – The Quick and Easy Raffle Or Door Prize

As monies from traditional sources becomes more difficult to secure, organizations are stepping up their fund raising efforts within their communities to raise cash to cover operating costs. While soliciting for cash contributions is the most direct means, it is becoming more difficult as companies are cutting back on such contributions. In addition, competition for the same dollars among the various organizations has increased, forcing them to look for creative ways to reach their goals. Events such as community or school fairs that include door prizes and raffle prizes are becoming very popular and businesses are regularly solicited to donate items to these events.

A themed gift basket is the perfect item for such door and raffles prizes. Gift baskets are eye catching and can be designed to reflect the theme of the event, such as “fall harvest”, “casino night” or “winter festival” simply by choosing the right combination of items to include in the gift basket. Books and videos can be good choices. A cookbook featuring traditional Thanksgiving fare, a travel book about Las Vegas and a coffee table book of winter scenes would compliment the above event themes.

A creative designer can often incorporate promotional items from a business, such as coffee mugs, into the gift basket while maintaining the theme. Even though attaching the business name to the donated item or placing a sign in front of it is common practice, company brochures and printed material can be discretely placed in the gift basket to be later reviewed by the recipient of the prize.

Marie is the owner and chief designer at Laurel Mountain Basket Company, the New England gift basket service voted “Best In The Valley” by the Valley Advocate Readers Poll 5 years in a row and chosen among the Rave Reviews! Top 100 for 2007. Visit her at http://www.laurelmtbasket.com

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School Raffles

One of the most common and probably the oldest kind of fund raising activity is the Raffle. Raffles are fun and enjoyable other than being totally effective. It involves raffle ticket sales, drawing of the ticket numbers and winning items that are either donated or sponsored.

Usually, for simple raffles, the winnings or the prizes are donated by good hearted individuals who have sincere sympathy towards the school and the students. These are usually the parents, stake holders and the alumni of the school. The donated items which are to be the prizes of the raffles may vary. It could be as cool as a Macintosh Laptop or as mundane as an electric oven toaster.

For these kinds of raffles, tickets may be sold for as cheap as a dollar. By selling volumes of tickets this cheap, the school may actually be able to raise funds as much as 2,000 dollars. That is assuming you are only able to sell two hundred tickets. Of course the number of tickets sold could depend on how many prizes there are to be won and how cool each of these prizes is.

There are times when large sums of money are required to be raised. For these, you will require a more valuable prize. Cars, motorcycles and even paintings from up and coming contemporary artists could be given away as prizes. Obviously, these items are either donated to the school for the raffle by alumni members or sponsored by good hearted companies.

For these kinds of raffles, you could sell tickets for as high as a hundred dollars depending on the value of the prizes. You won’t expect high sales from ticket prizes this high but you are sure to raise a lot more funds if the prizes are as expensive. You might actually be able to raise enough funds to construct new classrooms if not a new building.

It’s rare to have school raffles with really expensive prizes. But when it does, you can expect to raise large amounts of funds that could be put to good use.

Raffles, on the side of the people buying raffle tickets, could be considered a healthy and fun game of chance. But to the school and its members, this is a good and effective way of earning the much needed financial help in a short amount of time. As long as the information campaign for the school fundraising activity is disseminated properly, you could expect much results quickly.

If you are trying to come up with a great idea on raising funds for the school, then you should consider benefit raffles.

http://www.school-fundraising-ideas.net.au/

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How Will You Promote Your Non-Profit Fundraiser?

Non-profits organize fundraisers to collect money for their year-round social programs and activities. They host parties to hold charitable dinners and outdoor functions. However, as the main reason behind hosting such events is to raise money, the non-profits should know the ways of effectively promoting their fundraising programs.

Parties

Start organizing parties and balls of different sizes to attract people. Send invitations to your friends and colleagues requesting them to attend the party. Have proper seating arrangements and serve food and drinks to the guests to ensure customer satisfaction.

Dinners

Create excitement and enhance your non-profit fundraising event by holding a gala dinner. You can also promote your good cause by offering special prizes or a holiday trip to some exotic island! Declaring prizes will ensure maximum ticket sales and thus, generate greater revenues.

Outdoor Events

Arrange outdoor events to collect higher funds from people of diverse backgrounds. Introduce different games and make the donors participate freely. Summer and winter carnivals give you a chance to enjoy your time out and win exciting prizes.

Facebook

One of the best ways of promoting your non-profit fundraiser is to send out the message through Facebook. This hugely popular social networking site has millions of users hooked to it almost 24×7. The portal will give you an edge over your competitors in freely uploading your event details and pre-event images on your page. Facebook users liking your page will click on the ‘Like’ button and this is how you can count on the number of people liking your event(s).

Smartphone

Non-profit event organizers can also use smartphones to market their events. You can provide all event details in a convenient place, right on the mobile phones of your event attendees. Besides, smartphones offer easy access to any fundraising information within seconds! Many Cloud-based event and class management solutions have developed an in-built mobile application to let organizations share their program-related information with their customers.

YouTube

This video sharing website can act as a very powerful marketing tool. Record what your guest speakers are saying as well as the feedback of the audience after the event. You can upload an unlimited number of videos of your past events on YouTube. People will get to know how successfully you have organized the seminars. The videos help you advertise for similar occasions in future and these also act as a valuable proof that your event was a grand success.

Thus, we can see there are a good number of techniques to get maximum donations and pledges from individuals. Hope the method (s) applied by your non-profit work toward attracting support for your good cause.

Jonathon is a professional event planner. Event professionals worldwide are increasingly relying on automated software to streamline the online event registration, payment management, and attendee relationship management. Acteva is the market leader in providing event registration, & management solutions at competitive cost.

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