One of the most common reasons for not attending Movers and Shakers is
money – “It’s too expensive”, “We haven’t budgeted to send someone”, “I just
can’t afford to do it”. . . . While we try to keep the cost down (the
registration fee has a $0 profit margin), we also understand that nearly $400
can be a lot of money to produce in one go, especially for individuals.
Note: We strongly advise participants work with
their school, parish or community group on their fundraising efforts. Also the registration fee is not due up
front, schools/parishes/diocese/ministries are invoiced after the program has
been run. This gives time all the way up
to Movers and Shakers to get your funds together.
So to
help you lessen, even cover, the registration cost here are our top 5 easy
fundraising tips.
5. Sponsorship
While it might seem easy, it can be hard to simply ask for people to
give you money for what might appear to be nothing. However, the thing people are sponsoring is
your long term commitment to your community, so you’ll need to “sell
yourself”. Ask to speak after mass or on
school assemblies and tell everyone how you’re interested in Movers and
Shakers, how you’d like to improve yourself, how you’d like to meet other youth
leaders and most importantly, what you hope to bring back to your community
from the experience.
A simple way to gather your donations is to stand at the door after mass
or assembly with a bucket as people are leaving so they can give you spare
change or their sponsorship donation.
You should also work with your school or parish office to enlist their
help in collecting sponsorship money too.
4. Raffle
A simple raffle with a small
prize pool and (comparative) small profit doesn’t require a
permit to run (see www.business.gov.qld.au). With a small
prize pool and keeping the cost of a ticket to $1 or $2, you can run a raffle
in the space of a week or two. Make a
big deal of the prize draw, ask to announce it at a school assembly or after
mass. Your prize pool can be as simple
as your school/parish/yourself purchasing some gift cards. Or if you’re feeling ambitious, kick it up a
notch and ask a local businesses or craft groups to donate products or gift
vouchers.
3. Sporting Event
You can’t go past the good ol’ fashioned premise of a
something-a-thon! Be it walk, run, skip,
hop, jump, any physical activity can be turned into a means to raise money. You can even get everyone involved, for
example if you’re at school, enlist people to help complete relay laps of the
school grounds. The idea is simple, ask
people to sponsor you for completing a specific task. For example ask people to give you 50c for
every lap of the sports oval you complete in a lunch hour. Make it a spectacle and ask people to come
watch you do it.
How about a students versus teachers grudge match? Any team sport, stage it in a lunch hour or
after school. Get all spectators and
participants to make a gold coin donation.
2. Food, Glorious Food
Nothing beats a sausage sizzle, what can be simpler? For a small outlay, go cheap and simple on
bread, BBQ sausages and tomato sauce, you can run a sausage sizzle at any time
with little notice. Ask your school if
you could run it in a lunch hour in a prominent place, or ask your parish if
you could run it after mass. No BBQ or
weather too hot, why not do an ice cream day instead? Again something with a small outlay like cheap
tubs of vanilla or Neapolitan ice cream and wafer cones. Either of these options would be easy to make
the money back to cover the initial outlay and make a respectable profit.
How about asking your school’s tuckshop to share in their proceeds for a
day? Offer to help out for a lunch hour
and promote the fact that proceeds are going to you. Perhaps you could choose a particular product
(e.g. profits on all Paddle Pops sold today) or agree to an overall profit (e.g.
half/all of today’s profits).
1. Free Dress Day
While everything on this list is easy, this would have to be the easiest
fundraising event. Organise with your
class, year or even whole school to wear “normal clothes” instead of uniform in
exchange for a gold coin donation. Or
put a spin on it, like wear bright socks or different shoes or crazy hats and
again, get people to bring a gold coin donation.
Movers
and Shakers has been operating for over 25 years in Queensland and is a mainstay
in Youth Leadership Training for a lot of schools, parishes and dioceses across
Australia. Go to www.moversandshakers.org.au to find out more
about the program and register to participate today.
No comments:
Post a Comment