FAQs Fundraising Tips Promotional Flier (PDF) Online Donation Form

Books for the Bayou

Bringing Books Back to Students

Fundraising Tips

Thank you for considering supporting Books for the Bayou with a fundraising campaign. Your community’s donations will help replenish the personal libraries of students in hurricane-affected areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Following are some simple steps to help you get started.

1. Decide on a type of fundraiser. Fundraisers tend to break down into four fairly broad categories, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

• Exchange of goods/services for a fee.

  This might be a car wash, bake sale, rummage sale, sale of coupon books or pizza dough, or any other transaction where you encourage friends, families, and community members to purchase an item or service to support the cause. The advantages of selling a product or service can include not needing a venue (if it involves "door-to-door" sales) and the possibility of reaching a wide group with many "salespeople." The downside is that you may need a fair number of volunteers to sell enough of the product to make the effort worthwhile. If you’re selling a product, you’ll also have to purchase stock of what you’re selling, or have volunteers bring in items to sell.

  
  
  
• Appeals fundraisers.

  Appeals might involve a letter sent to potential donors, a collection jar placed at store checkouts, or an e-mail about the cause. Advantages to using this strategy include needing few volunteers and having relatively low costs for producing materials. The downside of this approach is the potentially low response rate. If you send letters to 300 school community members and have only a 5 percent response rate (which is often the case with this type of fundraising campaign), you will have only 15 people donating. Appeals like this are more often used to cultivate donors long-term.

  
  
  
• Participation challenges.

  Often designed as "athons"—walkathons, bowl-a-thons, hula hoop-a-thons, read-a-thons, etc.—these challenges rely on participants to agree to engage in a particular activity or behavior in order to raise funds. The low fundraising costs for this approach are an advantage, but much like sales, these fundraisers may require a fair number of participants to be successful.

  
  
  
• Special events.

  An auction, dinner, boat cruise, talent show—these are all examples of fundraising events. Fundraising events generally give participants entertainment, activity, and camaraderie in exchange for the ticket price. Advantages to fundraising events include the potential to raise large amounts of money in one fell swoop—if the venue is big enough and the ticket price sufficiently high. The downside can include potentially long lead times to book a venue, the expense of the venue and other event aspects, the amount of planning involved, and in the case of auctions, the need to secure attractive auction items from donors. Events also require the most advertising dollars to encourage participation.

To choose a fundraiser, weigh the amount of time you can commit, the general disposition of your primary audience, the income level of potential participants, and the other events scheduled in your community (e.g., you might not want to be the third auction of the spring.) Most fundraisers benefit from having their own committee to explore the options, organize the campaign, and recruit volunteers.

2. Pick a date. Your date may be the date of your event, "athon," service, or sale, or it might be a deadline for selling a product or responding to an appeal. Keep school schedules in mind, as well as any holidays that could affect the success of your fundraiser.

3. Set a timeline, budget, and goal. Make sure everyone is clear as to when each task needs to be completed, who is doing what, what investment there will be to start the fundraiser, and the net amount you want to raise (the funds raised minus expenses).

4. Promote. Once you know what you are doing, and when and where, let the school community know. For appeals fundraisers, the donation solicitation letter or e-mail itself can serve as the promotion.

For events, use the customizable Books for the Bayou promotional flier to tell your community why funds are being raised and how they can give. Download the flier and type in

• The name of your event
• The day, date, time, and location of your event
• A description of your event
• The event coordinator’s contact information

Please note: Unless you have Adobe Acrobat, you will not be able to save the flier with your information filled in. Before you enter any information, make sure you will be able to print the flier from the computer at which you are working.

5. Have fun and collect funds. Enjoy your fundraiser, and remember that you’re doing it for a great cause. Be sure to establish good cash handling practices for collecting and donating the funds (for tips, refer to the PTA Money Matters Quick-Reference Guide). At the conclusion of your fundraiser, submit all funds to Books for the Bayou using the online donation form.

For more information about fundraising, refer to PTA Fundraising Essentials or click here.