Things you should know before starting your school fundraiser
After a few years of organizing fundraisers for your school, you start to understand tips and tricks to make your fundraiser do better. You may have better fundraising ideas, you may understand how your students and parents react to some aspects of fundraising, and you may know the best time frame for getting orders in before order forms are lost or forgotten. But starting a fundraiser for the first time can be overwhelming.
Mom’s Pantry in Manitoba, Canada, works with people of all degrees of experience. In addition to our helpful tips on our blog, the following will help you answer some of the questions you may have about food fundraisers.
The optimal fundraiser lasts 2-3 weeks.
We’ve seen groups run power-hour fundraisers where students will push hard to sell for one hour. We’ve also seen groups let fundraisers go for a month or more. In our experience, the happy medium for selling the most product is running a fundraiser for 2 to 3 weeks. How you do this is totally up to you! We’ve got some fundraising ideas to inspire you on our blog.
There is no incorrect fundraising idea.
Whatever fundraising ideas your students come up with could work brilliantly! Fundraising ideas are genuinely just the jumping-off point. Whether you are going door-to-door, washing cars, or hosting a bake sale, the main points are to raise money for a cause they care about and give them something valuable in return.
Mom’s Pantry operates with both physical order forms and online orders. Online-only fundraisers through us earn a 1% bonus, which many of our returning customers take advantage of.
For first-time fundraising, use physical order forms.
If it’s your first fundraiser, using physical order forms provides a couple of benefits. First, your customers will have an easy-to-access list of available food items to purchase. You are more likely to get first-time orders when seeing visuals of the food before any online codes. Second, a physical order form is a constant reminder of the fundraiser. An elusive QR code or website address fails to attract a customer to new possibilities, but a physical order form allows the customer to see them immediately.
There may be minimum sales targets for shipping.
We ship all over Canada! But in order for shipping to be covered, your overall fundraiser must fill a minimum amount of orders. If you’re close to our headquarters in Winnipeg, you can schedule a group pickup. If the targets are not met, we may need to add shipping costs.
Mom’s Pantry offers information and marketing help!
When you request an information kit, it includes promotional materials. Our goal is to help you raise the commission on the products that you need for your school’s cause—that’s why we are called Canada’s Fundraising Specialists!
To get started on your fundraiser, contact us today.