Are you in a choir or a group of people that has some singing talent? If so, you may want to use your vocal talents to raise money for your organization. This is a great time of the year to do this because you can actually sing Christmas carols for money. There are a few ways to go about this, and any one of them could prove to be a great fundraiser for your organization. Here is a look at some of the different ways you could go about caroling for cash if you want to have a special Christmas fundraiser.

Selling Door to Door Carols

You could offer singing carol-grams that people can buy for their loved ones. A lot of people do this around Valentine’s Day because they want to send their partners a special surprise. Those same people may want to hire your group to sing Christmas carols at someone’s door. You would need to market a service like this in advance and then make a schedule to go out for the singing. You could offer special Christmas gifts with your singing in the form of jewelry, chocolates, or something along those lines. Just get creative with the idea and see what happens.

Singing at Businesses

You could contact local businesses to see if they would want to pay to have some carolers around for the Christmas season. Doing this would give the business a more inviting feeling, and it may draw enough attention to get new customers in the door. That is what you can tell your future customers to convince them to invest in your services. Just charge a flat rate for the time you spend there, and then wait for the business to pay you afterward. If you do this with a few different establishments, you may be able to get a decent amount of money for your group.

Getting Money on the Street

If you want to be a little less formal with your caroling, you could just do this on a busy street. Then when people pass by, they can drop money into a collection bucket for you to use. Street performing isn’t always profitable, but it can be if you go to the right location. Think about an area of town where a lot of people will be walking on foot. If you have a festival of lights in your neighborhood, that would be the perfect place to setup your caroling station. If you have enough traffic around you, someone is bound to give you money.

Before you commit to a location though, you may want to make sure you’re legally allowed to carol there. If you are doing so in front of a place of business, you will need to ask for the business’s permission to be there. Otherwise you may be cited for soliciting. If you work out something with the place you plan to setup a station in, you should be able to run your fundraiser without an issue.

Final Thoughts

Caroling for cash is a great way to raise money, but only if you’re good at it. If you have a bunch of off key singers trying to carry a tune, you may not have much success at all. Practice your singing as a group before you go out to the public. Try to get a good set of harmonies going, and then you will inevitably make more money. You’d be amazed by how much money you can raise just by spreading some Christmas cheer. Keep all of this in mind for this holiday season and you’ll have the equivalent of a pharmacy technician salary in no time.

No matter what kind of organization you are involved with, you will inevitably come across the need for group T-shirts. You may need these to identify your group at a convention, or you may need them to sell for a fundraiser. Whatever the case may be, you can create group shirts without much effort at all. Sites like CafePress and Zazzle make this process as easy and affordable as possible. Here is a look at what it might take for you to create shirts to wear or sell with your organization.

Picking the Design

The design you put on your shirts will be entirely up to you. You might pick a group logo, or you may pick a famous cartoon character. That’s up to you. Ideally, you need to get an image with a transparent background to avoid having a border around it on the shirt. If you have a word with a white background, you will have a white border around that word whenever it prints off. With a transparent background, all that will show up is the word on your design.

Note that you will have a chance to add words through the sites that won’t have backgrounds on them. The tip below mainly refers to images, like school mascots or cartoons. In an ideal situation, those need to have transparent backgrounds.

Creating the Shirts

To create the shirts, you will need to go to the CafePress custom T-shirt or Zazzle custom T-shirt section on the site you’re working on. You will see a set of shirts to choose from as backgrounds, so you can select which ones you’re interested in working with. You can choose several colors in several orders or you can choose just one. That part is up to you.

Once you select your base shirt, you will be brought to a product designer that will allow you to actually create the shirt of your choice. You can add graphics, shapes, or text to the shirt based on whatever you want it to look like, and then all you have to do is drag whatever you want onto the shirt on the screen. When you have a design you like, you can click the finish button to see what the shirt looks like.

Ordering the Shirts

Once you have all of the designs in place, you can place your order for the shirts. You will save money by buying in bulk, so keep that in mind when you place an order. Once you have all of that worked out, you can pay for your shirts and wait for them to come in. Then you can sell them or wear them accordingly.

Making Money before You Order

If you want to sell the shirts without actually having to order them, you can open a store on the site you just used so that people can buy your shirts whenever they want to. You can also apply your design to bags, coffee cups, hats, and just about anything else you can think of. Then you can make all of the items available on your store for people to buy. You’d be amazed by what people will pay money for nowadays. As long as you charge more for the products than what you pay, you could make a decent profit to use for your organizations. That is all the more reason to create a good design from the start. Think like an accountant and try to make the most out of your money and time.

Advertisements are everywhere, from magazine to bathroom stalls and anyplace in between. The world is literally filled with ads, and all of those ads cost a lot of money to put up. Have you ever wondered how you can tap into that money and potentially use it for your organization? The process may not be as difficult as you think. Your group has the power of size and community involvement, which is something that a lot of businesses will want to tap into in order to advertise themselves. Here is a look at what you could do to potentially sell advertising for fundraising.

Advertising on T-Shirts

One of the easiest ways to sell ads for fundraising is to offer a business a chance to get its name on some group T-shirts you wear. There are a few different ways to go about this. You could offer to put the business name on the back of the shirts if the company pays for the shirts, or you could ask for donations from several companies and put all of those companies on your shirts. You could talk to a legal assistant as a local law firm to see if the firm would be willing to pay for other articles of clothing as well. You may be able to get full uniforms if you sell enough ads. As long as you keep your organization and the donors’ names on the clothing in some way, you should be set.

Advertising on Your Website

Your website is full of places where you could potentially put advertisement. You could do something simple like install Google Adsense on the site, and then you would get paid every time someone clicks on one of the ads there. You may not make money initially, but the more people you get to see the site, the more chances you have to make money. You could potentially sell ad space to specific companies if you want to. That will just take a little marketing on your end. If you think there are some local businesses who may want to do that though, by all means give it a try.

Advertising on Vehciles

If you have a van that you always tote your club members around in, you could potentially sell ad space on it. Most companies will love the idea of that because their name will go everywhere you o. This is especially true for sports teams because they leave the city so often. That provides a traveling source of advertising that most businesses will be dying to take part of. Try not to make the ads too over the top. You still want people to recognize your organization in the end. If you throw an ad on the back of your charter bus though, you might be able to make some extra money for your group.

Advertising on School Supplies

You could offer to pass out pens and pads of paper with a company’s name on it in exchange for a donation of some sort. Then every time you send out care packages in the community, you could give out the office supplies to help the company advertise. College kids love free pens, so you should have no trouble getting rid of your supply over time.

Use the power that you have to your advantage and try selling ad space to raise money. As unconventional of an approach as this sounds, it actually makes a lot of sense. You can help a local business grow, and then they may have more money to give you in the future. It is a winning solution all the way around. Think about the different ways you could sell advertisement, and you could be rolling in fundraiser profits in no time.

Have you ever thought about making YouTube videos to raise money for your organization? Even though YouTube is a free site to use, there are money making opportunities that you could look into for the group. Creating a YouTube account does not take long at all, and it could be the gateway to a little bit of money for you. Using YouTube can be a lot of fun, and it allows members of your organization to express their creativity. All you need to know is how to make it work to your advantage. Read on to see what you need to do to make money from YouTube.

How You Can Make Money through YouTube

There are a couple of ways you can make money through YouTube. The easiest way is through YT’s profit sharing program, where you agree to put ads on your videos in exchange for money. Every time someone clicks on an ad, you make money. That may be small at first, but it can add up over time. The good thing is that you can make money for as long as the video is on the web, which would give you a “set it and forget it” source of fundraising. You just have to put up videos that are interesting enough for people to view. High views are what will give you those profit sharing opportunities.

You may also use YouTube to promote your organization, and you may draw in extra donations just by spreading the word. Put a little blurb at the end of the videos about the organization and how donors can reach you. Include the same info in the video description. You might be surprised by just how much money that generates.

Step 1 – Create an Account

Setting up a YouTube account is not nearly as difficult as getting into an online school, like Florida Tech online. To do this, simply go to YouTube.com and go to the registration area in the top right corner. Fill out the information on the form and choose to create an account. You can put your organization’s name for the owner’s name, and you can make the age whatever you want. Just make sure you hide any information you don’t want others to see.

Step 2 – Make Some Videos

The whole point of having a YouTube account is to make videos for the web. You can use actual camera equipment that you already have, or you can use your YT account to film directly through a webcam. What you decide to do should be based on the kinds of videos you make. If you want to make question and answer videos, having someone from the group speak to a webcam may not be that bad. If you want to make music videos of some sort though, you may want to put more effort into your videos. That is all up to you.

Step 3 – Post and Market the Videos

Put the videos you created on YouTube, and then share those videos with everyone. Post links to them on your website, or put information about them on your social network pages. Just spread the word that you have these videos up so you can get views and subscribers. That will ultimately make you money.

Step 4 – Earn Money

If your videos get enough attention, you will start getting emails from YouTube asking if you would like to participate in their advertising program. This allows YouTube to put ads on or before your videos. You get paid every time someone clicks on the ad, and that payment can add up over time. If you get the chance to do profit sharing on multiple videos, you have the ability to raise some decent money without having to do any additional work. Then all you have to do is wait for YouTube to send you the money so you can put it toward the organization.

What Makes a Good YouTube Video?

Your videos need to always be topical, interesting, and entertaining. Think about what people would logically go to YouTube to see. You could have people from your organization making funny parodies of popular music videos, or you could have some hot women from the group talking on camera about nearly anything. Those videos always get views, no matter what the subject of them may be. Try to be creative but still search worthy, and you should draw in good views in the end.