If you are trying to raise money for your organization, you are going to need a set of goals to follow. Goal setting is important for every aspect of your life, from getting a college degree to setting up a savings account. If you do not have a goal to follow, you will not have anything to strive for. That could lead to a lackluster performance, and it may mean that you will not be able to raise all of the money that you need. Here are some tips to help you set goals for your fundraising so you can establish a good plan from the start.

Know What You Need

If you are trying to fundraise for a certain project, you should try to figure out how much money you need for it. This may not apply for fundraisers that you just do for money in general, but it will apply for travel fundraisers, renovation fundraisers, and other events along those lines. You need to figure out what your ultimate goal is going to be so that you can center other goals around it. Think about what you logically need to make out of your fundraising, and then you can plan from there.

Know What You Can Make

For the most part, you should be able to predict how much money you can make from each fundraiser, especially if you have done them in the past. I was in choir for a long time in high school, and my choir instructor knew that we would be able to make a certain amount of money from our singing Valentine’s every year. If we went over that, great. We actually did that a few times. Nevertheless, she knew roughly what our bottom line was going to be, and you probably know that too. You can use that information to determine how many fundraisers you need to reach your overall goals.

Set Short Term and Long Term Goals

You need to be able to establish a set of short term goals and long term goals. The short term goals are going to reflect amounts of money that you want to make within a few weeks of time. The long term goals will be what your overall plans are for the year, the season, the National Merit Scholarship Program, the project, etc. your short term goals should add up to become your long term goals, and these will motivate members of your group to keep raising money. If they can see that they are meeting the goals you have set for the short term, they will work to reach the long term goals as well. It’s little tactics like this that can go a long way in helping you raise money.

Make a Schedule for Your Goals

Once you have all of the short term and long term goals in place, you need to create a schedule that is going to reflect them. This should outline the different fundraisers you plan to run throughout the year so everyone is on the same page. You can make a big calendar with all of your fundraisers on it, and that way you will be able to stay on track. Make sure you pick good times of the year for fundraisers so you get the most money out of every one that you hold. That way you will be able to reach your goals as easily as possible. With the right plan in place, you should have no trouble raising the money you need for your group. You just have to follow through with your ideas.

Fundraising projects are known for being a bit of a drag. There are some that are more exciting than others, but most people hate the idea of having to run a catalog sale for money. If you want to have a truly successful fundraiser for your organization, you need to find a way to make it fun for the participants and the donors at the same time. Whether you’re trying to set up some scholarships for girls or you want to build a new clubhouse for your group, you can adjust the way you fundraise to boost the morale in the organization. Here are some tips to help you put the fun back in fundraising. Hopefully they lead you to a successful attempt in the end.

Offer Prizes

One of the easiest ways to get people excited about fundraising is to offer special prizes for people who raise the most money. You could actually get donations for prizes from businesses in your area, so you do not necessarily have to spend money that you already don’t have. You could ask for gift cards or small prizes that people could win, and then you could give them out in support of your ongoing fundraiser. If the prizes are worth a lot of effort, you can rest assured that you will be raising a lot of money over time.

Make Fundraising a Game

If you turn your fundraiser into a scavenger hunt for money, you may be able to spark the interest of the people in your group. Everyone loves a little friendly competition, and there are plenty of things you can do to truly turn this into a game. You could have a special person on campus that will pay money to the first person that asks him or her about a project, like a secret agent working under cover for you. That way everyone will be scouring campus trying to find the person in question, and they will basically be forced to ask around about the fundraiser. This may be a sneaky approach to raising money, but it can get the job done.

Pick Fun Fundraisers

When you start figuring out which fundraisers you want to hold, you need to try to come up with some ideas to really get people excited about raising money. Some possible suggestions include:

• Spaghetti Dinners
• Date Night Auctions
• Silent Auctions
• Poker Tournaments
• Benefit Nights

If you look around enough for a really fun fundraiser, you should be able to spark the interests of your group members. Worse comes to worse, you can always give out your group’s email address so they can send you money on PayPal. This may not be the most creative fundraiser ever, but it can be fun to watch the money pile up right before your eyes.

By holding parties, auctions, and special dinners while you fundraise, you will give people a reason to truly be proud of the money they are building up for the organization. This will improve the way the group feels about the fundraisers, and it may encourage them to make more money as a whole. If you are struggling to get some fun in your fundraisers, try to read over the tips above. With the right project and the right motivational tools, you should be able to raise a ton of money in no time at all.

You can run a standard auction to raise money for your organization, but that may be a little bit boring. A lot of people won’t necessarily go to a college auction because they don’t think they will get anything good out of it. In order to get people to come to your auction, you may need to think a little outside the box. That is where a date night auction comes in. you can actually auction off dates with people in the organization, and then other people can potentially go out with some hotty they would not have had access to otherwise. Here is a brief overview of date night auctions so you can figure out how to set one up for your group.

The Purpose of a Date Night Auction

At a date auction, you are basically auctioning off time with people in your organization. This usually happens for the popular or attractive people in the organization that other people would actually want to bid on. An announcer auctions the people one by one just like he or she would items in a traditional auction. Then the winner gets a date with the other person that he or she pays for. This can be a really fun experience if you get into it, especially if the people bidding know it is just for fun. In some cases, they may pay a lot of money just to hang out with someone from your organization.

How to Set Up a Date Night Auction

To set up a date night auction, you will obviously need a venue to hold the auction in. Get enough seating for a decent amount of people, depending on how many of them you think will come to the auction. Ideally, you need a stage facing a set of theater-style seats, but you can use metal folding chairs and a plastic crate if you have to. Find an auctioneer that could help you run the auction or see if anyone from the group wants to do that. Then all you have to do is focus on advertising the auction enough to get people to come to it.

Get a group of people together from the organization that you will be auctioning off, and decide on a starting bid for each of them. That may be $20, $200, $2,000…It just depends on what you think that person’s time is worth. You will need to get some large cards to write numbers on, and then you will need to assign every bidder a number. Then when the auction is over, you know exactly who you need to collect the money from. Hold the auction to see how high the bids though, and then pick up the cash from the winning bidders. You should be able to use the money for whatever you want to after that.

Final Thoughts

Sororities and fraternities tend to do well with human auctions, just because they contain some of the most popular people in school. If you are trying to raise money for the Russian club, you may have a hard time getting bidders in the door. Only you know how desirable dates would be with people in your organization, so you need to keep that in mind. If you think that you will have a good experience running an auction like this, by all means find a way to do it. Hopefully with a little bit of marketing and some playful members of the audience, you can raise a lot of money and have a good time all the way around.

If you have never been to a silent auction, you’re probably wondering how people could possibly bid on an item without making any noise. Fans of Storage Wars probably have images of Dave Hester‘s famous “Yuuup!” flashing through their minds at this point, but not all auctions have to have a Hester-esque volume to them. You could have an auction totally free of noise and potentially raise a lot of money for your organization. Let’s take a look at how silent auctions work so you can use one of them for a group you are involved with.

How a Silent Auction Works

A silent auction is a little different than a standard auction because it is not hosted by an auctioneer. In a silent auction, you have various items laid out in a room that people can bid on, but they do not have to actually yell out anything to make an offer. Instead, they simply write down their bids on a sheet of paper, along with their names. Then when the auction is over, the person with the highest bid wins the prize. Every person can see the other bids before them. They just can’t see the bids after them unless they check back on the item. That way someone doesn’t know if he or she truly won until the auction ends.

How to Set Up a Silent Auction

Setting up a silent auction is fairly easy. All you need is a location, a set of items to bid on, and a group of people willing to bid on those items. The location can be anything from a school to a church to an auditorium. It just needs to be big enough to house all of the items for the auction and all of the people associated with the event. Some people will host banquets or spaghetti dinners along with the auctions to enhance the amount of money they can potentially make. If you choose to do this, you will need to get a venue big enough to hold tables that seat all of your guests.

The items you auction off should be somewhat related to your organization, but they do not have to be. You can buy some of these on your own, or you could request donations from your community. A lot of people will donate themed baskets for people to bid on, like a movie theme or a bed and bath theme. That gives people different things to choose from when they decide to bid on an item. You may get special figurines to be bid on their own, or you may get all baskets. That is entirely up to your organization.

As for getting the people to come to the auction, that is all a matter of marketing. You can advertise your silent auction in the community section for Craigslist, or you can just spread it all over Facebook. You should ask all the members of your organization to tell their friends and family members about it to attract as much attention as possible. The more people that come, the higher the bids will be. You’ll get everyone from school teachers to female tattoo artists there if you market the auction well enough.

Put a clipboard and pen out for every auction, along with a sheet for people to write their names and bids on. Then all you need to do is set a time for the event and hope it is a success. When the allotted time for the auction is over, you need to gather everyone around and announce the winners for the items. Collect your money after that, and you can put it to good use for your organization.

Now that Christmas is over, you have missed your chance to carol for cash. That doesn’t mean you can’t sing your way to a big wad of money though. You just have to wait for a different holiday. Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to have a singing fundraiser because you can sell musical telegrams for people to send their loved ones. I did this several years over in choir, and every year we raised a ton of money for new uniforms. Here is a look at some of the different things we did for singing Valentine’s so you can potentially emulate a similar plan for your organization.

How Singing Valentines Work

For singing Valentines, you will split up into small groups of people and sing one of five or sing songs that you have pre-chosen for people to order. The groups can be anywhere from four to eight people in size, depending on how many harmonies you want to use. You will make a list of songs that people can choose from when they place an order, and then you will sing the pre-selected song at someone’s house or place of business based on an address that the purchaser gave at the time of ordering. On Valentine’s Day, all you have to do is show up at that person’s door and sing whenever he or she answers.

Setting Up Singing Valentines

You need to plan for singing Valentines a couple of months in advance so you can learn the songs and market the fundraiser well early on. Start by choosing five or six songs that will be easy to learn and universally romantic. I know that we used to sing “Unchained Melody” and “When You Say You Love Me,” but I can’t remember the others we used to sing. If you want to use a karaoke CD while you go out, you will need to pick songs that you can find karaoke tracks for. Then all you will need is a portable CD player to use when you go out.

Once you have your list of songs gathered, you will need to start learning them as a group. Try to learn versions with multiple harmonies so the singing has some kind of depth to it. Make a list of songs and packages for people to choose from, and start promoting your orders. You can offer special prices if you go out with a rose, chocolate or a stuffed animal, depending on what you want to do. Just promote the crap out of your fundraiser online and in person to raise as much money as possible.

Make sure that everyone pays for their singing Valentines before Valentine’s Day. That way you have all the money on hand to help pay for the fuel and other expenses. Once the big day comes, all you have to do is go out as a group and start singing.

Tips for Having a Successful Fundraiser

If you want to have a successful fundraiser, you need to make sure you have an effective schedule. Section off the town and have one group do the Valentines for each section. Try to schedule orders so that you avoid driving around as much as possible. That will allow you to get more Valentines in during the day. Make sure that you get to a place before a person gets off work, and keep everyone in the group in communication at all times. If you can do all of that, you can have a successful Valentine’s Day fundraiser.