I have been doing a lot of research into scholarships lately, and I have discovered a growing trend that I think can apply to fundraiser. Many organizations are now using contests to raise money for their causes. They use the contest to make money initially, and then they spend a small portion of it on the prize for the contest. You could do this for your organization and potentially make a ton of money to use for whatever you need. The information below highlights how you may go about doing this so you can hold a contest fundraiser in the future.

How Contest Fundraisers Work

Let’s say that you want to raise money for Habitat for Humanity and all of your other fundraisers haven’t worked so far. You could hold a contest for people to come up with ideas for homes, and the top prize could be to have the winner’s designs used in an actual home that Habitat constructs. You’d have to get this approved of course, but it would be a nice way to raise awareness about the organization and still raise money in the end.

Where would the money come into play? That could be up to you. You could make every person pay a small fee for entering the competition, or you could ask local architects to help you sponsor the event. The publicity you get from the contest may encourage people to donate money toward your cause, or it may make them want to volunteer with Habitat in the future. You just have to see what happens when it happens.

You can obviously apply these theories to other organizations. I just wanted to show you what contest fundraisers are all about. Hopefully you can now see the benefits that may come along with this kind of program.

How to Set Up a Contest Fundraiser

In order to set up a contest fundraiser, you need to have a creative contest in mind and a set of prizes to offer. Make sure that whatever you choose goes with what you are trying to raise money for. You may have an essay contest with a prompt related to your organization of choice. You may have a dancing contest to raise money for your dance team. You may have a cycling contest to raise money for just about anything…You just have to think about what you want to do and then go for it.

Promote the crap out of your contest fundraiser, and encourage people to make donations along the way. Even if you only charge $2 for every entry, you could make a lot of money in donations from other people. If you spread the word about the fundraiser on Facebook, Twitter, etc, you will have a better chance of getting a good turnout. Marketing is key in this kind of fundraiser, so you may even want to see if you can get the media involved. It only takes one ad on the news to launch your success.

If you end up making a lot of money from the first contest fundraiser, try to turn this into an annual thing. Then people will actually get excited about it, and they will learn to anticipate it year after year. The sororities in my home town used to make big floats to display on their lawns, and they got a lot of money in donations from people just walking by. This became so much of a hit that they literally started doing it every year. You can launch a similar tradition for your organization and see what comes of it.