Fundraising for Community Organisations
Fundraising has always been a primary source of income for many organisations such as community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With restricted financial help from governments, nearly all of these establishments would not be financially viable without the great and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. For instance sporting clubs charge membership fees but with outlays ever growing, it wouldn’t be possible for them to exist financially without fundraising.
The types of fundraising opportunities today are many and varied. There is a plethora of fundraising entities about going to try and entice organisations to utilize their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to equestrian riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The selections are truly amazing and seemingly endless.
Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the time honoured methods of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over old few years, still, because of child obesity issues from poor eating traits and beneath exercising, most of these formal fundraising products have started to fall from favour with fundraising entities.
This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to acquire a foot in the door so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.
So where do you become when you want to get moving with fundraising? Say for instance your child is in their second year of school, and you have settled on to become more actively concerned in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you find yourself on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You would like to impress your peers; you want to do something positive for the environment and do the job successfully.
There are many reasons why the school may need to fundraise. It might need funds for a few extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or perhaps they would love to see a roof over a fresh walkway. What to do, where to get started to raise the required funds? Presently most people are turning to the internet.
The internet is now the hottest and powerful tool for locating facts, far more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When searching for ideas or information, the majority of people now do not consider any options other than the internet. There are many search engines available to the internet user, such as Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the hottest search engine on the web is Google.
ComScore is a marketing study company that provides marketing information and services to most of the internet’s largest businesses. According to estimates brought out by comScore at the conclusion of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That’s a large slice of the pie.
Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to details regarding the hottest search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The hottest search terms used with Google for fundraising are as a matter of fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.
The upshot from these searches show a broad variety of sites that the user can access, most of them being fundraising directories that list hundreds of fundraising entities offering their services.
One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you’re looking for fundraising, fundraiser ideas or fundraisers, check out Goldstar today.