Fundraising for your non-profit organization is one of the most time consuming aspects of community inspired work. There is however, a huge and largely untapped pool of funds just waiting for you to collect.

When you say the word ‘grants’ to many non-profit organizations it instills fear and trepidation. Often they don’t have a dedicated grant writer so it’s a matter of pooling resources and even then, no-one has direct grant experience or knows where to start.

The government, large companies and philanthropic agencies have to give you their money. It’s the law. Well not so much for the companies, but government grants and some philanthropic agencies are governed by mandates to return funds to the community and they are eager to comply. Unfortunately, or fortunately for you the fundraiser, the quality of some applications is not all that great, but they have to award it to ‘somebody’.

So where does this leave you? In a very good position to raise funds without baking one more cake, or selling chocolates.

Like most fundraising, it’s essential to determine your cause or project that you want the funds for. Then it’s a matter of finding a grant that will give you the money. Finding a grant can often be the most time consuming part but again, the government is there to help – seriously. They provide all the information. Check out http://www.grants.gov for all the grants you can stand. They also provide handy hints on how to apply.

Don’t worry about the paperwork, they make it seem worse than it is. The most important documents you need to support your grant are:

Copy of incorporation (or similar documents proving your status as non-profit organization)

Copy of last financial audited report

List of all executive officers, their titles, signed on organization letterhead

The Grant application.

The application form itself is not as daunting as many fundraisers think it will be. Your supporting evidence is the most crucial part. To give the grant credence, it’s wise to get letters of support from other community and non-profit organizations in your area who would benefit – the broader the benefit the more likely the grant.

If you want to raise funds for a landscaping project for example, take photos to show them what you want to do. Contact the government department directly, to discuss your grant, try to get a representative to come out and inspect the project for, example lighting for a sporting field. Even if you’re confident about your application it’s always better if the department or organization know you’re applying and what your project is about.

Fundraising will always be a part of the non-profit organization and in my view it actually strengthens that organization. Grants can give this a huge boost and provide funds for larger projects or even staff members to do nothing else but apply for more grants.

Stuck for ideas for raising money ?  Check out this list of over 101 fundraising ideas !

This comprehensive list of ideas is the perfect resource for your church, charity, PTA, middle or high schools, christian kids groups, non-profit group, scout troop, youth ministry or sports club.

1.      100 Club
2.      Annual Dinner Dance / Party
3.      Annual Event – dance/fireworks/New Year party, etc
4.      Annual Subscription/Membership
5.      Art Sale / Auction
6.      Auction of Promises
7.      Auctions of Promises
8.      Bad Hair Day
9.      Balloon Races
10.      Balls & Dances – mid-summer, Valentines Day, New Year or Christmas
11.      Barn Dances
12.      Beetle Drive
13.      Bingo
14.      Bucket or Street Collections outside stores and in shopping malls
15.      Burns Night Celebrations
16.      Cake Bake
17.      Car Boot sales
18.      Car Wash
19.      Carol Singing
20.      Celebrity Speaker Event (eg.figures)
21.      Challenge Events
22.      Charity Stall for Sales of Second Hand items
23.      Cheese & Wine Evenings
24.      Chess Competition
25.      Christmas Card & calendar sales
26.      Christmas Fair
27.      Clay Pigeon Shoot
28.      Clothes Swap – ask people to donate those unwanted items with their price tags still on
29.      Coffee Morning
30.      Concerts
31.      Cookery Book
32.      Cookery Demo or Themed Food Evening
33.      Country Walk or Ramble
34.      Craft Fair
35.      Crazy Golf Match
36.      Disco
37.      Doughnuts – idea for students and young people.  High profit margin
38.      Donations
39.      Duck Races
40.      Easter Egg Hunt
41.      Face Painting
42.      Family Portrait / Photo
43.      Fancy dress party
44.      Fashion Shows
45.      Fetes
46.      50/50 Raffle – you sell tickets , the winner from the drawing wins half the money raised.
47.      Film Premiere – sponsor or show a new film, ask for “donations” rather than charge a fee
48.      Fireworks Display
49.      Flower Arranging Demonstration
50.      Football Match / Tournament
51.      Fun Runs
52.      Garden Parties
53.      Generous Giving from Wealth Individuals
54.      Gladiators / It’s a Knockout
55.      Golf Events
56.      Grants from Fundraising Bodies & Trusts
57.      Helping Hand service – offer to cut peoples grass asking for a donation in return
58.      Horse Racing evening
59.      International Evenings – themed evenings, Italian, Indian, Australian, etc
60.      Just Giving – use Facebooks and MySpace to let your friends and family know all about it
61.      Karaoke Evening
62.      Litter Picking – Sponsored
63.      Love-grams for Valentines day (for students)
64.      Make Overs
65.      Mile of Pennies / Coins
66.      Mufti, Dress Down or Non-Uniform Day
67.      Murder Mystery evening
68.      Music Quiz
69.      Mystery Tour / Trip
70.      Open Garden Events
71.      Paint balling
72.      Pancake Day party
73.      Parachute Jump
74.      Plant Sale
75.      Play station party – get your mates to bring their PS2 & PS3’s
76.      Poetry Competition
77.      Pub Tournaments – e.g. darts, Skittles, darts, pool, cards
78.      Quit It – give up chocolate / smoking / etc for a week / month
79.      Quiz Night
80.      Raffles
81.      Rambles
82.      Read-a-thon – ideal for primary schools, students get sponsored for every book they read
83.      Run a Marathon
84.      Santa Letters writing
85.      Santa’s Grotto
86.      Scavenger Hunt
87.      Selling Christmas Gifts from Catalogues
88.      Seventies Night / Disco
89.      Singing Telegrams on Mother’s Day. Ideal for students.
90.      Smarties tubes – collect £1 coins for your cause
91.      Sponsored Abseiling
92.      Sponsored Anything – Hot Tub-a-thon, you name it, having fun is the name of the game !
93.      Sponsored Head/Hair shave
94.      Sponsored Jail break
95.      Sponsored Silence
96.      Spring clean your wardrobes and sell on eBay
97.      Spring Flowers & Hanging Baskets – Demonstration & Plant Sale
98.      Strawberries & Cream Tea party – at Wimbledon time.
99.      Talent Show
100.      Ten Pin Bowling
101.      Tennis tournament
102.      Treasure Hunts
103.      Trips & Outings
104.      Unwanted Gift Sale – perfect after Christmas
105.      Used Stamps
106.      Wine Tastings
107.      Salsa Night
108.      Welly Throwing Competition

Helpful Tips for New Fundraisers

The first tip that I have for any new fundraiser is to find out what you want to get out the whole process.  There are a number of reasons why a person gets into fundraising.  Sure, it makes a person feel good because they’re contributing to a good cause, but there are many other reasons.  You may be raising money for your favorite charity, your church, your school, a business or any number of other things.

Another tip is that you should have clear goals.  You should have a goal for how much money you want to raise with your fundraiser.  You should also have a clear time frame for achieving this monetary goal.  Some fundraisers only last a day, but there are plenty others that are ongoing, over a period of time.

Another tip is to give yourself plenty of preparation time.  There is nothing worse than being unprepared.  You have to have everything organized and know what everyone’s tasks are going to be.  You need to make sure that everyone knows what they are going to be doing and what is going to be expected of them.  You don’t want to try and wing it at the last moment and have everyone running around, not knowing what they are supposed to be doing.

Another tip is to make sure that you know what all of your expenses are going to be.  There is nothing worse than going into a fundraiser and not knowing what your expenses are going to be.  You have to run it with a business mentality, so create an income and expenditure budget and try and stick to it!

It isn’t how much money you make.  It is how much money you make after expenses are taken out of the total.  You can say, well we raised $10,000, but we spent $9,000 to do it.  You only ended up raising $1,000.  It sounds simple, but there are so many people that make this mistake and that is because they don’t figure in the costs ahead of time or they didn’t take the time to get a good estimate of what the costs were going to be.

Lets say that you’re going to raise money by mowing lawns.  If you’re going to do it yourself, you don’t have to worry about labor, but there are plenty of other costs.  You obviously are going to need a lawn mower and have a form of transporting it.  You’re also going to have to pay for gas and maybe an oil change or other forms of maintenance.

If you’re going to make and sell some crafts, in order to, raise money.  You’re going to have to think about all of the material costs that are going to go into it.  Unless you’re planning to sell them locally, you’re going to also have to find a way to ship the items and think about the material costs that go into shipping.  That would be the boxes, labels etc.  You may also have to look into advertising costs.  You may need to advertise online, in magazines or in newspapers.  You have to be thinking about all of these things.

Another tip is to simply have fun!  There is nothing worse than treating a fundraiser like a job.  You won’t have fun and that might effect the people around you and they might not have fun.  Just remember that you’re doing a great thing here.  Most people wouldn’t do what you’re doing, they just aren’t motivated enough.  You always have to keep the reward in mind.  Anything that you can do to spice things up and make things more interesting and fun, go ahead and do it, within reason, of course.

Another tip is to motivate yourself and the people who are helping you in the fundraiser.  One way to do this is to provide a little competition.  A little competition never hurt anybody and it will help ensure a more successful and more interesting fundraiser.  If you’re selling a product, give the person that sells the most a special reward.  That will help motivate people to work harder.

They not only have the motivation of raising more money for the fundraiser, in order to, help the cause, they will have motivation for beating everyone else and getting the special reward.

With this many ideas, fundraising is easy.  Just don’t forget to have fun!

Found this article at http://www.simple-fundraising-ideas.com/101_Fundraising_Ideas.html and thought it could be helpful

Fundraising has always been a necessity for churches, youth groups, and non-profit organizations. Most people realize that funding is a tool to do God’s work and the amount of funding earned helps to determine the effectiveness of our giving.