My donations are slowly coming in and our items for our event are better than last years thanks to all the tips on this site.
My problem is not donations - it's getting people to our event. We have 101 students and only 6 parents get involved. Our own children are involved with all our events but it's like pulling teeth to get the parents of the students involved in showing up to the fundraisers that are for the benifit of their kids!!!
We advertise our events through email to the families, school and FB like crazy. We have flyers every where. Our next event is our Murder Mystery/Auction/Raffle. Since food is involved we need to pre-sell tickets to get a head count. We are allowing a small amount for walk-in's so we don't over pay on food.
Any suggestions on how to get parents involved?
We did a Duck Dynasty basket in January. This next raffle we are doing a Big Bang Basket which includes a CheeseCake Factory gift card.
We have a raffle every month so by listing all our upcoming events in our donation letter we received 4 $50 Tiny Print gift certificates. We are making 2 graduation baskets and 2 baby baskets which will incluce hand knitted baby blankets by my mom.
I'm located in Massachusetts
Alex & Ani donations: If you've put in a donation request to Alex & Ani, just be aware that I've found them to be a bit disorganized. First I put in a request and never heard or got an acknowledgement, even though the website says you will. So I resubmitted. Then I got a response and they said they would donate. They said the donation would come 1-2 weeks before the auction. Still within one week before, we still hadn't received anything. So I emailed to find out if it had gone out. Then suddenly the next day, I receive a message that it is shipped out via UPS. At this point it won't make it in time for our auction, since it's less than 3 days to our auction. We'll hold on to it for next year.
For PTO Admin: it looks like from the homepage of PTO, under "fundraising", then "ultimate donation list" still connect with 2013 listing, instead of 2014.
Hi Marilyn,
Glad you already have the templates! I passed that link along because what we've gathered from talking to folks in the community is that it is often a good idea to send a personalized thank-you even when getting online donations.
Rose, thank you for the links but I didn't need templates for thank you letters - I have that. I'm using this Ultimate Donation list to request lots of new online donations for the first time.
My question was logistical - I successfully got donations from places (Disney, for example) and it seemed to be automated. How do I thank them? and for those who have repeat donations - did it matter whether they sent a thank you or not?
Last edit: 10 years 9 months ago by marilyn . Reason: forgot "thank you"
Footsoul - I am in Washington too (although not Seattle). One year I did almost 700 requests and had just 172 of them donate! A lot of businesses wait until closer to the event and the stuff will just show up (that's my favorite), and local is always your best bet - and you have a TON to choose from! I have been doing this kind of stuff in WA for over 5 years.....If you want to contact me off list you can, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I am NOT trying to leave anyone out or keep my donors/info secret...they just won't be of use to anyone NOT in the Seattle area or Washington state, and I don't want to bog down this awesome thread with a lot of info that will not be of use to the masses. These are not huge corporations with donation policies, they are small companies with local interest only. I would never keep something that would be useful for everyone off a thread that has been so helpful to many!
