When I was working as the front office lady in a Primary School, one of the things that used to fascinate me was watching the Parents from the P&F Committee work really hard for a fundraiser and then hardly raise any money. And it seemed that something always went wrong or something unexpected caused a whole lot of headaches for someone. I remember one time we had a Hot Cross Bun Drive just before Easter, and a whole heap of people forgot to collect their orders. So to keep them fresh over the four-day Easter weekend, we were left with the challenge of finding enough freezer space for 56 packets of Hot Cross Buns!
I recall one year the Fete (which is a MASSIVE undertaking and takes almost the whole year to prepare) raised $18,000, which was terrific, until our School Bursar Anne, (The Finance Officer) calculated all the unaccounted expenses. She realised that most of the expenses hadn’t been reimbursed yet, and 93% of the profits went to pay off the expenses. Poor Anne had to tell the P&F that instead of raising $18,000, they had only raised $1,260. Ouch!
Another time the School decided to do a 5 Cent Drive because, in Australia, five-cent coins are really annoying little coins that everyone stashes in their top drawer or their change jar. Consequently, most people have an extensive collection of five-cent coins in their house. The P&F thought, why don’t we get the children to bring in their unused five-cent coins and we’ll line them up on the basketball court as a great way to raise money… except for the poor School Bursar who had to count and bag up 7000 individual five-cent pieces, and take them to the bank. Needless to say, she was not impressed. All that work for only $350!
I would watch the parents work their butts off for such little amounts of money, thinking to myself “Fundraising is really hard. You hardly make any money, and it’s SO MUCH WORK – STUFF THAT!”
Interestingly, at the time I was working at the School, I was also moonlighting as a stand-up comedian. A mate who lived in Kerang, which is in country Victoria, Australia, owned a clothing store and was putting on a fashion parade to help his friend raise money for the local Toy Library. He thought it’d be a great idea to do a Ladies’ Night and combine the Fashion Show with a Comedy Night.
So I got a couple of my comedian mates, and we drove six hours to Kerang to put on a comedy show. My mate coordinated the fashion parade, we did the comedy, everyone was drinking and having a great time, and we all had such a fun night.
At the end of the night, when Mel from the Toy Library was counting up all the money, she screamed in shock. It turned out they had raised just over $3,000. They were over the moon “We have just raised ten times more money than any fundraiser we have ever done,” she cried, “and this was so much more fun!”
What this experience taught me, is that fundraising doesn’t have to be difficult. If you know what’s possible and are prepared to do something a little bit different – it’s totally possible to 10x your usual fundraising efforts. You just need to have a plan!
