Posted by Fundraising Pro on February 25, 2010
America is the most charitable country on earth. And according to a recent essay by Adam Meyerson, president of The Philanthropy Roundtable, one third of all this charitable giving–$100 billion a year–goes to religious organizations. For churches and Christian organizations that rely on Christian fundraising to meet financial needs, this is great news!
But you may be thinking “Then why is it so hard for my Christian organization to raise money?” Even with modest fundraising goals, many churches and Christian organizations cannot seem to raise enough to meet their financial needs. Here at Samaritan Fundraising, we realized that this was because many Christian organizations were using traditional Christian fundraising methods that were either outdated or not appealing to donors. That is why we created the Samaritan Card!
The Samaritan Card is a new Christian fundraiser, one that your donors will want to buy. The Samaritan Card is a discount card that is revolutionizing the world of Christian fundraising. Marketing a Christian fundraising product to your donors that allows them to save more money than they spend has helped numerous Christian organizations find huge Christian fundraising success.
With $100 billion dollars to go around, your Christian fundraiser needs to be efficient and easy, and appealing to donors. With the Samaritan Card, Christian fundraising will never be the same.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on February 22, 2010
Whether you are trying to raise money for a new church, thriving youth group, or Christian ministry to the homeless, we at Samaritan Fundraising understand that your fundraising is about more than just money. Reaching out to your congregation or community seems like it should be easier, but all too often Christian organizations find themselves short on funds that are so desperately needed to continue their work. And the frustrations involved with trying to find donors and organize a Christian fundraiser seem to be neverending.
Even billionaire investor Warren Buffet understands the importance, and frustrations, of fundraising. Speaking to business leaders about charitable giving today, he said that “the demand is unlimited” when it comes to charitable giving, and that “you really want to make your charitable dollar go as far as it can.”
With both the frustrations and importance of Christian fundraising in mind, Samaritan Fundraising offers your church or Christian organization a new way to fundraise that has already helped many Christian organizations across the country raise the funds they needed. The Samaritan Card is a unique and modern way to raise money for your church or Christian organization, a way that YOUR ministry can begin using today! There is no cumbersome paperwork, and the product, a discount card accepted at over 100,000 retailers nationwide, virtually sells itself.
Samaritan Fundraising knows how important Christian fundraising is to your organization. Visit samaritanfundraising.com to learn more.
Posted by Aaron Jeschke on December 4, 2009
Are you a Christian Sports team or organization looking for a product that will help you raise money quickly and easily? Many sports teams have a difficult time raising the money they need because it is usually pretty difficult to communicate the mission and purpose of a sports team to those who are not directly involved. It’s imperative for Christian sports teams to have quality church fundraising products that donors actually want to buy otherwise you might have a pretty difficult time raising money.
The Game Saver Card is the perfect product for Christian Sports fundraising. The Game Saver Card works like the Samaritan Card, but offers sports-themed discounts to golf, automobile, dining, and recreational venues. Save up to 50% at more than 1,700 golf courses nationwide, plus savings on golf instruction, gear, apparel and more. Also save at restaurants, on automobile expenses like oil changes, plus recreation including theme parks and tickets to professional sporting events! The best part is that the Game Saver Card is designed specifically for Christian Sports groups and is amazingly simple to sell! Have any friends that play golf? Who wouldn’t want up to 50% at over 1,700 golf courses nationwide?
It you are having trouble raising money for your Christian sports group than I would highly recommend the Game Saver Card. Its the card that sports fans want to buy! Raising money for your Christian Sports team has never been easier!
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 19, 2009
Here are some additional ideas for Christian fundraising:
Christian raffle
Ask local businesses for donated goods and services in exchange for free publicity. Put together a spreadsheet with dollar values of all prizes and assign them a position in the prize hierarchy.
Select your financial goal and price raffle tickets accordingly. Bear in mind that lower-priced tickets appeal to a lot more people, but you have to sell a lot more of them to raise the same amount of money.
Sell raffle tickets not only to friends and neighbors, but also to the general public. Get permission to set up sales tables outside popular retail locations. Use big signs explaining why your Christian group is raising funds.
Use a raffle flyer that describes the top prizes, recaps the funding need the raffle ticket sales will help meet, and asks for their support.
Bingo Night
This is a fun family night that, due to Bingo’s popularity, can draw several hundred people. You can find bingo game forms online or buy them from party supply stores. You can charge a small admission fee plus a dollar or two per game.
Keep things moving by using an experienced caller and a PA system that can be easily heard above the crowd noise. Consider making extra money through food and beverage sales, silent auction items, or with raffle tickets.
With a large enough crowd, you could also sell other fundraising products like Christmas ornaments or bracelets with phrases like “Got Faith?” or “What Would Jesus Do?”
In some areas, you may need a license for this event, so be sure to check local regulations.
Christian Event Summary
A fun, family-oriented Christian event that’s properly promoted will always raise substantial funds. And anytime you can get a big crowd together, you can include several more fundraising activities into the mix.
Divide the work so that the same people aren’t doing all the preparations and then working the event as well. That means recruiting twice as many volunteers as you think you’ll need.
And keep in mind how easy fundraising can be if your Christian group sells the Samaritan Card, a wallet-sized discount card good at over 100,000 retailers.
Once you’ve found a successful niche, make your Christian fundraising event an annual tradition.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 17, 2009
Church groups look for fundraising events that feel appropriate for Christian nonprofit organizations. Here are several ideas for Christian fundraising events that provide a wholesome atmosphere for family fun.
Church carnival
A family-oriented carnival on church grounds is a great way to raise funds. You can contract for carnival rides with an outside firm, rent inflatable enclosed jumping areas that small children love, offer face painting, sell handicrafts, offer prizes for children’s games, do a cakewalk, and dozens of other fun activities.
Sell inexpensive tickets from a huge roll that to use for each activity or to purchase food and drinks. Position several tables full of silent auction items donated by local businesses in a strategic place so they’ll draw lots of bids.
Charity auction
Auctions are great fundraisers. To get a good turnout, you must promote heavily with press releases, roadside signs, newsletters, emails, posters in local businesses, etc.
Approach all your supporters for donations of items or services to be auctioned. Handcrafted items, gift certificates, vacation rentals, and lawn services always draw a lot of bids. Ask your supporters also works their own list of personal contacts for more donations.
Bake sale
A well-promoted bake sale always draws a good crowd. It can be a Christmas cookie day, follow a Mothers Day or any one of dozens of seasonal themes. Ask around and compile a list of good bakers and cooks, then strategize with them on how best to put this event together with a Christian theme.
We’ll look at more ideas next time but remember, these event are fun but require a lot of work. For easy fundraising, keep in mind selling the Samaritan Card, the wallet-sized discount card that practically sells itself.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 15, 2009
Christian-based fundraisers are not always limited to churches; in fact, there’s a whole world of Christian organizations out there, from mission groups to elementary schools. Often, these groups are not-for-profit and privately funded, so like daycares, they often need extra funding to keep going. Many church-based organizations, like youth groups or universities, ask for donations on a regular basis from their members to cover the activities and ongoing costs.
However, when items such as rent, employee salaries (if the group is a school or other business-based organization), and travel expenses come up, they need more than what they get from tuition costs and their diocese. That’s when a fundraiser happens – and it can be a challenge for organizations to drum up enough interest in the non-Christian community to actually make the money that they need.
When you host a Christian-based fundraiser and you want to attract the general public, don’t be too heavy-handed with religious platitudes. You will lose your fundraising potential before you even begin. Instead, tell people what the end result will be – you’ll have a youth group for teenagers to attend one night a week; you’ll be able to send a certain number of people overseas to help build houses; or your school will be able to fund some extra-curricular activities for its students.
If you host an attractive fundraiser, you may get people who like to travel, or who want to see a performance or sample a certain type of food food, or even those who just want to expand their intellectual horizons. Play your cards right and you may get these people coming back for future fundraisers, and may even be able to help you with your next one, if they have knowledge of the area.
Christian-based fundraisers don’t have to stay in the Christian community, or only deal with members of churches. When they appeal to everyone, like the Samaritan Card, you will find that non-religious people may actually be interested in your cause.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 12, 2009
Schools may be out for summer and church activities may slow down as families go away on vacation. But this a vital time for school fundraising groups and Christian fundraising groups to plan their key fundraisers for fall.
Never has there been a better time to sell the Samaritan Card as your group’s major fundraising activity. Newly released data for 2008 reveals that charitable giving by Americans fell by 2 percent last year.
The Giving USA Foundation, which has conducted the survey since 1956, expressed relief that 2008’s decrease was not steeper, considering that many Americans lost more than 2 percent of their wealth during the year.
However, the report highlights the challenging circumstances facing America’s nonprofits, many of which have been forced to lay off staff and cut programs because of declining revenue.
Particularly hard hit were social services charities which suffered a 12 percent drop in donations at a time when most of them were experiencing increased demand for their services.
The last similar overall drop in giving was n 1987, the year of the Black Monday stock market collapse.
Although experts agree that this past year’s drop could have been worse, it still means that nonprofits will have to do more with less.
The Samaritan Card, a wallet-sized discount shopping card, offers people a way to be charitable in difficult times and a way for organizations to easily raise the money they need for their causes.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 10, 2009
The Internal Revenue Service is working to help “protect the trust and confidence” in nonprofit organizations during the current economic crisis and will be watching for possible abuses, said Lois G. Lerner, who oversees the IRS office that monitors charities and foundations.
“During hard times, there is often a rise in questionable or fraudulent activity, in overly aggressive or inappropriate fundraising, and in tax-avoidance accommodation schemes of less than sterling character,” Lerner told a conference of tax-exempt organizations in Washington held by Georgetown University’s Law Center, according to media reports.
“We are trying to stay ahead of the curve to curtail predatory abuse of tax-exempt organizations,” she said. “Consequently, we are looking very closely at applications from new organizations, and at activity being conducted by established organizations.
Lerner emphasized how important it is for the nonprofit sector to maintain the trust of the general public. “The IRS can help instill and maintain this trust by promoting compliance and transparency. Organizations can build and maintain this trust by doing the right thing – operating consistently with their long-held beliefs and missions, promoting transparency and accountability to the public, and resisting the temptation to sacrifice principles for short-lived and perhaps ill-gotten gains.”
It sounds like she was talking about Christian fundraising groups. Christian fundraising groups are committed to their long-held beliefs. These beliefs guide them to resist temptation and never sacrifice principles.
Christian fundraising groups that sell the Samaritan Card will find that the success of this easy fundraiser will further help them meet their obligations to their mission, their boards, the Lord – and the IRS.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 8, 2009
Christian non-profit groups and charities planning to start a business or keep one afloat are confronting daunting economic challenges. Experts in the field offer the following fundraising tips:
Don’t panic. The fundamentals of business don’t change, even in a downturn. To be successful, businesses still have to lure and keep customers, provide good service and keep prices competitive.
Watch the numbers. Keeping an eye on costs and cash flow takes on increased importance in a tough economy. Nonprofits that typically run their financial reports every couple of months should move to a monthly or even weekly schedule.
Planning is important. More charities are creating a range of contingency plans for their businesses now. It is important to outline courses of action for different levels of increases or decreases in revenue.
Be realistic. Many nonprofit groups are reeling from drops in their philanthropic support, but organizations in financial crisis should not start a business simply because it seems an easy way to make money. It could drain resources and create a worse situation.
Look ahead to the economic recovery. The downturn provides a valuable opportunity to plan and lay the groundwork for a new business to start in the near future.
Mission is key. To make smart choices in response to the economic crisis, nonprofit organizations need to remember why they started their businesses in the first place.
Sell the Samaritan Card. This wallet-sized discount card makes it easy to generate revenue. There’s little overhead and it offers your community a way to donate during difficult financial times – the card pays for itself after only several purchases.
Posted by Fundraising Pro on June 5, 2009
Many Christian fund-raising groups and other nonprofits run thrift stores as a way to generate income to serve their communities and causes. St. Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army, Goodwill and the Hospice Shops are known nationwide but in every town various churches, hospitals, symphonies and animal protection groups run small thrift stores.
The current economic climate is good news for these charitable businesses. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. It’s a jest, but it’s true, at least in this sense: When the economic going gets tough, the tough go shopping at thrift stores.
Millions of people have less to spend, so they spend more where goods cost less – at retail secondhand stores run by charities or for profit.
“Now that the economy is doing poorly, our stores are doing well,” Wendy Steinmetz, spokeswoman for the family-owned Thrift Town, a four-state chain with 15 stores, said in a recent newspaper article.
Some stores have been setting what Thrift Town dubs “world records.” Their weekly sales have hit all-time highs.
Similarly, sales in the Salvation Army’s thrift stores in are up from over a year ago, said Dawn Marks, a regional spokeswoman.
“Our clothing sales, our necessities sales, are up,” she said.
While thrift shops provide a wonderful service to the community by offering everyone a way to shop for very little money, a way to recycle and a way to raise money for good causes, they are very labor-intensive.
Thrift shops require many volunteer hours to sort and price donations and mind the store. Overheads can be huge too, if rent has to be paid on the store space and if a commercial truck is needed to pick up donations. And there are utility and insurance bills to pay.
Selling the Samaritan Card, a wallet-sized discount card, might be a much better fit for your nonprofit organization.
