Charity organizers with a great need for financial support can use custom T shirts to their advantage. Giving away or selling a shirt can be a real help in making a fundraising project successful. Several methods can be used to incorporate these clothing items into your plans.

Sometimes, custom T shirts can be used as a draw to get people in for the main charity event. If there is an event set to take place in the future, it is important to make people aware of it so that they will come out and take part. You could send out coupons for free shirts that you have designed, to encourage people to attend.

Another way to use this type of shirts as an incentive is to give them out as a reward for qualifying donations. If a person or group gives a certain amount, they get custom T shirts as a thank you. Corporate sponsors might get several shirts for a large donation. This can encourage the corporation to have a contest among employees. The ones who bring in the most donations get T shirts as prizes.

People who participate in an organized fundraising walk, run, or cycling event for charity deserve a thank you, too. You can make up special custom T shirts for the date and location of the event. It is also important to put text on the shirt describing the accomplishment required to get it. It might say something like “I Walked 20 Miles for Cancer Research.”

Auctions are a good way to make money for charities. A popular type is the silent auction. A card describing the prize of a set of custom T shirts that the winner can personally design could be one entry. During the charity event, people come by and write down their bids on the sheet. At the end of the function, the winner is announced.

A regular auction could be used as well. To sell a shirt, you will need to make it something special. You could do the same promotion, where the winning bidder gets to design and have a set of custom T shirts. Another way to go about it would be to get celebrities to sign shirts you have had made up for the charity cause.

Of course, charities can sell their T shirts a bit over cost to bring in funds. Then it is just a matter of finding places to sell them. Anywhere with a party atmosphere is a good place. A carnival or a barbecue festival would be a great place to start. The charity can also go to local clubs for sales.

People who want to give to a charity will look for ways to join in the cause. When you make custom T shirts available to them as a part of your fundraising efforts, people will be excited to help out.

Ron Subs works with Sonic Shack as a public relations consultant, more information about Sonic Shack can be found at http://www.sonicshack.com

The best part about a non profit organization is that you are giving back to a group or community. You have to heart in the right place, but there just may not be the funds available that you need to spread the word of your organization. If you fall into this category and your marketing budget is very low, you can utilize SEO strategies in order to bring visitors to your site and get the word our about the good work you and your organization are doing.

If you have a great website with excellent content and still no visitors, you will want pay attention to the pagerank you are getting. This will tell you how often your website is showing up on search engines. If it is low, then you know that you have some work to do. SEO can cost money, but there are also ways that you can get SEO results with little money and some effort on your part. You can first have one of your volunteers begins a blog. You can have a blog that will get the message across about what your organization does while giving a first hand experience of one of your volunteers. You can also include content that is relevant to your organization, such as pictures of animals that you have rescued or houses that your have built. This way, there is practically a second site used to bring traffic to the organization’s website. This blog will give your potential donors and new volunteers a reason to trust you and your organization.

Another trick that you can use is linking opportunities. If there is a person out there who has a website and believes in your cause, they will want to be able to link to your site from theirs. You can increase your pagerank this way and also network your site. You can exchange links, or use one way links. One way links are always much more beneficial . Find websites that are likeminded and let them know you would appreciate if they advertised your organization.

Either one of these advertising strategies can bring in more money and volunteers to your website. You can easily work less than an hour a week on either of these strategies in order to get eh word out about your organization. And everyone can help. You can have one person contacting places to do link advertising while another person writes about that week’s account volunteering for you so that you can post it on the blog. It will give anyone who reads it a first hand experience. This is an easy, money-saving advertising campaign that will work.

Jordan Mcpelt is a professional author who specializes in Non Profits and SEO for Non Profits. For more information on Non Profit SEO please visit http://www.grassroots.org

To help move the organization along here are 12 reasons to always make the most of each event.

1. Potential Exposure – your nonprofit organization gets your message out to your immediate area and to

those not specifically concerned with your message.

2. Newspaper Credibility – A widely read and well respected newspaper circulation is usually in the

thousands and sometimes hundred of thousands and gets you great pr in one example when say starting a

nonprofit.

3. Guaranteed Inclusion – when you pay, you know exactly where and when the press release will be

released. This helps you increase the effects of your advertising campaign.

4. Competitive Advertising – If there is competition for your nonprofit mission or dollars you can be

highly visible at another organizations highest visibility time.

5. Branding – Allows your group to differentiate and clearly establish your own brand.

6. Membership Drive – Launch your membership campaign and gain additional members.

7. Newsletter Announcement – perfect timing to announce your nonprofits upcoming scheduled newsletter on a

wider scale.

Near Term Advertising Usage and Benefits

8. Special Target or Related Market Inserts – sometimes a magazine or newspaper has special inserts that

talk to your specific group’s mission or a related market. This will help you reach your targeted market with

an affinity message.

9. Advertiser and In Kind services support demonstrate to your potential or existing advertisers, business

owners, vendor partners ad supporters that they should partner with your organization.

Long Term Usage and Benefits

10. Ongoing Local Exposure – Press releases stay on the local newspapers websites for a long time in most

cases and this means an additional how many eyeballs will read it and get your message.

11. Continued Regional Exposure -once a press release is on the newspaper web site, you get to use it to

market your organization from the prestige of the newspapers’ name.

12. Extended National Exposure – Press releases found half way around the world get read by someone who

lived near your cause but has moved far away. They will still support your nonprofit mission from a far because

they care.

13. Your Nonprofit’s Website – You get to capture a major article and use it on your website to promote

your nonprofit mission which gives your website more credibility with your targeted readers.

So can one press release and advertisement help your nonprofit mission? Can it support all that is listed for a

small fee per eyeball? The answer is an emphatic yes.

Learn more about continuing to build your profitable business model and get a free blog by contacting us at

www.techoss.com

Setting up a successful fund raiser can be a difficult task and requires much planning and industry know how. If done incorrectly you will not raise enough funds and may doom your nonprofit group for good. Here are some simple things that you can do in order to guarantee that your fundraising efforts will be a huge success.

One critical thing that you can do is form a business partnership with anyone who is in sales of their own product on or off line. If you ask them to promote their products with a small portion of sales profits going towards your nonprofit group a mutually beneficial relationship can be formed.

The business owner will enjoy a boost in sales from charitable people who will be more tempted to buy their products knowing that a portion will be going to a good cause. Obviously you will benefit by having one additional stream of funding for your nonprofit group.

Another great idea for a successful fund raising event is a type of auction. The first goal is to find appealing items to auction of, this can be anything from appliances to vacation tickets. When looking for these items you can ask local business owners to donate or wealthy members of your community who are active philanthropists.

The other option to a standard auction would be to set up a mini market with business owners selling their wares in booths. Again, the proceeds will be going to funding for your nonprofit organization. There are many resources available online with companies who have specific products that they use for charity and fundraising events. The good thing is that they have been doing this for years so their selection is guaranteed to do well at an event.

If everything goes according to plan and your fundraising event turns out to be a huge success there several things that you can do to increase your cash flow. One form of residual income that can be established is if the vendors continue to sell related products to customers from your event. Your nonprofit can continue to receive proceeds long after the event had been held.

The other more obvious thing that you can do if your event was a success is to turn it into an annual event. The attendees can be invited back each year to support the work of your nonprofit organization.

Finally for long term success in selling fundraising products be sure to closely monitor the individual success of each product. As time goes on you need to swap out poor performing products for ones that better appeal to current trends. This way you can ensure that your fundraising events continue to pull in the same if not more amounts of contributors.

For extra information on Work at Home Opportunities read about Rebate Processing and Rebate Processor jobs.

But where to start?

As popular wisdom has it, knowing and admitting you have a problem puts you half way to solving it. In this case, that means doing a little member research to determine how your members and prospective members view your organization through its brand. This can take one of several forms, including a quick poll on your website, a phone survey, an e-mail or electronic survey, or a paper/mail survey.

Regardless of the format, the recipient list should be equal parts members and prospects, to get both perspectives and spot any disconnects between those that know the organization from the inside versus what the brand alone presents to the outside world. The included questions should be formulated so that the responses returned are actionable, and give you some indication of their perceptions of the brand and the organization behind it, based on their actual experience with you, as customers, as members, as industry participants.

Reading the results in a timely fashion is important, as the cyclic nature of non-profit schedules creates peaks and valleys in the brand perception and awareness level, depending upon what time of the year it is, and how high the level of activity involving members is at the time you launch the survey. For organizations that have even more volatile years, it may be necessary to do two sets of surveys at different times of the year and compare the results to get a good reliable read on the level of awareness you can count on.

The results of your survey are one source of data, but there are other sources that while less formal or quantifiable, are just as valid in getting a read on your brand awareness and effectiveness. These include interviews with Board members, committee members, volunteers, chapter presidents or directors, vendors, other related professionals, including members of related associations, and members of ASAE.

Once all this data is collected, it needs to be interpreted accurately so that the actions you take drive your brand efforts in the most effective direction possible. Some items will be readily apparent if the surveys and interviews were constructed correctly.

One good tool you can use to read your results is to retrieve the set of brand characteristics from the marketing archives, and see how many of your responses line up with those characteristics. If your responses, including the open-ended comments, use some of the terms and attributes that make up your organization’s brand, then you’ve got a good solid start on reading your data correctly and rating a good score on your brand effectiveness.

Conversely, if very few or none of the responses include those attributes on the list, there’s a good chance there’s a disconnect between what you’re trying to convey with your brand, and how it’s being perceived by the various populations it’s designed to serve.

Now that you’ve got a read on how well you’re doing, how do you go about improving? The answer is, much as it’s been overused by too many of us in today’s litigious society – it depends. It depends upon what your data tells you, and every case is different. However there are some common scenarios and a few valuable remedies to match them.

Scenario #1 – Our brand registers very low on the surveys for memorability.
Typically this means that your customer base doesn’t remember your brand in response to a question designed to illicit a favorable response unprompted. Your organization isn’t top of mind for them as relates to your products or services, and someone else’s brand is. That could mean that your exposure frequency is too low, they don’t see enough from you to keep memorability high enough.

It could be that a competitor has captured some key emotional connection to the customer that you have not, despite an inferior product or service – they’re not as good, but customers remember them because they’re “out there” more. This can be remedied with some increase in exposure to key audiences – your top buyers should hear more from you in a positive light to reassure them that you offer the product or services that give the best value.

Putting your brand in front of them for positive reasons, like a price discount, a new offer that really saves money, rebate eligibility or other product or service related reason other than to sell them something should go a long way toward remedying this issue. It will boost memorability without seeming like you’re overselling them, a positive cognitive light that will cement the brand in the uppermost memory of the customer.

Scenario #2 – Our brand rates favorably and has high memory retention among customers, but neither do as well among prospects.

Usually, this indicates that your product or service has to be “seen to be believed” – it’s value is best seen at delivery or in the transaction, rather than prior to receiving it. This is a sticky problem that has to do as much with promotional direction and relevance as anything else. Your customers know you and have experienced your value, been satisfied with the product or service upon and after delivery and the reputation of the brand was reinforced positively.

Prospects, on the other hand, only know you by your “public” face – advertising, packaging, direct marketing, sponsorship associations. The brand unfortunately has little carriage by word of mouth, based on the fact that satisfied customers are not waving your flag and passing on the good word to prospects themselves. Prospects only get a read based on what you tell them.

Look to your research and find those key hot buttons of your best customers, and promote those attributes to prospects more heavily. Also, compare your reading on prospects versus customers in other areas of your brand – you may find another disconnect in their perceptions that could cause this effect, and you can remedy both with a shift in your promotional or creative approach to highlight those key elements more heavily. Align your creative with those highest ranking attributes of your best customers, and the prospects should get the best, most relevant perception of your product.

These are just two of the possible outcomes to this type of analysis. Suffice to say that if you’re brand is aligned with your message and your audience, you’ve got a strong package for success.

David Poulos, Chief Consultant at Granite Partners has been offering marketing guidance to firms for over 25 years. Specialties include non-profit marketing and full-scale strategic marketing campaigns. He can be reached at http://www.granite-part.com, or 410-472-4570.

If you are wondering how to start a nonprofit or you are running a nonprofit, at some point you look out at your internet, office, voice and client acquisition environment and wonder just how will you survive. The internet operation requires you to look at the website and all incoming connections. The office work involves the computers and all that borrowed or loaned nonprofit software on it. And of course it includes security against viruses. Then the voice network which means making sure the telephone network is secure and operating for the upcoming fundraising campaign. This means the main nonprofit mission of getting more clients, donors and additional fundraising special events gets put on the back burner.

When the resources of a nonprofit organization are scarce, money and true funding do not really exist to any major extent. This means an accidental techie situation is a reality. Your nonprofit job turns into you becoming an accidental techie because planning to handle technology was the last thing thought about when you were hired or during the starting of the nonprofit. This is especially true when you and the organization have the same name and the same business function, then that probably mean the organization is you.

When this reality sets in, you must review the whole situation and get a complete assessment of what you will need to do in order to meet your nonprofit goals. The last thing you want to do is try and embark upon a program to address all your office technology needs at once. Jump in to where there is an immediate need at the moment because if you try and do all the projects at once nothing will get done. Look at the immediate problem areas technically and start addressing those areas first. Take a systematic approach and go for a strong solution that you can demonstrate a strong return on the money you may be asking your board to spend money on. In other cases you need to get someone to help you. As a business system analyst from the corporate world, the objective is to get out of this no win situation by following a process as defined below.

You first need to get a comprehensive review of your nonprofits operating environment. Your opening move is to develop a picture of your current business operation. This includes your entire internet, out of office and in office technology needs. Second, look around and review your support staff, if you have a staff that is. Next establish how you presently make use of and purchase your technology and related computer equipment. Then launch a program to define how your nonprofit group is dealing with or the nonprofit board thinks of situations like system crashes, stolen property and more importantly unrecoverable s disaster recovery type situations. Finally do some reflection and define how are you managing your technology support role? Have you decided if what you do is effective or is it beyond providing real help to your group anymore?

Next we move on to another piece of building yourself, a get out of technology jail card. You are then required to put together executive board support for your technology initiative. This happens because when you started, the group probably had one PC and dialup. Then as the organization mission became clearer and more defined, technology needs grow by osmosis. They just multiply all by them selves. It is like an organic growth process. One day you go to work and there are needs for 10 people not one person.

When the organization you work for equates to a one for one situation, then you should evaluate what your time is worth. When you do this, you have a basis for making sound decisions. Are you spending time doing things that hamper your true mission? If you have a nonprofit board then as the default techie who is really the accidental techie, you have to confront the problem of educating and influencing your nonprofit boards’ policies and procedures. You may want to find out how to conduct a technology survey for nonprofits and present the results to your non profit management.

TechOSS IOVC Services Save money, reduce cost and increase customer acquisitions through Internet, Office, VOIP and Coaching solutions

To get your nonprofit organization to look worthy in their eyes, you need to look at your internet, office, voice and client attraction strategies and technologies or as we term it it IOVC strategy and technology. Let us start with strategy which means it is about people so you first need to appeal to their emotions. This is done by understanding the client attraction strategy you will use in your marketing campaign and the communication vehicle. You can see this by taking note of campaigns for breast cancer awareness and others that are similar. Getting worthy involves perceived worthiness based on actions and people and then how your office works which can be helped by technology. But let’s address the strategy first.

Firstly, you need to believe in it yourself. If you are only half convinced in the worthiness of your nonprofit organization, then that will most certainly show in your manner and your communication. Most people can spot lack of sincerity a mile away and if you are not sincere or convinced of worthiness, you will not be able to convince anyone else.

If you can get the support of someone who has the trust of your community and who also has a high profile, then that will help in the quest for a worthy look. It may be a doctor, a businessman, the town mayor or a politician. It could be the dean of the local college or a well-respected figure with a wider, national profile such as a politician.

It need not be just an individual who will lend worthiness to your cause, but an organization. If you can claim that the local tennis club or Rotary or Lions Club supports you, then that will give you a needed worthy status as well.

If your nonprofit organization does not look worthy, then prospective donors will not be likely to donate. You must be professional at all times by making sure the paperwork is up-to-date and available should any one ask to see it. You need to have a person available to talk to anyone who should want information. If all they can get is an answering machine -though these have their place – then they will be put off.

If your fundraising is ongoing, then you need to publish an annual report and have it readily available. Donors need to know that their money is being used wisely, so communications with them is of prime importance. This does notmean that they want to be pestered on a daily basis, but they do need to know what their money was used for, and that you are really appreciative of their support. If they can be made to look good through their support, then you will have a happy donor who is willing to lend their status to your nonprofit organization.

Learn more at http://techoss.com/tp/howtofundraising.php

Gregory L. Burrus, Author of building a Profitable Business with IOVC Strategy and Technology teaches small nonprofit organizations how to remove technology obstacles and reach your nonprofit goals. http://www.iovc.com

Business model innovation is something that many organizations struggle with. In this article, I’ve broken out the elements and added a nonprofit example to make innovative business model thinking and analysis easier to do. This article’s material will, however, be clearest to those who have already read about continuing business model innovation.

Expand What You Do Now

Unless you are providing a very small percentage of the needs of each customer or beneficiary, growing by 21-fold requires adding beneficiaries. Because so many organizations can expand to provide 21 times the number of beneficiaries, that’s a great place to begin. You should start by considering who you will serve as these added beneficiaries and where those benefits will be delivered to make the expansion more practical.

Who Is Served and Where

Let’s begin considering volume-expanding business models by looking at “who” is served. The lesson is to keep it simple. Change as little as possible while becoming more efficient and effective as an organization for your customers and beneficiaries. The simplest way to do this is to put more of the same kind of volume through an existing organizational structure without adding fixed costs or increasing the ratio of variable costs to benefits delivered.

In a nonprofit organization there’s a savings incentive to provide more of the same offerings to the same recipients. Let’s consider an organization that carries donated food by truck to distribution centers serving needy families. Most such distribution centers provide a small portion of a family’s total weekly needs — perhaps as little as one meal a week. The families may be visiting 10 to 30 different distribution centers weekly to fulfill all their needs. The trucks carrying the goods to a given distribution center are often owned and operated by that center, may be in use for only a few hours a week, and could be operated much more often.

Let’s assume that more volunteers can be found to load the food, and drive and unload the trucks. Both the nonprofit organization and the needy families will benefit economically if 21 meals weekly are delivered and distributed at one time to a distribution center.

See Example 1 for a quantification of this point.

Example 1: Adding Trip Volume for an Underutilized Truck to Increase Food Available to Needy Families for Each Pick Up

When a truck isn’t driven very much, its capital costs (depreciation of its value from the purchase price) exceed the operating costs. Put that truck into use more often and you are able to divide the capital costs over more miles. As a result, your cost per trip of the same distance will become much smaller.

Truck Beginning Point — 1 Truck Trip per Week: Annual truck capital costs $52,000 for 5,200 miles per year

Capital cost per trip $1,000

20 Times Truck Volume Increase — 21 Truck Trips per Week: Annual truck capital costs $109,200 for 109,200 miles per year

Capital cost per trip $100

Note: Annual capital cost is higher because service life is reduced by driving more miles a year.

Recipients’ automobile operating costs, by comparison, vary directly with use. Driving 21 times as much results in spending 21 times as much. If they can reduce their driving, however, their operating costs per week go down.

Automobile Operating Costs Beginning Point for Recipients — 21 Pickups per Week

Weekly gas, oil, and maintenance $21.00

Cost per pickup $1.00

Automobile Operating Cost — 1 Trip per Week

Weekly gas, oil, and maintenance $1.00

Cost per pickup $1.00

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Read about creating breakthroughs through 2,000 percent solutions and receive tips by e-mail by registering for free at

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

One way to raise money is to start a mailing campaign. It us usually possible to generate approximately $2500 by sending out about 75 well written letters to family members and friends. Don’t hesitate to spread the net wide and not just contact family and friends but also local businesses. Be sure to send out thank you letters to all who give.

Rummage sales and bake sales also are helpful was to raise money. A small newspaper add and several families donating goods that they no longer use can bring in some real income. A bake sale can be done on its own, or at the same time as the rummage sale.

Another effective way to raise money for your Church is for a youth group to run a car wash. This is a fun way for the group to bond and raise money at the same time. It is also a good idea to sell car wash coupons ahead of time. Many will buy tickets just to support your cause and will not show up and others will show up from the world of mouth from those who prepaid for their car wash tickets.

Golf or mini-golf tournaments are a fun way to raise money and build a bond within your Churches congregation and the outside community. For the golf or mini-golf tournament, contact the course first as they should have a group discount and may even let your group come for free since you are with a non-profit organization. You can advertise your tournament inexpensively by hanging flyer’s and contacting your local newspaper to post the charity tournament as a press release.

There are many restaurants that sell discounted and often give away free meal tickets to Churches for fund raising. Simply buy or get these tickets for free and then you can sell these tickets and raise your money.

A way that is quickly becoming one of the most popular Church fund raising ideas is selling Christian t-shirts and apparel. There are online Christian clothing companies that can sell cool Christian children or adult T-shirts, long sleeve T-shirts and even hooded sweatshirts at a discounted price so that you can resell these at a profit. If you are going to buy these shirts for a Church group, free personalized text printing on the sleeve identifying your group is available. These Christian t-shirts are so affective because they evangelize with style and are popular with kids, teens and adults.

If you are planning to raise money for your Church, you can try the ideas listed above. Remember to make a plan, use official Church letterhead, and be well organized and professional when dealing with outside organizations. With a little preparation and possibly using a couple of the ideas above, you will have raised the needed money in no time.

The author is publisher of the Online Christian Shopper Christian clothing and jewelry Web portal. To see the group discount rates for selling Christian apparel for your fundraiser visit Church Fundraiser

The library: Well before you start your fundraising efforts, you will want to frequent your local library. Your local library, as part of your community and a great information resource, is indispensable for your non-profit. Your librarian can help you find directories of government grants and programs that can help you, and can show you business directories that can help you find companies who may be willing to sponsor your non-profit.

Advertising: Many non-profits will seek donors by advertising in newspapers, on radio, and on television. Larger non-profits such as the United Way will often advertise year-round in order to encourage donors to come forward. However, even smaller non-profits will advertise locally.

You may well have seen your local food bank or shelter advertising for food and cash donations around holiday time, for example. Advertising tends to reach lots of people for the cost of one ad, even though individual ads in newspapers and radio can be quite expensive on their own. However, some non-profits find that they can sometimes appeal to a radio or local television station or publication to advertise for free. Even though the media makes their money through advertising revenues, they are occasionally persuaded to offer free advertising as a charitable contribution to a non-profit.

Plugging into the Community: Most small non-profits are very community oriented – most of their money and most of their charitable activities are centered on one local area. If this describes you, then you need to become a part of your community so that donors in your area will become aware of your group.

When people see that your group is offering something to the community, they may be more inclined to donate. Plugging into the community may mean showing up for local events with group advertisements, taking out ads in local media, or passing on the word through word of mouth. Whichever methods you choose, it is often very important for a small or starting non-profit to be seen as part of the community in order to secure donations.

Direct Appeals: Direct appeals mean that you approach people individually. This can be done door-to-door, by standing in front of a store or establishment, or by phoning or mailing people individually. The idea is that direct appeals are harder to resist than general appeals, and so more people are likely to at least give some money rather than say “no” entirely. The problem is that so many companies use this route that some individuals feel that this method is too intrusive and refuse every direct appeal made.

Awareness Raising: You will find some enthusiastic donors and some volunteers and resources by letting people know about the problem your group is trying to correct and by telling people about your non-profit group itself. Raising people’s awareness about your group and your groups’ work is a big job. You can raise awareness in many ways:

Reports in the media (interviews, articles)

Advertising

Visiting groups such as schools to let people know about your group

Setting up booths at fairs, volunteer workshops, and other community events

Going door to door to tell people about your group

Sending mail campaigns to raise awareness

Setting up events that will raise awareness (and money, too)

Market Research: Every successful non-profit needs to do exact market research in order to find out who the most likely donors are for their group. There are market research firms that can do this for a sum, but if you are a small or new non-profit, you can do your own market research by using newspapers and your own community knowledge to find out who will be most likely to support your group.

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