K-12 Fundraising Ideas: Simple Branded Items
Posted: Saturday, December 01, 2007
by Michael Crooks
Crooks Advertising Alliance
In an earlier article, "K-12 Fundraising Ideas: The Emerging Trend In Raising Funds", I explored how shifting to quality branded items that are relevant to a school's fan and parent base can boost school fundraising efforts. The need for more effective and profitable fundraising dictates that school fundraising must shift away from selling low-quality/high-priced items and engaging in labor-intensive/low-return events such as bake sales, car washes and spaghetti dinners.
Refrigerator Magnets and Sticknetics®
Refrigerator magnets are a basic mainstay of the promotional marketing world. The secret to effective fundraising with a magnets is to make the magnet a toll that is relevant to the needs of parents.
For school fundraisers, focus on the school holiday & vacation schedule and important school phone numbers. When considering a magnet, remember that if produced over the summer, your target audience and your sponsor will have benefit of them for an entire school year.
Keep in mind, one of your main goals IS to sell a sponsorship on the magnet to effectively underwrite the cost of producing the magnet, thus increasing your profit margin.
If you imprint a magnet with important school numbers, remember, everyone who watches a parent's children should have a magnet such as babysitter, grandparents, aunts, uncles … anyone who watches the kids. This encourages the parents to buy more than one. In a perfect world, they should buy at least four: 1 for home, 1 each for mom and dad at work and 1 for the babysitter.
Depending on your specific numbers, consider pricing the magnet at $1.25 each or 5 for $5. You can buy 500 business card size magnets for around $150 to $200. Your can buy 1000 for around $250. Selling them for $1 each you'll profit up to $300 for 500 or $750 for 1000. If you sell a sponsorship to a local business, your profit margin increases.
Another option to consider is having the magnet manufactured so that parents can write-in a couple of their own important numbers such as their cell phone, work numbers or other emergency contact number.
Sticknetics® are another good entry level school fundraising item. Sticknetics®, a hybrid cross between a sticker and a magnet, stick anywhere you can stick a magnet. Like magnets, they are removable, repositionable and leave no residue. But their greatest benefit is that you can place then on and around your computers and magnetic media without fear of erasing anything. You can't do that with a magnet.
Another huge benefit of Stiknetics® is that you can place them on surfaces you can't put magnets such as glass, smooth wood … even fabric cubical walls. They also weigh less than magnets so you'll save on shipping. Sticknetics® allow te end-user to put them where they WANT to, not where they have to.
Waterless Tattoos and Stickers
All across the nation, Jr. and Sr. high school groups are selling waterless tattoos imprinted with the school brand at football, basketball games and other school events. In many cases they're selling waterless tattoos for anywhere from 2 or 3 for a dollar up to a dollar each.
Once the cheerleaders or team start wearing them, the rest of the students clamor for them. Items such as waterless tattoos are a great place to start a fundraising program because of the low initial investment, high profit margin and consumable nature of the product, meaning that after a couple days kids need to replace the waterless tattoo with a new one. While stickers and conventional temporary tattoos will also work, stickers don't carry the fascination of waterless tattoos and regular temporary tattoos that require water to apply are simply messy.
Patches and Pins
Next up the fundraising food chain are such items as patches and pins. Patches and pins are long-lasting mementos of a specific event and place in time. They provide connectivity for fans and a lasting memory for participants. Patches and pins are good school fundraisers especially when a team makes it to the finals or goes all the way; when the band gets a #1 rating at festival or to commemorate a special event. In many cases, traditions can begin with a patch or pin that can live on for decades as fans want the next patch or pin in a series.
Summary:
School fundraising projects don't need to be complicated or expensive to start up and be profitable. When starting out, focus on Simple Branded Products that are relevant to: parent interest/needs (magnets & sticknetics), interests of students (waterless tattoos) and the interest of your fan base (pins and patches).
You'll find that when you approach your school fundraising from the standpoint of the consumer, ie: parents, fans and students and their wants, need and desires, the products will be MUCH easier to sell and your target will be much happier about parting with their money.
In future articles in this series you'll learn how to effectively shift the focus from asking sponsors for donations to selling them effective advertising mediums.
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