Choosing a Time Frame for Your Direct Sales Fundraiser

Hosting fundraisers in direct sales is a wonderful way to find new customers and to possibly recruit new team members.

Choosing the length of time you’ll host the fundraiser is crucial to the fundraisers success.

My suggestion is to consider starting your fundraiser on a Thursday and running it for twelve days. Your fundraiser would then end on a Monday. By running it for twelve days starting on Thursday, you’ll capture two weekends.

One mistake I’ve seen is fundraisers that last too long. As a distributor I know you want more sales and I know you want to allow more opportunity, but what happens is folks procrastinate as they know they still have a week or two left.

If you cut the fundraiser short, you’ll miss out on sales from those who might be busy during the short timeframe and might not have the opportunity to sell the products. By offering twelve days, this can almost always fit into anyone’s schedule.

It might be helpful to create a timeline for the fundraising participants. Your timeline might look like this:

Thursday – Look through the catalog and begin letting your family and friends know you’ll be taking orders to help support the organization.

Friday-Sunday – Make sure you take the fundraising catalog with you through the weekend. Also take plenty of order forms and pens to document the orders.

Monday-Friday – Continue taking orders and begin to assemble the order forms so that you can turn them in on Monday.

Friday-Sunday – Again, take your fundraising catalog with you to all your weekend activities. If you’re at a sports event, let the other parents know what you’re doing. If you’re at the beach with friends, let them know how they can help the organization.

Monday – Submit all orders and payment before 5:00 p.m.

I really believe that by holding the fundraiser over a two-weekend period you maximize the amount of sales.

About the Author: Audrey Okaneko has been in direct sales since 1983. She can be reached at audreyoka@cox.net or you can Become a Tupperware Consultant.

Secrets for Easy Fundraising

I'd say that most all of you have been involved at one time or another with fundraisers. There are plenty of good causes that need to be supported. And having a fundraiser is a good way to accomplish that.

Here are some of the main types of fundraisers:

1. Direct Sales - This type of fundraiser is when the product being purchased is being resold. Up-front payments are required. You have to be prepared to deal with collections, delivery, inventory, and many other details. Direct sales is what is called a 'high work' fundraiser.

2. Order Taker - This fundraiser is also known as 'pre-sales'. Others call them brochure or catalog sales. You just take the orders, and then they get tallied up and sent to the fund raising company. The company then fills the order and ships the merchandise to the contact person for your particular group. The members, along with some volunteers, then go out and deliver these products to the supporters. This type of fundraiser is a 'high work' event as well. There are times when the company will go the delivery and collection, and this really cuts down on the work-load.

3. Bake Sales and Service types - these fundraisers are things like car washes and bake sales, etc. Again, high work events.

4. Online Fundraising - These events are generally handles by putting a coded link on the website of your organization. This link sends your visitors directly to a personalized page where the supporters are encouraged to purchase directly through the link, and then the group will get a percentage of the proceeds.

This online fundraiser is the easiest by a long shot, and is also very effective. The only problem they may have is that some of the smaller groups might not have a website. If the youth group from your church wanted to raise some money to go on a mission trip, you would need a website to pull one of these off.

There are some new companies with fresh innovations that are attempting to make things much easier for fundraising groups. And they're experiencing some great success. They actually will develop a web page and give it to you to use. They help you create an effective sales letter and help promote your cause. They coordinate all the sales, all deliveries, collections, and the orders. All that's left is for you to publicize your page.

You can do this by sending out emails and posting on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. You can also post on blogs and in forums. You can print out literature to pass out at school or church events. They really have made it a much easier undertaking for people wanting to host fundraisers.

You can in fact ask a company if they'll do a fundraiser with you or for you. Most of the major fundraising companies have the online fundraisers already set up. You need to be careful though and keep an eye on the prices, as there are some companies that change them quite often.

If you should want a company's help on a fundraiser, and they don't have one already established, or at least not one you like, then see if they can accommodate you for getting what it is you want. Smaller companies may be more inclined to work with you in this fashion. Have a talk with the manager or owner. All you need from them is a page on their site that you can direct your potential donors to. This page needs to have all the necessary information on it, all about the organization you represent and what they are about. Then you want to let the company handle all the other work like the orders, collections, inquiries, deliveries, and the sales. You want your cut of the sales for bringing the business their way. You'll want to choose a product or a service that has a wide appeal so you can expand the scope of potential donors.

Once you've done this, you're on your way to having a successful fundraiser. It's easy, and you can get set up quickly. No hassles and easy expansion. You can even promote more than just one cause. These steps and tips are easily repeatable.