I hear this all the time at the end of every school year… “I just knew we were going to do much better than we ended up doing.” Or, “I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t do as good as I thought we should have done this year.”
We hear stories like this a lot because we run over a thousand of school fundraisers every year. Because of that, we are in the schools all the time that have had less than stellar results with their current fundraising campaigns. The thing is, they all have a different story to tell but I can give you my two cents worth on “WHY” most of these groups didn’t meet their goal.
I can say without a doubt I can tell you that as long as a school does a main stream product line in their fundraiser, they can have an above average fundraiser if the just do one simple thing differently. It is not hard to do and most any school could do it. The answer to a great fundraising program can be summarized in six words… Go Whole Hog On The Prizes!
That’s it! If you do ordinary incentives you will have an ordinary results on your sale. If you decide to skimp on prizes, you will have a poor sale. However, if you decide to step up your sale by giving premium prizes you will make more money than you thought possible. Period. The facts don’t lie. This is not my opinion. This is based on the results that even you could take a look at on our website. If you “Wow” the students and families with the prizes and incentives you offer with your fundraiser, they will “Wow” you with participation and profits that you didn’t expect. In short, if you make it worth their while to participate in your school fundraiser, they more than likely will do just that… participate! It is participation in your sale that makes your school more money. After all, it’s that what you are trying to do? Make money money?.
How you go about putting the “Wow” in your incentive program is a little more involved that adding a drawing for a 40 gig IPod, but it is pretty simple. In fact, if the only thing you do is add a Playstation or XBox game as your top seller prize, the only thing that you will accomplish is to waste $200. However, there is a way to set up your prize program that will increase your participation and the level of that participation. Most of the time when you set up your prize program in a “Wow” way, you’ll more than likely see anywhere from a 40% – 200% increase in your previous sales.
Well, like I said earlier, this is too simple and the claim just a little too far fetched for many people to actually believe it. However, just because it is simple and easy to do does not change the fact that it works for school fundraisers almost every time it is tried. Period.
Premium Prizes That Raise Fundraiser Participation
