Finances and Saving Money

Do you have an organization that is near and dear to your heart? There is one thing that besides volunteers every nonprofit needs to function. CASH. But are you looking for an idea that goes beyond candy bars and cookie dough. Ugh I’m a bit bloated just thinking about it. (And completely craving a snickerdoodle.)

Well I’m here with some ideas.

It could be a small country school that you know has the ability to be amazing even though they lack the funding. It could be an animal shelter that won’t turn away the lost, or a sports team that has raw talent but desperately needs the correct equipment to keep its teammates protected. Whatever the function, without funds, you cease to continue the good works that you have set out to do. And rather than running a number of mass scale fundraisers that are all consuming for the few members that are running them how about a few ideas that can generate some somewhat passive income for your non-profit.

Let’s talk about some areas that can give you and your charity a jump in the right direction.

• Coca Cola has “My Coke Rewards” It is simple as pie to get your school set up with them and coke points (which come in the form of codes under the cap or inside the packaging of coke products) can be entered online and redeemed for merchandise for your school. And no, every dry erase marker or P.E. items doesn’t come with the name Coca Cola stamped all over the entire item. Your members, friends, or family members can enter their codes online and automatically donate to your organization. Or you can designate a drop off location and have someone within the organization volunteer or assigned to entering those on a regular basis.
• Common Kindness- CommonKindness.com is an online printable coupon site that you can link to your nonprofit and when your members, family, and friends print their coupons online your organization gets the benefit. Talk about a win-win situation.
• Good Search is a search engine that utilizes the same principles as “Swagbucks” if you are familiar with that to generate rewards in the form of cash back to your own organization. www.GoodSearch.com You can download a toolbar, use it for online shopping such as you would with Ebates and instead of cash back to yourself it would be donated directly to the organization. You can link your card and dine at local various locations with a percentage being donated back. How about a Taco Tuesday Fundraiser all year round? That feels like it takes quite a bit of the work out of the process if you ask me.
• Raley’s Quality of Life program links your card to a specific charity and every time you shop you can scan your card to get a percentage back. The organization must set itself up and order the cards. And then every card is already linked to that charity.
• Dutch Brothers has a fantastic fundraiser program if you live in the west that gives back 20% of every gift card purchase. The key is to automate your list so once a quarter or three times a year you do a Dutch Brother’s Campaign where any friends, family, or neighbors can put in their orders during a certain week and the organization can reap huge benefits. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of money that your market is going to be spending anyway regardless of if it benefited your organization?
• Set up every single piece of online correspondence with a donate link. Are you e-mailing an online newsletter out. How about an shiny update box with progress for project X with a Donate Now link. There are a number of different companies that specialize in online charitable donations to help reduce fees and keep more of your organizations money in its pocket. The point is that just by human nature a huge amount of the population are motivated to respond based on being presented with a need. If they are not given the opportunity to easily do so immediately there is only a minute percentage of people that will actually follow through after the fact. I’m just saying I am a busy person with short attention span. If you want my money you better be ready to take it right now!
• Facebook and Twitter linked with a SmartyPig account would be an awesome way to generate knowledge about where our need is in relation to our actual monies received. What better way to update your facebook and twitter fans with each deposit in the form of a super cute little piggy that monitors progress and can publish that process encouraging others to get involved. And YES, they allow contributions to be made directly into your “Goal Account”.

What other ideas do you have? How have you generated funds for your nonprofit?