Youth Group Fundraiser - Youth Workin' It

How To Plan A Flip-Flop Fundraiser

August 13, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

This week is the final part of our series giving ideas for an evening fundraiser – a flip-flop fundraiser.

Now, depending on what you’re fundraising for, this idea may not work. The flip-flop fundraiser works best if you’re trying to raise money for a missions trip or are raising money to support an organization working with people in the developing world.

What’s the purpose of a flip-flop fundraiser?

There are usually two dual purposes of this fundraiser, although sometimes only the second option is the purpose:

To raise money – Either to put towards the cost of a missions trip or to support a charity/organization
To provide footwear – The flip-flops you sell can be taken on the mission trip or given to the charity/organization you’re supporting

Wait – you’re selling flip-flops but the buyers don’t get them?

Not quite. The way the flip-flop fundraiser works is by getting people to take part in a BOGO promotion. BOGO usually stands for Buy One Get One, but in this case it stands for Buy One Give One.

To support this fundraiser, people pay for two pairs of flip-flops. As the special BOGO explanation above suggests, they receive one pair of flip-flops and the second pair is donated.

How much should we sell the flip-flops for?

This will depend on a number of factors:

1) Whether you’re actually looking to raise money or just gather as many flip-flops as you can – If you’re only looking to get as many flip-flops as you can, sell them as cheaply as possible. If you can buy flip-flops for $2.50 a pair (often possible during the summer at Walmart or Old Navy), you could run the BOGO at $5 total.

If you’re wanting to also raise money at the same time, you could set the offer at $10. This means $5 will go towards the cost of buying the footwear, with the other $5 going towards your fundraising target

2) How much the flip-flops cost in the first place – As mentioned above, you can often buy flip-flops for $2.50 a pair. However, if they cost more or less than this, you’ll need to adjust how much you sell them for accordingly.

3) How much people would be willing to pay – In the first option, we suggested setting the offer at $10. Depending on who you’re selling to (or who’s attending your evening fundraiser), you may be able to set the price at $20 or even higher, raising even more money.

We just want to get as many flip-flops as possible – how can we maximize this?

As we mentioned above, one way is to set the price of the footwear as low as you can – this will hopefully encourage as many people as possible to participate in this flip-flop fundraiser.

An alternative is to provide different options on the number of flip-flops people are able to give. For example, if you do buy the flip-flops for $2.50, you could provide the following options:

$5 – Buy One Give One
$10 – Buy One Give Three
$20 – Buy One Give Seven

Tips

Keep receipts for any flip-flops you buy so that you can return any unsold flip-flops
This fundraiser could be a good option if you want to organize a fundraiser where you give money away
Buy flip-flops in different colors and sizes so that you have options for both sexes and all ages

If you’ve found this idea helpful, you might like our other youth group fundraising ideas.

Question: Have you ever run a flip-flop fundraiser? If so, do you have any additional tips? Let us know in the comments below.

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Paper Airplane Competition Fundraiser

August 6, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a series on how to plan an evening fundraiser and events to include in that. Today’s idea is one that I’ve seen used to great effect at an evening fundraiser – a paper airplane competition.

This isn’t a fundraiser that would be likely to raise much money as a standalone event, but by making it part of the evening extravaganza you’ll have far more people taking part, plus it helps make the evening more fun due to the competitive element.

What You Need

The paper airplane competition doesn’t require much – just:

Room large enough for a group of people to throw paper airplanes
Ream of paper
Possibly a prize.

Tips: To save some money, see if anybody would be willing to donate the paper for the airplane competition. Also see if anyone would be willing to donate a prize – perhaps a local business would be able to supply a small trophy to give to the winner.

Fundraising

The way that the paper airplane competition works as a fundraiser is by selling sheets of paper in order for people to enter the competition. You should set the price of each sheet as high as you can, without putting people off by setting the price too high.

The optimum price will depend on the income of the people attending your evening fundraiser. For some fundraisers, $1 per sheet might be an appropriate amount, whereas at other fundraisers you may be able to charge $5, $10 or even more per sheet.

Tip: Make sure everyone writes their name on their sheet(s) of paper, so that it’s easy to identify who won.

Maximize

To raise even more money, offer an enhanced option whereby competition entrants can pay more for a sheet that has a paper airplane template on it. For example, you could charge $5 for a plain sheet of paper or $10 for a sheet with a pre-printed template on it. There are a number of sites where you can download paper airplane templates for free – here’s one such site.

Another way to maximize how much you raise is by allowing people to enter more than one paper airplane into the competition.

The Throw

Once everyone has had a chance to craft their plane(s), it’s time for the paper airplane competition itself. There are a few ways you can organize the throwing of the planes:

All together – Get everyone to stand behind a line at one end of the room and on the count of three, have them all throw their airplanes at the same time. This can be a fun culmination of the competition, but a couple of downsides of this option are that planes might hit each other and participants will probably be so focused on their own plane, they won’t get to enjoy watching other people’s designs flying
One-by-one – With this option, people take it in turns to throw their paper airplane(s). One of the good things about this is that everyone gets to see each others planes flying, but this option might take a long time if you have a large number of participants
Heats – Organize participants of the paper airplane competition into groups of four or so. Have the first group throw their planes at the same time, with the winner of each heat making it through to the next round. Keep running these heats until you have a lineup for a grand finale, where all the previous winner throw at the same time for one ultimate champion

To Win

The winner of the paper airplane competition will – needless to say – be the person whose plane flies the furthest. Bear in mind though that there are a couple of ways that this could be judged:

Furthest distance travelled before touching the ground
Furthest distance travelled in total

The difference between the two is that the latter option includes the distance travelled sliding along the ground. This could result in a different winner, so be sure to communicate before the competition starts which of these options will be used to judge the winner – this will prevent any arguments or bad feeling.

Prize

As mentioned in the “What you need” section, it would be nice if you can give a prize to the winner of the competition. As you’re fundraising, you don’t want to spend a lot of (if any) money on this, but it’s a nice gesture to thank them for their support.

If you can’t offer anything else, provide a winner’s certificate. You could also provide a certificate to the person with the plane adjudged to have the best design.

If you’ve found this idea helpful, you might like our other ideas for youth group fundraisers.

Question: What tips do you have for running a successful paper airplane competition fundraiser? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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How To Run A Silent Auction – Part 4

July 30, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

For the last few weeks, we’ve been advising on how to run a silent auction – check out part 1, part 2 and part 3. Today is the fourth and final part of the series:

After The Silent Auction

1. Unpaid items – At the end of the auction, there could well be some items that haven’t been paid for yet. The most common reason for this is that the winning bidder had to leave before the bidding on the item ended. If that’s the case, you’ll need to contact the winner the next day, using the contact details you collected on the bidder registration form.

There may also be winning bidders who change their minds for whatever reason. Although it’s not an ideal situation, the best option is to contact the next person on the bidding sheet to see if they’re still interested in the item.

2. Items not won – You may also end up with some items that no one bid on. Here are a couple of options of what to do in that scenario:

Sell the item on eBay – Depending on the item, this might result in greater interest in the item, due to the global nature of this marketplace
Retain for a future auction – If you do this, make a note of how much you’d set the opening bid at. Next time, lower this starting bid to encourage at least one bid on the item

3. Check money vs winning bids – Total up the value of the winning bids (that have been paid for already) and check this against the amount collected via cash, checks and credit cards to make sure that it all balances.

4. Deposit the money – For cash and checks, deposit these at the bank in the usual way. If you’ve also accepted credit cards, arrange for this money to be deposited by whichever credit card merchant you’ve used.

5. Thank donors – Send a thank you letter to every person, business or organization who donated an item for your silent auction.

Depending on how much the winning bid was, consider also informing the donor of how much their item raised for your youth group/charity. (This may not be such a great idea if an item with a value of $200 only sold for $20)

6. Thank winning bidders – There would be no items without donors, but there would also be no money without the winning bidders. It’s therefore a nice gesture to send them a thank you note too.

If possible, try to provide them with a tangible way that their money has helped support your work. For example:

Your bid of $240 means that you’ve sent two young people from low-income households to our youth retreat
Your generous bid of $75 for the movie tickets means that you’ve bought many pieces of sports equipment that we’ve needed for a long time

Put the focus on what the bidder has done, as this will help encourage them to be involved in your next silent auction (or other fundraiser). i.e. “you’ve sent” and “you’ve bought” rather than “we’ve sent” and “we’ve bought”.

This series on how to run a silent auction has also been a part of a larger series on how to plan an evening fundraiser extravaganza. For even more ideas, check out all our youth group fundraisers.

Question: Is there anything we’ve missed from this series on how to run a silent auction? We’d love to hear your additional ideas in the comments below.

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How To Run A Silent Auction – Part 3

July 23, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been showing you how to run a silent auction – check out part 1 and part 2. Today is the third part of the series:

At The Silent Auction

1. Check up on volunteers – Volunteers should have been advised before the silent auction what tasks they were responsible for. Check on them during the night though to make sure everything’s going OK and to find out if they have any questions.

2. Monitor the bidding sheets – If possible, have one or two volunteers monitor each table. That may not be feasible depending on the number of volunteers you have, so at least ensure that there’s one close to every table. These volunteers are there to answer any questions, to make sure the bidding sheets are completed correctly and to gather up any bidding sheets where someone has bid the amount to guarantee that they win the item.

3. Communicate when each item is going to end – This is a job for the emcee. Depending on the number of items being auctioned, it can be a good idea to end the bidding on an item every few minutes. This has a number of benefits:

It helps create a sense of urgency throughout the evening
It means additional items can be auctioned if there isn’t space for them to all be displayed originally
Payments can be processed throughout the night, rather than there being a mad rush at the end

4. Process payments – After the bidding has ended for each item, have the emcee announce the winning bidder’s number. Ask them to go to the payment table, where a volunteer should have already taken the winning bid sheet. Check with the winning bidder to see if they’ve bid on any other items (or are still planning to). If so, check to see if they’d prefer to pay for each item as they go along, or if they’d rather wait until the end of the evening to pay for all items they’ve won in one batch.

5. Provide a receipt – Once the winning bidder has paid, they should be given a receipt. The receipt should detail who won the item, what the item was, how much they paid and their payment method. To make this process easier, consider using something like these receipt books. These work especially well as you can retain a copy of the receipt for your own records.

6. Collect the items – While people are paying for the auction(s) they’ve won, have your volunteers gather the items for the bidders to collect once payment has been taken.

Come back next week for the final part in the series on how to run a silent auction – what to do after the auction has ended.

Question: What other tips would you give people for how to run things at the silent auction? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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How To Run A Silent Auction – Part 2

July 16, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Last week was the first part of our guide on how to run a silent auction. Here’s part 2:

Day of the silent auction

1. Set out bidding sheets – Set up tables around the outside of the room. Place the bidding sheets (attached to a clipboard) on the tables, along with a number of pens for each sheet. Also set up a sign for each item so people can easily find what items they wish to bid on – this should display both the item number and what the item is.

Consider mentioning the name of the donor on the sign, along with their logo if the item or service was donated by a company. This is another way of thanking the donor for their generosity.

2. Display items next to bidding sheets – Set out tangible items (like gift baskets, movie tickets, etc) on display next to their respective bidding sheets. For services (like helicopter trips, gardening, hotel stay, etc), try to display something anyway – perhaps a picture of the helicopter or hotel, as this will act as a visual draw.

3. Set up refreshments – If you’re running the silent auction as part of the evening fundraiser extravaganza, this will already be covered. If not, make sure there are snacks and beverages available for attendees.

4. Set up payment tables – At one end of the room (or perhaps a side room if there’s not enough space), set up three tables for people dealing with payments – one for checks, one for cash and one for credit cards.

Alternatively, if you’re expecting most payments to be made by credit card, set up two tables for that payment method and one table for people paying by cash or check.

5. Provide a lock box with cash – As you’ll probably have some people wanting to pay with cash, provide the volunteer on that payment table with a lock box that has different denominations of notes.

If you’ve set it up so that bids will be in multiples of 5s or 10s, there’s no need to have any $1 bills. Instead, have on hand some $5, $10 and $20 bills to provide change to successful bidders.

6. Larger silent auctions – If you have dozens of items for people to bid on, it may not be feasible to set out all of the bidding sheets at the same time. In that scenario, consider setting out half the bidding sheets initially, with the other half set out later during the auction once the bidding time on the initial items has ended.

Selecting which items to display initially can be done in one of two ways:

Auction lower value items first – This means that the more expensive (and more exciting) items will be auctioned off later in the evening, encouraging people to stick around
Auction items with different values – Some people may not wish to spend all evening at the silent auction though. By having higher value items available to bid on at the beginning in addition to lower value ones, you’ll be able to accommodate all of the auction attendees

If you’re not going to have all the items on display at the same time, ensure the bidding sheets and signs for the later items are organized so that they’re easy to set out as the evening goes on. Consider delegating this job to a volunteer whose sole responsibility is to set up the new items as the bidding time on previous items ends.

7. Set up a registration table – This is one of the most important parts of the preparation, as this will be where the attendees will be allocated a bidder number to identify themselves.

Print off a silent auction bidder registration form(s) that already has bidder numbers entered (see below for a free template you can download). This will make it easier for the registration table volunteers, as they’ll then only have to enter people’s names and contact details next to each number.

Here are a couple of ways to allocate bidder numbers:

Random sequential numbers – This simply involves making a list of numbers in order, such as 201, 202, 203, etc. If you go with this option, also pre-prepare some sticky labels with the numbers already written down. The labels can then be given to each bidder as they register – this will save time and help the bidders remember their number
Raffle tickets – Although you’re running an auction, raffle tickets can be perfect for allocating random bidder numbers. This has the added benefit of each bidder getting a ticket with their number on it, helping them remember what it is

Download a free silent auction bidder registration form.

Come back the next couple of weeks for part 3 and part 4 of how to run a silent auction, or check out part 1 here.

Question: What other planning and setting up needs to be done on the day of a silent auction? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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