Today’s youth fundraiser idea is to sell something that millions of families have bought over the years – the Entertainment Book.
Your youth group sells copies of the Entertainment Book – at a discount to encourage buyers – plus your youth group gets to keep up to 50% of the profits.
The Entertainment Book fundraiser is therefore a great way of fundraising for a youth group, as many parents will already be planning to buy the book in the first place.
What is the Entertainment Book?
If you’re not sure what an Entertainment Book is, so don’t know how the Entertainment Book fundraiser would work, it’s basically a massive coupon book that people buy. This is contrary to how many coupons work – most coupons come free in magazines, newspapers, etc.
Think of it more as a forerunner of Groupon, Living Social, etc – you pay for a coupon, but in return you get coupons worth more than the value you paid for them.
Here are 5 great things about running an Entertainment Book fundraiser:
1) Low cost – The normal retail price of an Entertainment Book is approx $35, but on average each book contains coupons for more than $15,000 of savings. Most people aren’t going to use anything near $15,000 worth of coupons, but using even just a few coupons means they get back the money they paid for the book.
Even better is that if you’re running an Entertainment Book fundraiser you get to sell discounted books, so people will save even more money by buying their book from your youth group instead of at retail outlets.
2) It’s local – The Books are tailored to your local area, so buyers won’t get coupons for attractions or stores far away. There are books for more than 140 cities in the US and Canada, so there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to run this fundraiser in your area.
3) There’s great variety – The coupons inside the books you sell for an Entertainment Book fundraiser will be for almost every activity imaginable: restaurants, hotels, car hire, museums, theme parks, watching sports, family days-out, movie theaters, department stores and so much more.
4) Perfect for vacations – If people are planning a beach or city getaway, they may also be keen on buying a book for their destination. There’s a good chance they’ll plan activities for wherever they’re going, so selling them a book for their destination is another way for them to contribute to your fundraiser, while saving themselves money on the cost of their vacation.
5) No upfront costs – If you’re worrying that you’ll have to buy a lot of books in advance for your fundraiser, don’t worry – there are no upfront costs. You therefore have no initial outlay, plus the books are shipped to you for free.
Here are 5 ideas on how to run a successful Entertainment Book fundraiser:
1) Fundraise at church – If your youth group is connected to a church or other faith-based organization, there will probably be many people in the congregation that would love to support the youth fundraiser, especially if they were planning on buying one of the books anyway.
2) Go online – If your youth group, church, charity, etc has a website, you can get an affiliate link to put on your site. This will link to the Entertainment Book website and if people buy a book through that link, you’ll earn money on that referral. Even if you don’t have a website, your youth can share the link on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
3) Send books home with youth – One common sales tip in all walks of life is that it’s best to get your customer’s hands physically on what you’re selling. This is why car dealerships let you test-drive, why electronic stores let you play with gadgets, etc.
The same goes for your Entertainment Book fundraiser. If you send books home with your young people, their parents can have a good flick through the book and see how many useful coupons there are. They could also show the books to their neighbors and other family members to try to get as many sales as possible.
4) Have local businesses sell the book for you – Local stores, restaurants, nail salons, etc might be willing to sell books on your behalf. This is a great way of enhancing your fundraiser, plus you could provide a thank you letter to them afterwards for them to display in their store.
5) Use work connections – Have your young people’s parents take books with them to work to sell to their work colleagues.
To request an Entertainment Book fundraiser pack, you can complete their form here and they’ll send you all the information you need.
Unfortunately this fundraiser is only valid for the US and Canada, so apologies to our site visitors from other countries. However, does your country have a similar coupon book that gets sold? If so, check out their website to see if they offer something similar to the Entertainment Book fundraiser.
If you’ve found this idea helpful, you might like our youth group fundraiser ideas. This idea is also part of the Evening Fundraiser Extravaganza.
Question: Have you run an Entertainment Book fundraiser before? If so, how successful was it? Let us know in the comments below.
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