Fundraising in Economically Challenging Times

As the president of a non-profit board, I get all kinds of fundraising solutions on the phone, in the mail, and via email. One that made me laugh this morning was from an organization that wants to offer a solution for attracting sustainable income during economically challenging times.

Here's how their solution works. You select seven board members and send them to a two-day workshop where you will learn to put together a sob story about your organization's mission that you will present to invited guests and then slam them for donations as you pass out the tissues. The fee for the privilege of learning this technique, which I just divulged for free, is twelve thousand dollars ($12,000)! That does not include airfare, hotels, ground transportation, or meals, which can add up to several more thousand dollars. Then, be prepared for dealing with board burn out and a projected ten year program.

It's surprising to me that this fundraiser business even has the nerve to present such a program, especially in our current economic turndown. Not too many non-profits have that kind of time or money or board members who can leave their own businesses for four days in the middle of the week and at such a high cost to the organization.

At first I thought it must be a joke. How could they be serious? This is particularly true now that I have some special knowledge, a secret way to raise funds that any non-profit can do, and it doesn't even have to cost anything. Not only will I give you this information for free, but I will help you get set up free too. You see, I have my own mission of helping all the non-profits I can in my lifetime. Twelve thousand dollars indeed!

My free solution will also generate a sustainable residual income, but you don't even have to ask your supporters to take one cent of their own money out of their pockets. Do you think this would be a program that your supporters will embrace? I believe so because people like to give; it's just that sometimes they cannot afford it. In this time of need, every non-profit has its hand out. It's going to be the clever non-profit that can present a fundraising program that doesn't ask for money that will bring home the bacon.

The secret revealed

Here's the secret. Have you ever heard of online shopping? Of course you have. You probably do it yourself all the time as does everyone you know. Online shopping has grown to a 30 billion dollar industry in a few short years. Why not tap into some of this 30 billion for your organization? But how?

The answer is simple. You just design a shopping mall and invite your supporters to shop there and make agreements with all the stores in the mall to give you a percentage of their profits from each person shopping from your organization. Sounds a bit daunting doesn't it? It would take you several years and several million dollars to build such a system.

What if there were already a company that has done all this work and would be willing to give you your own Website for free with your organization's name on it for this purpose? Then all you would have to do is encourage your members to shop there. Remember, this is something your supporters are already doing and it doesn't cost them anything. Yet, they are still supporting the organization, perhaps more than they ever did before. Not only that, you may be able to attract even more supporters who could not afford to support you in the past.

This is no ordinary mall that you may find in your town with perhaps two or three dozen stores. This mall has over 1300 stores, every store you ever heard of and lots more from all over the world. Even the most hardcore shopping addict will be satisfied in this super mall.

How much money could you make?

Let's suppose you have a group of 1000 supporters or members to whom you mail your newsletter and have given you contributions in the past. If each of these individuals agrees to participate in the program and the average online shopping is only $100 each per month, which really is not a lot, your organization could make $8000 a month. That's almost a hundred thousand dollars a year without even asking your supporters for any money. Powerful, eh?

An even more powerful solution

Here is another fundraising tool that is even more powerful than online shopping. The glory is that they can be combined for an almost obscene profit-making machine for your non-profit organization. What if you could offer each of your supporters a free search bar that works on both Internet Explorer and Firefox that is powered by Yahoo and pays ten cents a link click? That's right, your organization earns ten cents a click. If every one of your 1000 members clicked ten times a day, each would earn a dollar for the organization. That's one thousand dollars per day. It sure beats selling a bunch of poisonous junk food no one wants or needs, doesn't it? That's thirty thousand dollars a month, $360,000 a year for just a few clicks a day.

It gets better. The search bar has your organization's name on it to remind people to click. It also has a button that says Mall to remind them to shop in your mall. So, you can be earning money from clicking and shopping. So, in our example of the thousand member organization, they would be earning $8000 from shopping and $30,000 from clicking--$38,000 a month or just short of a half million dollars a year—and you didn't even have to ask your supporters for any money.

If you would like to get such a system set up for your organization, please visit my blog where you will learn how: www.freenonprofitfundraisers.blogspot.com.