HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer

It’s too late to make donations good for deduction for this coming April, but its the perfect time to get 2012 off to an organized start. Cell phone and ink cartridge donations programs are popular for groups to mount. However, you cannot always be sure the group is getting the maximum benefit. Different cell phone recyclers offer differing amounts for the same phone in the same condition, but not all of them participate in mass donation programs. They will credit organizations that collect phones and send them in a shipment, but might not credit random individual cell donations to a charity that has not registered.

An alternative is to shop around yourself and  sell mobile phones that are collecting dust and lint in your drawer at a competitive rate to a recycler, and then in turn give the proceeds to the group of your choice once the check arrives. Sellmymobile.com has a list of various phone models and the going rate at a variety of recyclers. The site does not purchase cellphones, but gathers the reported data in one place. Once a match is made, you send the phone to the selected company.

When you receive your check, you can personally donate the funds to your group of choice. Since you shopped around, the rate might be higher than the funds realized by a group in a dedicated cell phone program. The other benefit is that a charity need not be registered with a recycler to receive a benefit. Granted, a publicized collection campaign does drive donations when a group mount ones, but shopping around yourself when you clean out your drawer and spreading the word to your individual network creates initiative. Oh, and of course – you divest of the clutter in your drawer. You can’t save every one for a 2037 Antique Roadshow episode.

A few years ago—I won’t say how many—at this time of year, my classmates started to hawk candy bars to neighbors (but mostly to each other) to fund our Spanish class’s spring trip. After the long and tasty road to ultimately earning a snack at the airport, it was many months before I wanted to look at another chocolate bar again. While the enticement of candy may generate revenue for your group, there is another way. At most charity auctions I have attended, the liquor and candy tended to be the darlings of the night.  Skip the candy bars and try some of the more luxe collections sold as business gifts. Often, they come wrapped in foil or a festive box, so there is no additional volunteer time pulling together a presentation. (At left, the “Festive Favorites” from See’s.)

Most of the time, hungry bidders bid something like this up to at least the retail price, but often higher for the sake of a gentlemanly or gentlewomanly challenge amongst colleagues.

When you donate this way, a registered charity group will give you a receipt for an “in kind” donation for your taxes. No, the tax savings won’t be gigantic, but the satisfaction of making a small difference will.

It’s time to start thinking about the different celebrations that occur in the fall. There is Halloween and Thanksgiving, of course, but sometimes with so many competing parties and gatherings, its hard to plan something people will be available for. If you want to see all your friends and family, why not plan an alternate party, so that everyone can then spend time with their relatives on the holiday. It occurred to me that many popular party themes would be perfect for fundraising or charity parties too.

We have all seen poker themed parties. Some are a motorcycle poker run, and some are just a bunch of people sitting around a table playing cards. Celebrations.com has an idea for a Rat Pack poker party. Basically, you take the theme and run with it a little farther. Encourage your guests to dress up like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin. Don’t forget Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland! You could have prizes for the best costume, and you could come up with silly drink names. Of course, for most charity events, they would be non alcoholic, but you could add plenty of swanky swizzle sticks, and have some one be the bartender. It would be fun if that person dressed up in a vest and shirt sleeves to add to the atmosphere. Perhaps they could wear a tux. The fall weather would be conducive to hats and suits as well, unlike doing it in August.

Of course, you would want to make sure the tunes in the background fit the theme.  You can easily pick up CDs from the discount bin, but maybe someone you know has some you could borrow.  If you really wanted to push it over the top, you could have a piano player and a crooner, whether it is someone who is actually good or if you are going to go karaoke style and off the cuff.   All of these things can be done very economically if you have volunteers.  You can also get card themed little bar napkins and silver streamers.  This is an inexpensive way to further sell the theme.

As far as the actual poker, no one would really have to play.  I recommend doing a live auction, and having various contests.  Keep the card playing, if it actually occurs, light and fun.   Another thing to do would be to have someone be a police officer and arrest people for bail.  Of course, the bail would go to your charity.  It was, after all, a crazy time, and the Rat Pack was certainly in a hot kettle of water form time to time.

Fall fundraisers are coming up, and many groups are thinking about screen printing tee shirts to either be worn by volunteers to publicize the event, or to sell as souvenirs. There is always the possibility of printing in bulk on white shirts. However, I find that the “two sizes fit all approach” may not always work to the best advantage. At events, because of my smaller size, the only thing I can do with them is wear them as night shirts. The shirts I wear are the ones that may cost a few dollars more but might be a long sleeve or something with a slimmer cut so I don’t look like I am wearing my dad’s shirt. In fact, I wear them out on the town, sometimes on a night out, so the event or charity is certainly getting more bang for their buck versus when a shirt just sits in my drawer.

LogoDogsPrintz.com has a wide variety of options such as baseball styles, tanks, babydolls and more. They may not be the bulk $2 shirts you are used to buying, but if you are looking for shirts that will actually be worn, you will definitely get more mileage out of them.  Tank tops are still a good option in the fall because you can offer them at a lower price point, and they are good for layering.  Many groups want to offer sweatshirts, but sometimes the price point is prohibitive to attendees.   A long sleeved tee is what I recommend.  It is something that people can wear right now, as well as to protect their arms in the sun in the summer.

In high school, I transferred to a very small school where we had a variety of fundraisers to meet the goal of new uniforms or a class educational trip. One of my fondest memories was of selling Chocolate as a fundraiser. There were candy bars for the quick sale, then boxed chocolate that our parents usually bought. You would think we would have eaten most of the profits. Actually, what we did was sell them to each other. We would, of course, ask our family to buy them, and sat through every ball game hawking them, but we each carried our boxes to the lunch room and cleaned up.  I am just glad it wasn’t the same time of year as the Presidential Physical Fitness test!  We would have all flunked!

In fact, they are probably the same ones that Gertrude Hawk Chocolates offers to this very day in a variety of flavors.  There are is all sorts of goodness there to use as fundraisers or to buy as gifts.  Yes, there is such an occasion as “Happy Birthday to Me.”  I would imagine that for myself, I would buy a lot of these cute two toned puppy chocolates.

These days, everyone is reinventing the wheel when it comes to various fundraisers. Sometimes old fashioned things are big successes for a reason. We could have just directly asked people for money, but I think we learned something about business better this way, even though we bought a lot from each other. I guess you could call that “knowing your consumer!”

What did you do to raise money for your class trips back in your day?

Many smaller non profits have turned to CPA Offers to increase their income. What are CPA offers? CPA is defined as “Cost Per Action.” In simple English, this encompasses affiliate programs, pay per click campaigns, and the like to monetize a website. Supporters are usually positive about this, as long as the items or links are on target with the site’s overall look and cause, and often specifically think about clicking from the cause’s site when they know that the cause will benefit when they buy something or read something they were going to anyhow.

It is all a lot to wade through and consider, as you can imagine, but OfferVault is one of those sites that consolidates offers all in one place for your review. Sure, there are many, many sites out there that basically are a list of links to affiliate programs. This site differs in that you can use their database to not just search sites, but can wade through actual individual offers that are currently running. Not only can you find a website to sign up for, but you can determine where the biggest payout for the individual offer is. This saves a lot of time, and could potentially make you more money.

I decided to register for the site just to check it out for all of you. Upon registering, you do see a large ad to sign up with a program that will teach you the tricks of the trade, but you can easily decline this. It is a little spammy, in my opinion, but once you get your confirmation email, you get to the meat of the site. It was very interesting to me that the rates offered on the same or similar offers varied widely from affiliate provider to provider.

The reality, of course, is that you cannot expect to make your operating costs from programs such as this. You will have to still sharpen the saw when it comes to other fundraising options. Programs like these, however, can go along way into paying for your web hosting and other costs of hanging up your shingle. Treat it as “found money” only.

Quite some time ago, I talked about the Chip-In Widget (click here) as a means of raising money online.   It is an easy way for charities  to take the tallying out of the mix and let the donors watch the progress in real time.   The downside, is that it can be connected to any Paypal account.   There is no safety in place to make sure the widget is connected to the Paypal account of a non profit. I encourage you to check things out to see where the money is going to.

Sarah wrote in and asked:

Does anyone have any good alternatives to ChipIn? Somethat that perhaps do something close but have the back up of requiring a 501c3 or the like, to at least cut down on the fraud?

Sarah, there is another alternative that I almost forgot about.  Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees charity has a widget that works through Network For Good.   While the Chip-In widget accepts a donation of any size amount, the minimum to use the Network for Good Widget is $10.00 per donation.

Anyone can put up a widget to raise money for an organization, but the organization receiving the money must be registered with Network for Good.    For example, I could decide to raise money for my favorite animalorganization (Saving Shelter Pets), or an organization that fights the disease my coworker has.  I could implement my own “challenge” to my friends, yet the charity would receive the funds.

In the past Six Degrees has issued giving challenges, where the emphasis was on the number of donations, not the size.  Saving Shelter Pets was among the top 6 charities in the past.

The Chip-In Widget may still be easier for some folks, but I thought I would mention this alternative for your toolbox.