Kids and Stickers. They go together like sparkles and glue, like gift-wrap and tape, like paste and construction paper. Kids love Stickers. Educators know that kids love Stickers. Marketing professionals know that kids love Stickers. Isn’t it time you used a resource your school has in abundance—kids—and one that you can obtain easily—Stickers—to promote your school, motivate your students, and create something unique to represent your values?

Adherence: Marketing 101

The best way to sell something is to get your customers to sell it for you. If you’ve ever invited corporate sponsors into your school, or participated in any large, multi-school program, you’ve most likely noticed that free Stickers are offered to your kids. Some of them may end up in the trash, the laundry, or the bottoms of your students’ sneakers, but it only takes one Sticker, stuck in the right place, to create free advertising.

Some adults may be wary of sticking ads on their personal property. Not so with kids! Those who love Stickers the most will be happy to stick any corporate logo on their notebook. Why not take advantage of this trend to market your school? If a child will happily display the name of a company that has offered him or her a free water bottle, how much more will they be willing to spread the word about the school they love?

Follow Instructions

All you need to do is print your school’s name on a stack of Vinyl, Economy, or Bumper Stickers. But don’t stop there. You’ve got a website, right? Prominent inclusion of the URL makes it easier for potential parents to find you online. What about a logo? If you haven’t got a logo, hold a contest and get the kids to draw one for you. Now you’ve got a beautiful, child-centric design to attract the people you want.

Other options include adding an image of your school, your mascot, prominent alumni, or anything else that appeals to your students. This is a creative medium! Stretch your mind: find the images that work for you, and add your names and website to create the perfect marketing tool.

The Old Math

You may already be using Stickers to spread the word. Many schools offer Bumper Stickers to parents of honors children, and more recently, these Stickers have been customized for parents of children in the band, on sports teams, with perfect attendance, or even those who simply show up on a semi-regular basis. “Proud Parent of an XYZ School Student” may be enough.

If you’re not already offering Bumper Stickers along these lines to your parents, either as rewards for their children’s performance or as part of your fundraising efforts, this is one situation when you want to be on the bandwagon.

The New Math

Bumper Stickers are, as they say, Old School. They certainly get around, but there’s more to the story. Why aren’t you offering your kids custom Stickers with their school’s name on them?

If you begin with an assortment, you can use them as incentives and rewards for different activities. You can create Stickers for each athletic team, each after-school activity, each instrument in the band. You can create Stickers that celebrate grades, attendance, or community service.

You can create a range of collectible Stickers to motivate young children to complete a series of tasks so they can collect them all. You can create customized rewards that will be highly coveted. Just find an inexpensive source for items that children need or want anyway, then slap a Sticker in the center:

• Notebooks
• Pencil cases
• Water bottles
• Kleenex packets
• Binders
• ID cards or badges
• Folders

Better yet, ask your students what kind of prizes they’d like to earn!

The more items available, the more stealth marketing you can do. Wherever your kids take their Stickers, they’re offering your school free publicity.

Final Exam

Small and portable, the possibilities are pretty much limited by how many Stickers you’re willing to buy and your creativity in finding ways to use and distribute them. Once they’re in the kids’ hands, those Stickers will announce to the world you’re your school is on the map. Whether you choose to sell them or give them away, offer them as prizes or incentives, Stickers in schools create a winning situation all around.

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The news can't be avoided. Our public schools are in the midst of an unprecedented budget crisis. All across the nation, school districts are being forced to cut back on programs. In many places, sports, music, arts, foreign languages and other curriculum which are often considered "non-essential" have already seen the chopping block. Forced to tighten their belts, school districts now have to make tough decisions about where to cut next. Proposals such as reducing staff, laying off teachers and cutting the school day and year have all been put forward as budgets continue to shrink.

In a time of such fiscal crisis, school fundraising has become more vital than ever. Many communities are stepping up the effort to bring in new streams of revenue so they can support their students and supplement shrinking government funding.

Unfortunately, with so many groups adding their voice to the fundraising chorus, the effort to raise funds has become a cacophony. Savvy community members and parents can find themselves frustrated, wanting to provide the best education for their children and finding hands out grasping for funding at every turn. Some individuals, tired of the constant barrage of requests, have been turned off completely from the idea of donating to yet another school related cause.

Many fundraisers feel all too familiar. Car washes, bake sales, and candy bar drives all fade into one another, occurring so frequently that community members become exhausted. Confronted by so many causes it's impossible to keep track of what they have contributed to. Overwhelmed by the crowded fundraising market, some individuals simply stop giving, feeling they have given enough already.

In light of this, it's important to meet fundraising burnout, with creative and savvy solutions. If your organization finds that its donations are decreasing, it may be time to reassess your efforts and give your fundraising plan a makeover.
 
Consider what  West Lafayette, School District in Indiana did when it found its schools falling far short of its desired budget. Realizing that many small fundraisers were raising just a little money here or there in a scattershot approach, members of the community created a foundation through which all of the money could be funneled through. Though a number of fundraisers, from barbecues to garage sales, take place, participants know the money goes to one organization. With a united community, the foundation has more power to not only raise funds, but has a strong recognizable brand that can put itself behind political efforts to get new school funding referendums on the ballot.

In this way, traditional fundraising like school carnivals and raffles don't have to be thrown out completely. Instead the school fundraising groups organize around a central organization that the community can recognize and rally around.
 

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If you’ve already read “The Smart Money: Online Fundraising for Schools Part One,” you know why the Internet is your best bet for expanding your donor list and your profits. You’ve read a few tips to get started, and you’re ready to learn the rest: ten more ways to boost your online fundraising dollars, make the most of donor communication, and promote your school’s online fundraiser, along with some basic guidelines for conducting online or offline fundraisers.

Communication and Promotion

 Use the Internet to keep your potential donors aware of your school and its needs. You’ll want ongoing communication to ensure everyone’s up to date on upcoming fundraising events and school needs, particularly those of student clubs, organizations, and teams. The more involved they are, the more they’ll give. Here’s how to keep everyone in the loop.

4. Start an email Campaign
Starting an e-mail or e-newsletter campaign is the most important step you can take to ensure the success of your online fundraiser. If people aren’t informed, they won’t help. Make your campaign a success with the following tops:

• Tailor Emails to Recipients’ Interests: Build detailed profiles for each potential donor. You can send an initial email asking about the recipient’s needs and demographic, or you can send more surveys and polls over a longer period of time. The second option is often best, as it allows for better relationship building as you gather information and develop continually more personalized emails.

• Do Not Solicit in Initial Mailings: Even the most generous among us usually don’t care to give money to organizations or individuals before we have established some relationship. The importance of not soliciting recipients with their first email cannot be emphasized enough. Initial emails should be used to gather information on the recipient’s needs and interests in order to provide more valuable content. There is a direct correlation between the relationships built with potential donors and the amount they will give.

• Purchase email Marketing Software: Email marketing software will save you time and money. This software allows you to automatically upload your donor database into an email marketing application and helps you tailor your emails to a recipient’s interests. Emaillabs.com offers great basic email marketing software. WildApricot, Convio, GetActive, and LocalVoice are designed specifically for online fundraising and offer a handful of specialized tools not offered by general email applications.

• Establish a Schedule for Writing and Distributing: The whole point of an email marketing program is to hold the recipients’ attention by keeping them continually informed. People should look forward to receiving your email. Establish a set frequency based on time constraints and your school’s ability to produce relevant news or content.

For more information on email marketing read "Stay Between the Lines! Your School Email Marketing Campaign".

5. Start School Blogs and Forums
Forums are especially great for school websites. They provide parents, students, community members, and faculty a place to share ideas and become involved. An active forum helps you understand the community’s concerns and communicate instantly. A blog is a great way to provide information on current school happenings.

6. Incorporate a Web Calendar
Integrating a web calendar into the school website is essential because it allows visitors to view upcoming fundraising events at a glance. There are many web calendar applications out there. Trumba event calendars (www.trumba.com) are easy to use and boast a number of features. Google and Yahoo both offer free event calendars.

7. Integrate an RSS Feed
RSS feeds automatically update subscribers on new website content or events; there’s no need for users to continually check your website. New blogs, email newsletter shipments, wiki page updates, and upcoming fundraising events should be placed on an RSS page. This will greatly increase fundraiser participation.  For more info on creating RSS feeds visit /www.wilsonweb.com.

8. Create Wiki Pages
A wiki page is a webpage that can be edited by website visitors. Wikipedia is the most commonly known wiki site: a visitor edited, free encyclopedia. Submit your school’s details and history to this site, as it often comes up first in search results. Wiki pages for every sports team and student organization can be of great benefit. Parents, students, and staff can contribute unique pictures and stories about each group, establishing a sense of community while keeping the entire community informed about student activities. Write about notable alumni, too. Giving staff the ability to quickly edit these pages will make them more valuable and interesting. Search engines consider frequently updated content more valuable, so wiki pages increase your website’s natural search results. JotSpot provides a fully integrated wiki application that makes creating wiki pages a breeze. While most wiki pages are text based, JotSpot allows you to create rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries with ease. For additional information on general wiki page creation, visit www.intersci.ss.uci.edu.

9. Create and Distribute Charity Badges
A charity badge is a small widget, often including a picture, brief description of the organization, and link to where you can make a donation. Using charity badges is good practice for any fundraising campaign. Although they may or may not produce large donations, they are an effective way to promote a fundraiser. Placing yours in targeted locations can help you reach new demographic groups. These badges also allow users to share with one another by simply clicking on “get this badge” and copying the html code onto their website or blog, which helps you target individuals who may donate. They are inexpensive and easy to create. Simply follow step-by-step instructions though providers such as CareBadges or ChipIn.
To get your school’s charity badge started, choose a provider and create a badge.  Then, email those who would be most likely to make a contribution or share the badge with others. After this, donate to your charity badge yourself, and have co-workers and friends do the same. People are much more likely to donate if they feel they are part of something big. Finally, promote your badge though your school blog, social networking sites, email newsletter, or forums.

The Basics

Here are some basic tips to increase the effectiveness of any fundraiser.

10. Base Appeal on Benefits, Not Needs
Communicate how your school will be a better place for children, or the community will be better off as a whole, after receiving fundraising dollars.

11. Create a Sense of Urgency
Communicate the need for urgent action with clear deadlines and purposes. Catch people in the moment, with a sense of immediacy, and they are more likely to make a donation. 

12. Provide Convenience for Donors
Give donors the convenience of paying online, over the phone, or via mail.  Establishing several media for submitting donations or purchasing Raffle Tickets increases the likelihood of participation.

13. Following up with a Thank You
Don’t forget to send thank you notes to any direct donors, big Raffle Ticket customers, and purchasers of auction items.

14. Use Online Fundraising as a Supplement
Encourage online participation, but don’t let this be the only alternative. A lot of people do not want to become engaged with the online process. Make sure traditional fundraising activities are still in place. Online fundraisers are long arms, while traditional fundraising is the backbone of your fundraising efforts. Think integration. Allow your offline and online fundraising efforts to complement each other.

 

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1.  Utilize Email Marketing

Keeping people continually informed and interested in your school and its events is a difficult task (in addition to the rest of the toils of operating a school). An email marketing campaign makes keeping in touch with parents and community members simple, and is well worth the minimal effort. The following are some quick tips to develop a successful email marketing campaign.

• Tailor emails for Each Recipient’s Interests: In order to be successful with an email campaign you must know what your recipients find valuable. There are a few options to achieve this. When your recipients first sign up for your email be sure to include boxes they can check to receive information for each club, student organization, sports team, as well as general school news or other topically related content. Another option is to include surveys and polls with each email, this way you can continually react to your recipients desires even if they change.

• Establish a Schedule for Writing and Distributing: Establishing a set frequency is required to hold people’s attention and keep them looking forward to receiving your emails. You must find a balanced based on available resources, your ability to create valuable information, and your recipient’s desires.

• Email Marketing Software: Email marketing software is a great investment as it integrates database information and designs specific emails for each recipient group. The obvious benefit is the time saved by eliminating the need to manually compose each email and enter data. EmailLabs.com provides good API software.

2.  Incorporate a Web Calendar

It’s essential to integrate a web calendar into the school website. Period. A web calendar allows visitors to quickly check up on current events, and even add to their own calendars. They can also be customized to different groups, and updated easily by many users simultaneously. There are many web calendar applications out there. Trumba event calendars
(www.trumba.com) are easy to use and offer several useful features. Both Google and Yahoo also offer free event calendars.

3.  Host Blogs/Forums

As stated earlier, keeping your school in the fore-front of people’s minds should be the overall goal; a blog on your school webpage is an efficient way to accomplish this. Creating separate blogs for each student activity group will allow visitors to easily find the blogs that interest them. For example, the head football coach might maintain a blog on the football page. Remember to include pictures in your blogs for visual reference. For more valuable info on creating a great blog visit buildabetterblog.com.

4.  Integrate Wiki Pages

A Wiki page is a webpage with the capability of being edited by authorized website visitors. Not many schools have wiki pages, which presents a great opportunity for your school. Sports teams, music and choral departments, and student organizations should each have a dedicated wiki page on your school’s website. Wiki pages communicate real, personal experiences and interaction, and invoke excitement. Parents, students, or anyone involved can post pictures, stories, and comments relating to each entity. Not only will this create a sense of involvement for contributors, but the insightful content will also spark the interest of non-contributing visitors. PBwiki provides a wiki application that makes creating media rich wiki pages a breeze. For more information on general wiki page creation, visit www.intersci.ss.uci.edu.

5.  Post Regular Video and Podcasts

Podcasts are utilized even less often by schools than wikis, but are a great way to promote student events. Podcasts are similar to blogs in that they can easily be published, syndicated, shared and accessed by the general public; the main difference being the information is audio and video rather than just text. Collect audio and video files of existing moments during athletic events, band concerts, theater events, etc. Users can help spread the word by downloading the files and sharing them via iPod, email, Facebook or MySpace posts. Podcasts go a long way toward creating buzz and excitement for your events.

It’s important to post new podcasts regularly, otherwise the appeal is lost. In order to preserve talk and excitement, people must have something new to talk about. Apple.com has more info on podcasts.

6.  Establish RSS Feeds

An RSS (“real simple syndication”) feed is vital to the effectiveness of the above components. Subscribers are automatically updated on new website content or events without having to regularly check your website. New podcasts or video content, newsletters, blog posts, school news, or current events should be put on your RSS feed homepage. An RSS feed can also be integrated with your web calendar or published on other web sites. Ultimately an RSS allows even the most time constrained individuals to stay up-to-date on your schools news and events. For more info on creating RSS feeds visit WilsonWeb.com.

7.  Consider Social Networking

As the web continues to grow more “social” a number of opportunities are presented that allow for efficient and effective communication with the people involved with your school. Post some of your better videos, stories and pictures on sites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Flickr. Doing these things will go toward creating an adequate web presence, an element that will directly affect event attendance.

You might not want to get too entrenched with social networking, but you don’t want to get left behind either. Place someone in charge of keeping track of the constant changes in technology this way your school can react strategically. Making your media and information easy to obtain will increase the chance that it will become widely distributed.

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