Want a Successful School Event? Choose Tyvek Wristbands

You’re not sure what your classroom budget is going to be this year, but you are sure it won’t be enough. As you look out over the faces of your young students sounding out words and carefully calculating math problems, you wish you could give them something more to reinforce their education.  Whether you want to raise the money for extra books, school supplies or creative materials, holding a fundraising event using custom printed wristbands can be key to bringing cash into your classroom.

A School Carnival

Paper bracelets or Tyvek Wristbands go hand in hand with your fundraising plans, especially if you’re planning a school carnival. A carnival is a traditional choice for a school fundraiser. It is the type of event that opens the doors of the school to the community. Individuals get to see the cause they are donating to, and faculty and students get a chance to show off their place of learning to the public. As an added bonus, school carnivals are just plain fun!

Security and Safety

Making sure that an event on school grounds is secure and safe should be a top priority of any planning committee. Tyvek wristbands can help you reach this goal. Somewhere between paper and plastic, these wristbands fit snugly around your attendees wrists. They cannot be transferred or removed without being cut off, so you can rest assured that the right folks are at your event.

Event wristbands are available in several colors. You can set aside ones for faculty and staff, parents, students and friends of the school. When individuals see the colored wristbands, they can easily identify the type of relationship an individual has to the school.

Raffles

Your school carnival will likely have games, food, student performances and displays. Another big draw might be door prizes or raffles, based on wristband numbering. In order to save additional money, you may want to solicit a local vendor or merchant sponsor the event by donating a prize. Prizes can be big or small. What counts is the spirit behind them and the enthusiasm with which your attendees participate.

Because event wristbands can be securely numbered, they can serve a dual purpose at your event.  They will help to keep your event secure, but they will also double as a raffle ticket. Each guest with an event wristband gets a chance at the prize.  And, they won’t run the risk of losing their chance at the raffle.

Guests can feel safe participating in carnival games and rides. The Tyvek wristbands will stay securely around their wrists no matter how many rounds of skee ball they play. They can even take a few rounds in the dunk tank because these event wristbands are waterproof!

Your Students are Worth It

It’s easy and cost effective to design and print custom wristbands. Event wristbands can be customized with your school’s logo making them unique and memorable.  Not only will members of your school’s community have a fun time, you’ll be earning money so that you can buy the much needed extras the budget may not cover this year.

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Need a little help getting those donor wallets open and jump starting event ticket sales? Maybe you haven’t provided a great enough incentive. Give your supporters the gift of glamor: make your next fundraiser a fabulous casino night. Recreate the allure of Monte Carlo and start selling event tickets for your casino night.

You’ll need:

• A crew of eager volunteers
• Games of chance (call a local party supply company for rentals)
• A passel of donated prizes
• A venue of sufficient size
• Flashy print publicity
• Some event ticket printing

If your organization supports it, a cash bar will truly make the night successful. You can boost bar sales with Drink Tickets. Remember: inebriated gamblers are your most profitable gamblers.

Start by determining whether there is interest in this night among your group. Once you have enough support, you can start rounding up the volunteers. Take some time to ascertain which skills each volunteer possesses, and then dole out the tasks. Events flow more efficiently if everyone has their own job. Decide whether your volunteers will work the game tables—many party supply companies will also supply the croupiers and dealers.

Meet regularly with your team to check on progress. This will help you see, in advance, if you’ve assigned the proper tasks to the right people. Make a schedule: who will book the venue, and when? How will you distribute event tickets? If there is to be live entertainment, that must also be arranged. Of course, it wouldn’t be a casino night without fabulous prizes.

Your best bet is to start early and look for impressive donations. However, even if nobody has the courtesy to offer you a speedboat or a big screen HDTV, don’t despair. Keep asking. Ask local business owners if they would be willing to make a donation in exchange for extra publicity (you can mention them as sponsors on your event tickets, in the event program, and in other forums, wherever you promote the event). If you get a lot of great donations, amp up your fundraising ability by adding a prize draw to the event. Then you can start selling raffle tickets well in advance, and add another fun component to the night as you announce the winners.

When you print up your event tickets, you can create matching event collateral at the same time: flyers and posters, invitation and raffle tickets. Printing event tickets and matching event kits really helps you get your publicity going. Announce your casino fundraising event:

• In your print or email newsletter
• To your mailing list, using printed invitation
• On your website and allied forums
• Via a press release, sent to all local news outlets

Then, start selling event tickets!

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Wristbands for Simplicity’s Sake

How can a sheet of paper bracelets help keep your event orderly?

Consider your event before you need Wristbands. Maybe it started as a simple  gathering of friends and neighbors, a few  barbecues or a shared potluck for a small donation, perhaps billed as a fundraiser for the local PTA because you wanted to do something good. It was so much fun, the next year, you did it again. More folks came. Eventually, your annual party evolved into a community event. That's when you started thinking big.

You and your peers decided to turn it into a real fundraiser to benefit your city's schools.  Word got out. The venue was moved to a bigger location. Local vendors offered sponsorship. Restaurants catered. Bands got booked. Artists, and crafters and sellers of all kinds put up booths. Attendees even bought tickets. Maybe you realized they needed to wear event wristbands just so you could figure out who paid, or who was old enough to drink. What started out small grew, and now folks come from all over town to attend your yearly block party. If you haven’t started distributing Event Wristbands, now might be a good time to start.

When You're Ready To Enjoy Your Party as Much as Your Guests

Wouldn't it be nice to feel like you were still attending the small intimate gathering of the past? It's great to see a well-attended fundraiser, but you would like to spend less time directing and more time being at the event. When the occasion is well-organized, and the crowd is well-managed, even you can take some time to sit back, relax and enjoy the party, the ease of visual recognition provided by color coded wristbands can be the key.

How Do You Manage Your Growing Event?

When you expect a large number of guests, effective pre-planning can make a real difference. Managing the comings and goings of your attendees can take a lot of time and energy, so you'll want to keep this aspect of your event organized.

Begin when your guests arrive at the gate. Admission tickets are perfect for getting your guests in, but you may want a visible cue to ensure the right guests have access to the right events. Color wristbands are an excellent way to keep tabs on individuals once they make it into your venue. They allow volunteers or staff to immediately identify gatecrashers or underage drinkers. Wristbands just make it simple to determine who belongs where.

Who's Who at Your Event?

As attendees arrive, you can organize them using custom security wristbands. Admission wristbands allow security to easily identify whether individuals belong at your event. They make it easier for you to keep track of guests who may need to leave the venue, but want to return. Rather than holding onto ticket stubs that can get passed to others or getting a stamp that can easily be rubbed off, guests can merely show their wristbands to attendants.

If you are serving alcohol at your event, you can better manage sales by issuing bar wristbands to guests over twenty-one. This help keeps concession lines stay organized and move quickly.  You can also use event wristbands to manage your VIP traffic in the same way. Instead of collecting passes to special events, attendants can simply check to see if guests have the correct color wristband.

Additionally, Tyvek wristbands are durable, waterproof and hard to lose. They can't be wiped off like a stamp, and they are also recyclable, so when guests turn them in at the end of the day, you can feel good about choosing a sustainable material to help manage your event.

Enjoy Your Event

This year, spend less time directing guest traffic and more time being a part of it when you choose admission wristbands to help organize the crowd. It may be bigger than it was in the past, but it only means you have more opportunities to have a great time!

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Even huge events focusing on large issue such as hunger relief or cancer research can benefit from an active grassroots movement to aid a larger, national cause. It’s time to gather your local grassroots community! If you are starting such a community from scratch, call a town meeting that will give you an opportunity to gauge the importance of your movement within your community, as well as find volunteers who can help you get the ball rolling.

*  You Got Your Goodwill Army, So Now What? Now that you have the support and muscle of people in your community, your grassroots effort may begin. With these people, begin to plan and create a fundraiser. Let them tell you what the community wants. Sell tickets to the event to raise money. Sell raffle tickets to generate even more money for your cause.

*  Get Local Exposure: Utilize local media such as newspapers and radio stations to raise awareness of your cause and your event. Be sure to tell people in the community how they can attain a ticket to your fundraising event. Take notes to ensure that you say all that needs to be said via the media to get the word out about your cause and your fundraiser. Use statistics, even local statistics if you can get them, to further the cause. For example, if you are raising awareness about Diabetes and aim to have a fundraiser about it, be sure to cite stats such as how many people in the country have the disease, as well as a stat of how many people in your community are afflicted. The reality of statistics will give your grassroots movement a solid foundation and awake the cause within your community. 

*  You Got the Exposure, Begin Planning the Event: Much of the preliminary details such as where and when must be decided before you speak to the media. But there’s more to planning and implementing the details: food, entertainment, or speakers. Continuing to use the example of a grassroots movement for Diabetes, an appropriate speaker could be a local doctor or an artist or musician in the community. Often local authorities and celebrities will donate their time for a fundraiser. Put out calls in the community for appropriate speakers to perform or speak at your event.

*  Event Tickets for Your Fundraiser: Research event ticket designs: choose the perfect ticket template and create your own tickets online for speed and convenience. After your tickets have been designed and printed, begin selling within your community. In addition to selling your event tickets to your friends, neighbors, and coworkers, pound the pavement and do some selling door to door. Continue to promote the event, reminding potential guests about to get tickets. Use poster, flyers, Internet forums, microblogging, social networks, and your website. It is easy to create a simple website that can be exclusive to your cause with news and a schedule of events at this fundraiser and others to come. The website can also function as a way to educate the community about your cause as well as keep a running tally on the money that has been raised.

*  Don’t Stop When the Party’s Over: Your successful grassroots campaign has created a mobile army for your cause. Keep them mobilized. Encourage them to bring new and creative ideas to the table and run with them.

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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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You need extra-curricular activities, office supplies, and roof repairs. You need to make up for the budget cuts, expanding classes, and an increase in Internet bandwidth. In short, you need money. When the PTA is stretched thin and your kids refuse to sell another chocolate bar, it’s time to take matters into your own hands. Don’t worry if your hands are tied! You can earn more money for your school with online fundraising, and you never even need to leave your desk. In this two-part article, we’ll discuss the why and how of filling the coffers without overwhelming your calendar.

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7 Reasons to Take Your School Fundraising Campaign to the Net

1. Online giving grows exponentially every year, from just over a half a billion dollars in 2000 to more than $4.5 billion in 2005. (www.groundspring.org)

2. One-click giving helps convert the philanthropic urge into fast action. Your supporters are much more likely to turn their impulse to help into actual donations, Raffle Ticket purchases, or auction bids, when they’re online. The instantaneous nature of the Internet promotes action by catching people in the moment. Being “close to the click” means being close to donors and dollars.

3. Online fundraising eliminates geographic borders. With the right incentive, you can attract a world of potential donors outside your region.

4. People are more generous online. An email campaign launched by North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics resulted in a 20% increase in the average donation. Their overall efforts resulted in a 150% ROI. (www.bronto.com)

5. Online fundraising attracts alternative demographics. cMarket conducted a study concluding that 71% of their online bidders are women. They found that women are turned off by the highly competitive, testosterone induced environment of the traditional auction. Internet bidding turned this demographic into major donors.

6. The Internet is quickly becoming donors’ medium of choice because it’s quick and easy.

7. Online Fundraising is a great option when your potential patrons are pressed for time. The typical auction lasts 1 to 3 hours; fewer people will be able to attend in that small window. Online auctions generally lasts 1 to 3 weeks, expanding the potential for more people to make more bids.

14 Ways to Boost Your School’s Online Fundraising Dollars

Think you know fundraising? Online fundraising is a different beast! If you’re ready to made the move from traditional fundraising to Internet fundraising, here are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. Offer Big Incentives for Big Returns
Online fundraising works on a much larger scale than a PTA pancake brunch. You’re not limited to your usual group of donors; you’ll be tapping into an audience that is larger and more diverse. However, you’ll be competing for their attention, so they can be much harder to engage and coerce into action. You need the right incentives. The Mount Madonna School, located in San Jose, conducted a raffle with a $1.8 million, 2800-square-foot dream home as the prize. They set a benchmark of 26,000 tickets at $150 each before the house could be given away. Even though they fell short, selling only 19,137 tickets sold, they still gave $1 million to the top winner and $141,000 to the remaining 319 winners, and while managing to raise $1 million for themselves. Eliminating geographic limitations and providing the right incentive creates a massive audience, and your rewards grow exponentially.

2. Partner With Online Fundraising Providers
To greatly expand the audience for your auctions, consider selling on eBay Giving Works.  (www.givingworks.ebay.com/). eBay Giving Works is dedicated to nonprofit and charity listings. Start by signing up on MissionFish (www.missionfish.org/), a site that makes it safe and easy for nonprofits to sell on eBay. AuctionPay (www.auctionpay.com) is another resource that can help create bidding activity outside your school’s local geographic range.  St. Mark’s School instituted AuctionPay’s Online Auction Solution and managed to raise $25,000, more than one-fourth of the school’s total revenue of $97,000. A bidding war even erupted between two grandmothers, one in Florida and one in California, over lunch with a teacher, followed by a movie at a local cinema. The experience sold for $2,200 (www.nptimes.com).

3. Measure Everything
One of the great things about fundraising online is there are many useful ways to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. Normal metrics you should gather with your email campaign include email open rate, click-through rate, forward rate, opt-out rate, and email list growth rate. You can also track valid website metrics as well, including traffic growth, and the number of visitors who register. It’s also important to keep track of online versus offline funds raised, and the number of participants that are new donors.

Read Part 2 of The Smart Money: Online Fundraising for Schools for 11 more ways to improve your school's online fundraising efforts.

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