Three Things I've Learned Fundraising
I am in the middle of my second fundraising campaign this year. The first was for our annual ice show. Now, I am collecting donations for the Beaver Dam Family Center's annual fundraising banquet, held next weekend. This is the first year I've done anything like this and I've discovered I'm actually pretty good at it. However, as is the case with most new things, I also learned some important things along the way. First, you can't rely on mailers. I'm not saying sending out donation request letters to local businesses was a complete failure. I did manage to receive some donations. But, for this banquet, we sent out nearly 200 letters and only got about 15 donations back as a direct result of them. That's not a very good response. When I followed up with some of the businesses, I was told they didn't even look at the letters and threw them right in the recycle bin. As a result, I found follow-up is very important. In fact, when I do this again in a c...