Getting Return on Investment for Employees Time

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I was talking with a prospect business the other day that gets so many Donation Requests it keeps one full-time person busy! We see that a lot with Bakeries, Restaurants and Local Merchants especially in this season. I was trying to explain to the owner that they could put the full-time person into other revenue activities.

What’s been great is to see how the results of the Donation Beast has saved time for these small businesses.

“Cupcake Royale was an early adopter of bundled.com‘s Donation Beast App on our website. With six stores we get well over 100 requests a month to support local causes. Using Bundled.com we’ve been able to cut donation processing time down by 90%. We don’t miss any requests and we hope to see greater social media following as a result.”

90% was a huge number – almost too good to be true… Before, they would take the Donation Request letters at the counter or every store. Then forward those requests to a single person that would review them and put them into a spreadsheet to track. If they had questions, they would send an email with a form out to the non-profit to get the answers. After reviewing the requests, they would get back to some with a Yes and some with a No. Sound familiar??

The toughest part, having to say “no”. The non-profit volunteers don’t know that you’ve already given your monthly budget, or that the restaurant had five requests yesterday.

The question the business owner asked me was, “What would I do with that person, I can’t pay them to do nothing and if I use your App we won’t need them”. I was surprised, here I thought that would be a high class problem!
So I thought I’d list a few activities that might be better revenue opportunities:
  • Call local employers and see if you can cater their events
    • Ask if they have any upcoming employee or customer events
  • Send an email campaign out to your customers
  • Build a calendar or marketing activities based on season on holidays
  • Create a promotion
  • Let that person cover your shift and go take in a baseball game!

Summer’s almost here… I hope you can save some more time to enjoy it.

 

Managing Volunteer to Increase Donations

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Stop the heavy lifting!

I’ve done it too. I waited too long to engage the volunteers so I end up stepping in with a very small group of people doing the last-minute wrangling to get the event donations in the door.

Making your fundraising event or auction a success requires lots of details come together. Is this post were talking about how you better leverage your volunteers to help increase your donations. I’m assuming you are a first time event planner for your group – but hopefully some of the tips will work for you even if you done this before. Or you can hand this off to the person that is taking the event over for you next year as the coordinator.

  1. Where do you find your volunteers? Start with your attendee list from previous years, you know if they have attended the care about the event. If it’s event where their kids are involved look for active parents to participate.
  2. What makes a good volunteer profile for meeting Donors? Look for people who are in a sales profession, Realtors and executives. They are used to making the “Ask” and it’s not out of their comfort zone.
  3. Set the Volunteers expectations. Most groups target 200 donors/merchants to get 100 donors for the event or action. Set a goal of 10 volunteers with 10 target donors each. Have them keep track of the status of each donor: Asked, Committed or Pickup Up.
  4. Give them a script. Who does the event benefit, why the merchant, franchise or restaurant should support the event. WIIFM What’s in it For Me? Are you showing their Company or Brand name on the big screen during the event? How many local families are attending?
  5. Be specific in your “ask”. Many companies have a monthly budget or a standard gift. But you should ask for what you hope to get or for what you need.
  6. Don’t forget to ask attendees to donate an item from their business or family. The statistics show about 1/3rd or your donations for an event will come from attendees. Sometimes they buy a gift card to their favorite restaurant or they will put together a basket.

Finally – recognize your volunteers at the event. The people who setup the event, helped with details and the procurement team. You may need them again next year!

Why a No is Better Than a No Reply

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One of the things we see with the Donation Beast for Merchants is we limit the risk of not getting back to donation requests. We provide an email notice when a donation request comes in from the website and we provide a weekly reminder of all pending requests.

This however doesn’t eliminate the risk of a non reply completely… there is still action the merchants, restaurant or franchise needs to take.

The good news is that we have replaced the paper process that comes from taking donation request forms from your store manager or staff. Now you can process the requests via your website or even your Facebook Fan Page.

Not responding to requests is worse than a “NO” response.

With an No response you can let the non-profit or Cause know why you’re not supporting their group -

  • Maybe you’re at your donation budget for the month or the quarter. We see that many of our Merchant customers set a store location budget of $200 – $300 a month.
  • Maybe the deadline for the event is just too soon. And the Franchise needs more time to route the request through the process
  • Maybe you only give to kid groups or the arts – and this donation request doesn’t fit the type of group they generally support

A non-response just leaves the non-profit or group wondering. This is especially bad if the person making the request is a regular customer. Over 80% of donations come from local business (including franchises). Which means the people making the donation request should get a response.

Donation Request Form Example

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What are the key components of your donation request form and how should you use it? If you’ve run a local event for a Non-Profit or a Cause you know that one of the things that merchants and donors will need is a Donation Request letter.

The Donation Request Form captures the required information on two fronts for the Donor:

  • The Tax ID and Group info – are you a qualified 501c3 Organization?
    • Tax ID Number, mailing address Group Name
    • Have the Non-Profit Logo on the letter
  • Event information:
    • Event Name
    • Date/Time/Venue – including Pick Up Day if you need to pick items up in advance
    • The Event Planners Contact information
    • Number of attendees & the profile of the attendees
    • Thanks!

Give the Merchant or Donor the reason to support your event. Why does the event matter? Is your event support the local Elementary School? Will there be 100+ families coming that live within five miles of the restaurant you’re asking for the donation?

Don’t make them do the work for you, make it easy for them to say yes!

Finally, don’t forget to thank them for the contribution. If they’ve donated in previous years, thank them again for donations in the past. Ask for a specific item or help that they can give you.

Here’s an example Donation Request form you can use as a template.

___________________________

Dear Local Merchants:

The purpose of this letter is to provide information to those that have requested it. Mill Creek’s Cub Scout Pack 11 is having their annual Blue and Gold Banquet & Auction. This event assists our local Pack in their efforts to provide services to our community and helping our boys in leadership development.

The banquet & auction will be held on February 16th, 2012 at North Creek Presbyterian Church.  We are requesting that donations be ready for pickup by February 15th, 2012.

There will be >50 families in attendance at this event.

There will be a silent auction, as well as a raffle & balloon pop. 100% of the proceeds will go to funding the efforts of the pack toward grooming well rounded individuals as well as helping others in our community!! No donation is too small. Please help out with anything that you can. If you have any further questions or a donation that needs to be picked up, please call me and I will do what I can to assist you.

We are a non-profit organization that is sponsored by North Creek Presbyterian Church. For taxes purposes, our tax ID number is 91-1111111. If you are mailing a donation, please send it to: Address, City, ST ZIP.

Thank you for your time and help,

Event Coordinator Name

Cub Master – Pack 11

206-XXX-XXXX

email@bundled.com

“Event Manager” Software Platform Launched

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Like many parents I’ve had the opportunity to run an auction or fundraising event for events like Scouts – Little League – School etc… Some have gone really well and some have gone, well, less well.

When you take on managing the event, there are a huge number of details and tasks that need to be completed. How many people, what’s the venue, live or silent auction, etc?

You have probably had the same experience I’ve had, when you start the planning process, you have many ambitions to try new things. But as a non-profit there is a lack of time and resources to pull of all the good ideas. Often you lack the documentation from the previous year event, even something as simple as the Donor list and contacts.

Thank goodness for the volunteers, without them the “heavy lifting” for the event rests on the shoulders of the event coordinator and a couple of friends that she has cajoled into the project.

We’ve launched a new product that is specifically designed to help you better managing the procurement process:

  1. Manage your list of Invitee/Attendees
    1. Send out email invites (Save the Date, Register)
    2. Email Templates – you can customize and still pre-populate things like Event Date, Time and Venue
    3. Reminder emails
    4. Send thank you emails
  2. Manage your Volunteers
    1. Send emails that include the Donation Request Forms
    2. Assign Volunteers to call on Specific Target Donors
  3. Manage your Donors and Target Donors
    1. Email templates – thanking them for previous year donations and letting them know about your upcoming event and auction.
    2. Track the donations
    3. What has been Asked, Committed & Picked up
    4. Send thank you emails

Emails can be sent out directly through your Gmail account – or if you’re a bigger organization, we’ll be able to sync with Constant Contact. Don’t forget social media! We’ll be launching more features that allow you to integrate with Facebook Events as well as recognizing your donor’s activities via Facebook and Twitter.

Our goal has been to make the procurement process easier – for both you and the volunteers. And ultimately increase the number of Donations and the Amount of the Donations!

We’ve launched the new Beta version of the product that you can register for here. It’s FREE during the Beta period. Give it a try and let me know what you think!