Direct Fundraising's Blog | Team Fundraising Without Selling

Most fundraisers involve teams and booster clubs spending countless hours selling cheap products to raise money. First, many of these products like candy, magazines, candles and scratch cards are items that people really don’t want to buy. Second, team members should not be subject to having an exhausting side-job in sales to raise money. Direct mail, on the other hand, offers a professional fundraising option for teams that produces great results with very little work. The basic premise to direct mail fundraising is that teams send out letters to a targeted list of potential donors – namely their friends and family.

Some people in the world of fundraising will tell you that direct mail can be costly due to postage and printing. The reality is that donation response rates with direct mail can be mind boggling – especially for sports teams. Some direct mail fundraising service providers are boasting profit margins of 80%-90%. This means that your team keeps a majority of that money that is brought in after paying the costs associated with the fundraiser. Most sales based fundraisers only allow you to keep 50% of the profits. So after all your work selling cheap products that people don’t want, you only get half the money that is raised.

The questions is then – why does direct mail work so well with sports teams instead of selling products? The easy answer is that the mailing lists for sports fundraisers are very targeted and accurate. Team members are mailing to their friends and family – people that have already have an interest in their athletic success. The second reason for this success could lie in the emotional connection that people have towards sports teams. Sports fans have a unique feeling towards their favorite teams – especially when family members are on the team. Direct mail offers a great medium for teams to exploit this emotional connection. Because direct mail is in letter format – it allows teams to tell their stories to potential donors. The stories include how the team did last year, their potential success for the upcoming year and what excites donors the most – pictures of your team. A well crafted direct mail letter can heighten this emotional connection to a team as recipients feel like they are a part of your program after reading your story. This connection is also something that triggers people to make a donation. And this is why direct mail is great for sports teams.  The picture to the right shows a potential direct mail piece for a sports team (click to enlarge).

Now that we have looked at why direct mail and sports fundraising are the perfect marriage, below is a list of tips for creating your own mailing that will be effective.

• Personalized – Because direct mail is in letter format, it is important to personalize the document as much as possible. Put the athlete’s name at the top of the letter and address the recipient by name in the salutation (i.e. Dear Uncle Jim). This can be easily done with a mail merge or variable data printing. Also, a handwritten note on the letter from the athlete can also be beneficial.
• Brand Your Team – Your team has logos and colors. Be sure that these are properly represented in your direct mail piece. Doing this will make your team look professional which is good because no one wants to support a sloppy looking program.
• Tell Your Story – Like was mentioned in the article above, you want to give details about your team. Let donors know how last season went and what the prospects are for this upcoming season. Give donors a schedule of your upcoming games and any websites or social media sites like Facebook where they can follow your season.
• Make it Easy to Give – Finally, give a couple different options to make a donation so it is convenient for the donor. Options could include mail, phone and online. For the mailing option, make sure to include a self-addressed envelope so donors can easily send back a gift.

To find out more about how direct mail can raise money for your sports team with little work and great results, visit www.directfundraisingllc.com.

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People like to receive handwritten notes. With most communication today taking place through text, e-mail and social media, using a touch of the old fashion in a handwritten note can go a long way in your sports fundraisers. According to studies, fundraising letters with handwritten messages can receive up to a 300% better response rate that typed letters. A great example of this comes from a company called Life Outreach International in Fortworth, Texas. Life Outreach International does an annual appeal that is all handwritten and the response is usually double or triple that of its other letters.

Direct Fundraising LLC is a company that helps sports team raise through the use of direct mail. The mailings resemble greeting cards and are sent out to the friends and family of team members asking for donations. In most cases, these team members handwrite a note to recipients inside these cards. Recently though, Direct Fundraising substituted the use of a real hand written note with a scanned image of hand written note. Although the results of the  fundraiser were great, it was clear that a handwritten note would have been much more appreciated by some donors. One donor actually voiced their opinion on the subject by sending in a gift along with the following note:

“In futures solicitations we would prefer a personal note or inscription that was hand written by the athlete.”

The picture above shows the complete note from this donor. This is a great example revealing how much donors prefer to receive handwritten notes from teams and organizations. So take the extra time to do an old fashion form of communication – you will make your donors much more inclined to make a donation to your sports team.

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People like watching videos online. YouTube’s dramatic rise as a video powerhouse is a testament to that. Results from recent sports fundraisers conducted by Direct Fundraising LLC have shown that having a video on your team’s website can result in an increase in the number of online gifts your program receives. This may seem like an obvious correlation, but there are some additional benefits that come from getting more online donations.

Direct Fundraising’s technique to raise money involves sports teams sending out a mailing to their friends and family. The recipients of the mailing have the option of making a gift in one of two ways – mail back a check in a self-addressed envelope or go online to the team website to make a credit card gift. Originally these websites contained only static information about the team’s fundraiser and upcoming season – nothing too exciting (sample static website here). The overall results from these fundraisers were great, but only 10% of the gifts to the team came through online donations.

Recently, Direct Fundraising introduced videos to these websites that provided a preview of the team’s upcoming season (sample website with video here). The mailings that went out to friends and families now also had a clear call-to-action, telling recipients to visit the website to find out more about the team. The video on the website told the story of the team’s upcoming season through vibrant images and upbeat music. Furthermore, at the the end of the videos, viewers were instructed on how and where to make an online gift. The results were what you think – more people came to the website, watched the season preview video and then made online donations.  Most of the fundraisers saw a jump to 16% of their donations coming online.

Now the questions is – why is it important to have more online donations? For one, the average gift size for online donation versus someone mailing in a check were larger. In all the fundraisers Direct Fundraising has completed, the online donation gift sizes were at least a couple dollars bigger.  The reasoning behind this is that people generally spend more money, or in this case make a bigger donation, when using a credit card. According to studies, credit card purchases are bigger for a couple reasons. For one, when people use a credit card, it doesn’t seem like “real” money so they do not mind spending more. Knowing that the money does not have to paid right away with a credit card allows for less buyers remorse from a purchaser. Also, credit cards have reward systems that provide gifts when more money is spent. So people will spend more on a credit card to get these benefits such as free airline miles.

The second reason that online donations are important is that it opens up the opportunity for the use of social media. And when social media is involved, you can spread your fundraising message to a larger audience. All fundraising websites should be equipped with widgets that easily allow visitors to share the page on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  So for example, if someone clicks on a Facebook widget on your site, their Facebook status would show a link back to your fundraising site. Then all of their Facebook friends would see this link to your site and might visit. And the more people that visit your site, the more donations you will potentially receive. That is exactly what social media widgets do – they let more people know about something. One of the best social media widgets to use is called Add This. Just add the code to your website and let people start spreading your fundraising message!

Finally, many people might be thinking that putting a video on your fundraising website is a hard task. If you have ever created a YouTube video, then it is not hard at all. YouTube allows users to embed their videos on to other websites easily. If you look under a video on YouTube, there should be button that reads “Embed.” Click on that button and YouTube will give you the code to insert into your sites coding for the video. YouTube also allows you to customize how the video will appear on your website. So what are you waiting for? Get videos on your fundraising site now and starting getting more visitors and donations! Please comment or make helpful suggestions on this article.

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A fundraiser is an extension of your sports program – anything you are selling or sending out to potential donors reflects on what people think about your organization. With this in mind, you want to make sure your fundraiser makes your team look like a professional and winning organization. People like to support a winner anyways. Below are three things you should watch for to ensure your sports program looks good while fundraising.

1. Branding – Branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.  In relation to your team fundraiser, this means the logos and colors that people identify with your program. Anything that is being put out in front of donors for your fundraiser should fully represent the logos and colors of your team. Furthermore, make sure every part of your fundraiser looks the same. Your direct mail piece should look like your online landing page so people are sure they are in the right place. The picture to the right shows a a fundraiser done by a team that utilized direct mail and a website. Both the website and direct mail piece look similar while the team’s branding is in check. Overall the fundraiser looks professional, reflecting well on the team.
2. Cheap Products: Is your team selling candy, discount cards, magazines, or candles? Most of this is crap people really do not want. They purchase them because they feel guilty and then these products just sit around their house going unused. I personally have some magazine subscriptions that go unread and pile up in the house. Having the players on your team sell products that people do not want reflects badly on your team.  Make sure the products you are selling are quality and something people want. Or you can utilize fundraisers that do not involve selling at all.
3. Commercialized Fundraiser: If any part of your fundraiser involves something being given or sent to potential donors, make sure that it is not over-commercialized. Over-commercialized means that the fundraiser is filled with advertisements, special offers or sponsors. I once received a fundraising letter that was filled with different offers from credit card companies and discounts for local businesses.  It had so much of this fluff, that I can’t remember who the team was and what they were raising money for. Make sure your fundraiser sticks to what is important – your team, what your fundraising for and how it will make your program more successful.

In short, before starting your fundraiser, make sure that every part of it reflects well on your team. There are too many fundraisers that involve cheap products and poor design that will make your program look bad. Choose wisely.

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