Q: Hi Marc! 🙂 You seem to know much about fundraising…any great ideas on a fundraiser for Cub Scouts…we need to raise $1500 for a new pinewood derby track…however the pack is in an area that the people don’t have tons of money…HELP! I need a jump start. TY Katherine
A: Well that seems perfect for corporate sponsorship! You could ask 5 businesses to contribute $500 each and give them recognition on the track (logo or something).
Or better, ask one for $1000, 2 for $750, and 3 for $500!
I’m sure you can use the extra money for something. 🙂
Any business fits since this will be seen by many over the years. But automotive parts stores and car dealerships may be a cool fit for this project.
If you do ask for more than the cost of the track, be sure to ask them to support your Cub Scouts with a gift, not the track. That way the money is the troops money, not solely dedicated to the track. But I’d recommend all the recognition go right on the track since that is very visible and something even nominal Cub Scout families remember.
Marc
PS Studies consistently show that poorer people are generally more generous then wealthier folks.
I was in a similar situation where I needed to raise exactly that amount of money for a local campaign I was doing. I actually got the local chamber of commerce to give me a list of all the companies in my town, surprisngly to me there were a couple of hundred. I wrote to them all and asked them all for 50euros. Now the normal Direct Mail stats would tell you that this yielded me 400 euros, just about covering my costs. But in fact I managed to raise 1200 euros from this. The local impact it was going to have seemed to make it easy for people to take out their cheque book and send me 50 euros, some did send more.
So that’s certainly a way to do it
Great job! Sounds like there were ready to be asked!
Did you do individual letters or just one general one?