How to Kick off Your Discount Card Fundraiser

5 steps to a successful start to your discount card sale.

A discount card fundraiser differs slightly from selling items out of a brochure. With a brochure sale, you're attempting to get your students to reach and exceed a sales goal by preselling items. On the other hand, when selling cards, your primary goal is to sell off your inventory as quickly as possible. Unless you have a coordinated effort, you may end up with leftover cards. This is why you need to have a kickoff meeting. The primary purpose of a meeting is to generate momentum and create a sense of urgency in your students.

How you kick off your sale is important, so make sure to follow these steps:

1. Communicate Your Fundraising Purpose

The first thing is to communicate your purpose. Why are you selling discount cards in the first place? Where will the money be spent? How will you convince your sellers that the fundraiser is important to them directly? A well-communicated purpose will motivate everyone to work harder.

2. Set a Student Discount Card Sales Goal

Let's say you order 500 cards, and you have 100 sellers. You'll probably want to issue 5 cards to every seller. Everyone must do their fair share of the selling. However, before you issue the cards, you'll want to keep track of the cards that you've issued. Have your sellers fill in the information on your Discount Card Sales Tracking Sheet. Once students return the initial $50.00 for the five discount cards, you can determine whether you want to issue them additional cards. If it's still early in the sale or you need to get rid of additional cards, you may want them to help sell the additional cards.

3. Be Sure Everyone Understands the Process

• Discuss who you want them to sell to. Ensure they only talk to people they know and encourage them to have their family members take the cards to work.
• Review the businesses on the back of the card with your sellers. Before the kickoff, you should familiarize yourself with the offers to present them more effectively. Your sellers will be more successful if they're familiar with the card.
• It is strongly encouraged that you provide envelopes for collecting money. Have the students put their names and group information on the outside. Tell them that checks are made payable to your group if you accept checks.
• Set a money turn-in deadline date and remind your sellers about it daily. In most cases, a one-week selling period should be sufficient.

4. Maintain a High Level of Enthusiasm

• Check on the progress of your sellers whenever you see them.
• Remind them regularly about the deadline date for turning in their money.
• Create competition between your sellers by offering fun incentives or special privileges throughout your sale.

5. Incorporate Additional Incentives

• Reward the person who successfully returns their money for the most cards sold.
• Give a prize to the student who sells off their cards first.
• Have a grand prize drawing by selling five cards to get your name at one time. Then, for every five additional cards sold, you get your name in additional times.

See our discount card fundraiser.

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.