A Discount Card Fundraising Idea: Tracking Makes Perfect

The benefits of tracking your discount card sale.

Zig Ziglar, an author and one of the world's most popular motivational speakers, once said, "If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your mind before you arrive at your goal". So do you have a sales goal and a way to measure your progress?

Assuming you already know how much money your group needs to raise, let's discuss why monitoring your progress is essential. Why is it important to track your sale? There are two primary reasons why fundraiser tracking is essential.

First, discount card fundraising works just like selling candy bars. You must distribute them to your sellers so they can turn around and sell them to family and friends. Handing out a product to sell is like distributing money. Each card has value. It's worth something because it will bring profit to the group. Therefore, the same principle applies to your discount cards, just like keeping track of the money in your bank account.

The second is accountability. If your sellers know that you're keeping track of how many cards they have in their possession, they'll know exactly how much money they'll be expected to bring back. To be clear, we're not necessarily implying this is an integrity issue. It's more about obligation and responsibility.

To bring this point home, here is a real-life example of what can happen if you don't track your discount card fundraiser.

Every Card Has a Name

Any discount card not accounted for is money lost. Unfortunately, even when we provide instructions for our sponsors to follow and tools to utilize, there are times when they don't use them. Perhaps they don't feel they're essential or forget. Not too long ago, we worked on a discount card sale with a group, raising money to cover equipment costs and travel expenses for their baseball program.

We stressed the importance of using our tracking sheet for distributing their cards to their group as a sign-out sheet. Each participant was told to write down the number of cards they took with them, along with their name and phone number.

So if someone agreed to take ten cards, they would document that on the sheet and bring back the money for those cards by a predetermined date. If they were willing to sell more cards, they would need to write down their name for those cards too. However, they would need to turn in the money for the first group of cards.

And, if any cards were returned, those were documented as well. To help remove returned cards, they would be redistributed to other group members to sell. In other words, every card needed to be accounted for.

Why Discount Card Fundraising Tracking Sheets are Vital

Our group chose not to use the tracking sheet and handed out their cards to whoever requested them. The sponsor was looking to deplete his inventory and bring in money. You can almost predict the chaos that ensued. They ended up having a huge mess on their hands. And it wasn't because some people weren't turning in their money. The problem was that nobody knew who owed what and how much. It became a "he said, she said" free-for-all.

When his sale ended, the sponsor had plenty of people who hadn't turned in their money. But he didn't even know who he needed to collect from. The problem was that no accountability or tracking system was in place from the start.

And to top it off, no one was told up front when to turn in their money, so the fundraiser went on much longer than it needed to. He had lost complete control. As a result, he had no choice but to take people at their word.

Did this sponsor finally realize the value of our discount card tracking sheet? Absolutely, but not until it is too late. Unfortunately, he learned the hard way.

An Additional Tracking Benefit

So how can your group avoid this same predicament? Our example drove the point home about documenting and tracking your sale. But it can do even more than that. It not only helps set the tone for success by holding your sellers accountable, but it also gives you an additional option.

To help sell off your inventory faster, you can incentivize students willing to sell returned or leftover cards. For those motivated to sell more than ten cards, you can offer tiered rewards for selling 15 or 20 cards or more.

To prevent students from trying to sell too many cards up front, consider requiring that money be turned in for the ten cards first. Then make issuing each additional set of 5 cards contingent on the money being turned in each time. All of this requires having a tracking system in place.

Learn what your school needs to know about discount card fundraising

How to Use Your Tracking Sheet

• Treat your tracking sheet like an accountant balances a profit & loss statement:
  • Have the seller write down their first and last name.
  • Get their phone number.
  • Any time you issue cards to a seller, document them on your sheet.
  • Report the amount of money that's turned in and note any discrepancies.
  • Track additional cards that are issued. Again, we strongly recommend only giving out additional cards after all initial money has been turned in.
  • Account for returned cards and plan to redistribute them to others to resell.
• It's essential to have a frugal mindset. Understand that your cards have a monetary value. Would you hand out money with no strings attached?
• Have a preset deadline date for turning in the money. Most students can quickly sell 5-10 cards in a week or less.

Using a discount card tracking sheet for your fundraiser may create a little extra work upfront, but you'll have peace of mind in the end. There's no price that you can put on that.

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.