The Anatomy of a Good Fundraising Brochure

A guide to picking the best possible sales catalog.

When it comes to raising money, many schools choose to sell out a brochure, so there's plenty of competition. Therefore, if you expect people to purchase, selecting a good fundraising brochure is essential to stand out.

When choosing a brochure for your school, there are several things to consider, like buyer motivation, pricing, where certain items appear, and how they're presented on each page. Can people quickly reference needed information about an item, and are the item numbers adequately marked? This can affect whether someone orders the wrong item by mistake.

Buyer Motivations

People become buyers for the following reasons:

• They see something exciting and are enticed to make a purchase.
• They buy a familiar item they had a good experience with previously.
• They know the seller and want to support them.
• They don't see anything they want but feel compelled to support the school or student.

Seller Intuitions

However, schools usually choose a particular brochure because:

• The same type of brochure seems to work for them year after year.
• They attempt to catch people's attention by trying something new and different.

To make sure you pick a good school fundraiser brochure, consider the following before making your choice:

Fundraiser Brochure Selection

Selection is everything when it comes to brochure sales. The more types of items you offer, the more appealing your brochure will be to a broader base of potential buyers.

Brochure Item Pricing

If you expect people to buy, ensure the items are priced reasonably. The average price in your brochure should be between $10 and $12. It's ok to offer a few more expensive items, but most of your sales will be made with the less expensive merchandise.

General Brochure Design & Layout

This is often overlooked but still important nonetheless. The items in your brochure must present well to make them appealing to potential customers. Good school fundraising companies spend a lot of money to capture the right camera angles, lighting, and coloring surrounding their items. This is so the items will stand out when your customers see them.

Make sure there are not too many items on each page. Cluttered pages can sometimes be confusing to a potential buyer. Ordering mistakes can occur if the items and their respective pricing and descriptions are too close together. Unfortunately, some companies try to save money by placing more items on fewer pages.

In addition, make sure your item descriptions are in Spanish as well. Finally, having an 'eye-catching' cover doesn't hurt either.

Choosing a good fundraising brochure is essential, but be sure to also focus on other areas, like how you plan to promote your sale.

See our brochure fundraisers.

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.