Do You Offer Additional Fundraiser Incentives?

Reasons your sale might be falling short

If you’re like a lot of schools, you may think that a good prize program and an exciting kickoff are enough to motivate most students to reach their sales goals. Many sponsors don’t use extra motivators like top-seller prizes or prize drawings because they don’t want the expense to cut into their profit. They feel that getting by with what the company already provides is the safest bet. Or, they may feel that their students should be intrinsically motivated by the purpose of the sale.

Although many students may initially be excited about the prize program at the kickoff, it probably won’t keep them interested. And even though some may be motivated to sell solely because of the purpose, others won't be.

How then can you keep the majority of your students motivated? This is where additional fundraiser incentives can play an important role. Here are some things to consider when adding incentives to your sale.

You Can’t Afford to Pass on Additional Incentives

You usually get what you pay for. If you don’t offer additional incentives along with your basic prize program, chances are you’ll miss out on a great opportunity to increase your bottom line. Motivators like top-seller awards and daily drawings have been proven to bring in more money.

How You Promote Your Fundraiser Incentives is Key

Depending on how well you promote your incentives, you could be talking about thousands of dollars. Get the most out of your incentives by posting notices, sending home reminders, and incorporating daily announcements. Be creative.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Fundraising Incentives

If you haven’t been offering additional incentives, you have a perfect opportunity to measure the before and after effects. If you decide to use them for the first time on your next fundraiser, you’ll know if your sales go up or not assuming other factors don’t change.

Be sure to be ready to evaluate the effectiveness once your sale is over. How many students were excited about your incentives? Did you hear people talking about wanting to win them? If not enough people were interested, was it because the incentive wasn’t appealing enough, or perhaps the goal to obtain them was too high? On the other hand, if you had too many people qualifying for a special prize, perhaps your goal would have been set too low.

The key is to find additional fundraiser incentives that will inspire as many students as possible to want to work a little harder for them. Then, hopefully, you’ll more than make back your initial investment.

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.