3 Big Fundraiser Delivery Headaches You Can Prevent

How to experience a hassle-free delivery.

The school fundraiser delivery is often considered somewhat of an afterthought, that is, until you have your first issue. Once you do, you’ll wish you’d been a little more thorough in researching and asking more relevant questions ahead of time.

Knowing the right questions to ask in advance may prevent many unexpected headaches during your delivery. Because once your order ships, it’s too late to make any changes.

So make sure that you do your homework and are aware of the following three potentially significant delivery obstacles so you can work to avoid them. This way, you can at least make your experience more predictable.

1. Presorted or Bulk Delivery?

This may seem obvious since most fundraising companies now offer a pre-packing service before a brochure product delivery. And this is regardless of whether the merchandise being shipped is dry or frozen. However, there are still companies that don’t box individual student orders.

Some companies will ship bulk to the piece or by product type. This is typically more common with brochures offering a single product type, like cookie dough, flowers, or candles. Brochure companies that ship by product category may even require that orders be packed in the whole box. For instance, if a complete box contains 12 items and the group only orders 10 of that particular item, they’ll still be required to purchase the two additional items anyway.

If you like a particular product well enough to be willing to sort it after it delivers, that’s fine. Just make sure you know what to expect beforehand so you can make arrangements for additional help with the sorting. You don’t want to have planned for individually packed student orders and then find out that you’ve just received a bulk order.

2. Merchandise Delivery Location

Have you confirmed with the fundraising company where your order will be delivered once they arrive at your school? Everyone has a different policy, so almost anything can happen unless you’re specific about your expectations. Well, not anything. There are two possible scenarios. Your order will either deliver inside the school, or you’ll need to go out and bring it in yourself. For example, most frozen food is delivered by a frozen carrier, and they’ll usually only take your order to the end of their trailer. That’s right; they won’t even take it off their truck.

Many companies will bring orders inside the closest available door. This is what’s referred to as an inside delivery. In many cases, double doors with a vertical bar must be removed ahead of time to make room for pallets unless you plan to break the pallets down and bring in the individual boxes. In some cases doing this is unavoidable if all you have are single doors.

Ensure you also confirm that your order can be delivered to your school. Some school districts require funneling all orders through a central location first.

3. Handling Replacement Items

You’ve distributed your boxes to your students to take home, and you think you’re finished with your fundraiser. Not so fast. It takes about three days for the phone calls to start trickling in. Parents want to know how to replace missing and damaged merchandise. Do you know what to tell them?

Most companies offer two methods for handling replacement items. One way is to provide you with an item replacement form. When parents call in, you record the items. However, you must give your parents a cutoff date for this to work.

The other method is to provide parents with a toll-free customer service number to call instead. The advantage is that your parent deals directly with the company, not you. Many sponsors make the mistake of assuming that the company will automatically handle all parent complaints. This may not be the case, so you’d better confirm their procedure before signing up to do a fundraiser.

A good rule of thumb to go by is to always ask in advance for extra volunteer help at your fundraiser delivery. At the very least, you can get help sorting individual student boxes before distribution.

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.