Advertising Fundraisers: Tools and Techniques for Schools

When it comes to school fundraisers, many need all the help they can get to market their initiatives successfully. But with so many marketing channels to choose from and marketing software tools available, it’s easy for choice paralysis to set in.

This guide will help you cut through the noise and find the right tools and techniques for your school advertising strategy. It will review popular resources and communication channels and explain how schools can use them in their fundraisers.

Tools and Resources

Graphic Design Platforms

Marketing requires grabbing potential supporters’ attention. To this end, you’ll need to create engaging, eye-catching visuals.

If your school has a graphic designer (whether a volunteer or officially hired), they can create designs for flyers, social media posts, emails, and other marketing materials. If you need a graphic designer, look for volunteers in your community, or consider turning to graphic design platforms with templates and design assets.

Graphic designer platforms can help both professional graphic designers and newbies alike create marketing materials needed for your school fundraiser. Look for a platform with the following features:

• Intuitive interface
• Templates and design assets
• Free or low-cost options for schools

If you have questions about using your design platform or want guidance on creating a specific effect, there are thousands of free resources available. For example, platforms like YouTube have hundreds of free tutorials for creating various effects using Adobe tools.

Local Businesses

Try reaching out to local businesses for fundraising help. Businesses sponsor school fundraisers in a variety of ways, including by assisting with:

• Finances. Monetary sponsorships are the most straightforward type of support. In these agreements, businesses donate to your school with the understanding that their money will go to support a specific project.
• Marketing. Businesses sponsor schools to improve their reputation, and as such, they often ask schools to publicize the partnership as part of their sponsorship. With this in mind, some businesses will be happy to add marketing support to their sponsorship agreement since doing so will get even more eyes on their good deeds.
• In-kind donations. Do you need a venue for a fundraising event or items for a school auction? Ask relevant businesses if they’d be willing to make in-kind donations like these. Many businesses will give schools a discount or even provide their services or products for free in exchange for promotion.

When approaching businesses, make sure you discuss why the agreement is beneficial for them. After all, for for-profit organizations, choosing to sponsor a school is a business decision. Emphasize the marketing support your school will provide them and how your partnership will boost their reputation in the eyes of the local community.

Volunteers

Volunteers are one of your most significant assets for successfully running every part of your fundraiser, including marketing. For schools, these will usually be parents, and you can improve your volunteer recruitment efforts by:

• Recruiting early. Parents have busy schedules, so if you need help with a fundraiser, contact them early so they can plan ahead of time. Additionally, consider ways you can be flexible about volunteer shifts to handle changing schedules.
• Organizing volunteer groups. Many parents volunteer as a way to get to know other families in their community. As such, make volunteering a social activity so volunteers can build connections. When new volunteers make friends with your current volunteers, they’re more likely to return for future fundraisers.
• Making volunteering accessible. The easier it is to volunteer at your school, the more parents will do it. Make volunteering accessible by offering online opportunities, such as making fundraising phone calls, designing flyers, and entering data.

Be conscious of parents’ additional roles in your fundraiser outside of volunteering. For example, if an elementary school hosts a product fundraiser, parents will be the ones arranging and writing down sales. As such, make the workload for your parent volunteers as light as possible during these fundraisers so they can also help their children participate.

Communication Channels

Email

Email is the go-to marketing channel for many nonprofits, including schools, and for good reason. To craft effective marketing emails for your school’s fundraiser, consider these elements:

• Subject line. Stand out in your supporters’ inboxes with bold and intriguing subject lines, such as ones that ask questions, share statistics, or open with stories. When crafting your subject lines, remember to keep them to 60 characters or less to avoid getting cut off on users’ screens.
• Images. An attention-grabbing image can help get supporters to read your message after clicking on an email. Add photos relevant to your fundraiser, like students completing projects or participating in school clubs. Remember to ask parents’ permission to use photos of their children in marketing materials beforehand.
• Call to action. A call to action tells your supporters the action you want them to take after reading your email. For a fundraising email, this might be “donate now.” Be sure to include only one call to action per email to avoid overwhelming supporters.

When it comes to email, consider using an email communication tool to stay organized and divide your email list to ensure supporters only receive messages relevant to them. For example, you might have an email list for former students and one for parents of current students.

Text Message

Text messages are faster than email and valuable for short, quick reminders that call for immediate action. For example, if a sports team at your school has a fundraising deadline to meet before the start of the season, you might send out a text message on the last day to remind supporters to get their donations in.

Even if you’re missing supporters’ phone numbers, you might still be able to get in touch via text message. All you need is a phone number append. Phone number appends are services nonprofits, and schools can purchase wherein a third-party provider will use the supporter data you have (such as names, emails, and mailing addresses) to find missing data, like phone numbers.

Social Media

Social media connects your school with a massive audience, and some fun social media marketing ideas can even get your students involved. For example, create a social media challenge and ask students to create and upload videos of themselves completing the challenge to their social media.

This approach gets even more eyes on your school and helps you tap into your students’ extended networks. For maximum reach, ask students to tag or link to your school in their social media posts.

Search Ads

Search engines like Google have millions of users, and your school may be able to use Google Search Ads for free with the Google Ad Grant. The Google Ad Grant provides qualifying nonprofits with $10,000 a month in free advertising credits to promote any page on the website they choose.

Getting Attention’s Google Ad Grants guide breaks down the eligibility requirements:

• Be a valid charity. Nonprofits must be registered charities in their home country. For the United States, this means registering as a 501(c)(3) with the IRS.
• Have a functional website. Your website should be functional and contain valuable content that Google users want to engage with. Additionally, Google requires that Google Grant applicants own their website’s domains and have limited commercial activity on their websites, which means you can advertise your school’s merchandise store but can’t use your website to run third-party ads unrelated to your school.
• Maintain web security measures. Make sure your website is secure with an SSL certificate. You can tell if a website is SSL secure because it will have an “https” URL instead of a “http” URL.

Additionally, schools are not eligible for the Google Ad Grants program, but your school’s fundraising wing may be. Essentially, if your school's fundraising arm is considered a separate 501(c)(3), you can apply for the Google Ad Grant. If not, you can still get free resources from Google via Google for Education.

Flyers

Physical flyers can grab attention and are especially effective in school fundraisers where you can send every student home with a copy of one.

When it comes to the design of your fundraising flyers, you can get as complex or simple as you want. Kwala’s fundraising flyers guide shows off a tri-fold pamphlet from charity: water that makes strong use of brand colors and typography to create a compelling design:

Follow charity: water’s example with a few bold photos and a robust and consistent color scheme. In terms of the flyer’s content, note how the third column on charity: water’s flyer opens with a fact as its heading. Instead of standard headers, think of bold, attention-grabbing statements you can use for your school’s fundraisers.

Local Media

Local media, such as newspapers and the radio, are often the best way to promote your fundraiser to your community. For instance, put an ad in the local newspaper for your annual school fundraising carnival.

Or, connect with a local radio station and have them read a donation request for your school during a broadcast. In exchange, you might promote them through events, flyers, and your website.

To find the right marketing tools and platforms for your school, assess your upcoming fundraisers and communities. Consider what channels and marketing styles are likely to resonate with your target audience. Then, start planning strategies far in advance so you’ll have plenty of time to promote your fundraiser.

Author Bio

Jessica King is the business lead at Getting Attention, where she helps nonprofits get the Google Ad Grant and manage it effectively to get the most from it.

Prior to her work at Getting Attention, Jessica worked at nonprofits and in higher ed, where she focused on communication and digital marketing. Most recently, she worked in search engine optimization in the mission-driven sector.

Jessica holds a master's degree in communication from Virginia Tech. In her free time, she reads, cooks a new recipe, or hangs out with her cats, Benny and Olive.