<p>I'm interested in organizing a charity fundraiser, but I have no idea where to start. For those of you who have experience with this sort of thing--how did you do it? Any advice is appreciated.</p>
<p>What kind of charity do you want to help?
Who do you plan to collaborate with?</p>
<p>Do you have a starting budget?
Is it a one time event, or fundraising over a few weeks?</p>
<p>LIke a car wash is a one time event</p>
<p>Selling homemade something is over time</p>
<p>Is it a local charity or national</p>
<p>How many people will be working with you (it doesn't matter really, just gives us a framework)</p>
<p>I have done some charity work and if you have some more specifics, we would love to give you ideas and advice!!!</p>
<p>I had an idea about buying laptops for collegebound inner city public school kids, but I don't know if that's too ambitious. I've seen several instances on CC where kids have started their own charities, and I'm curious about how they worked it out.</p>
<p>As you can see I'm pretty much clueless. :o</p>
<p>That's a really wonderful idea, much needed. My thoughts are, though, that it would be better to start with something that is less expensive.</p>
<p>I know that low income students even have trouble affording the calculators that are needed for college track high school math classes. This would be a more doable charity. You could select a particular high school to donate the calculators to and could have the GCs give them to students qualifying for free lunches who also are enrolled in the classes requiring the calculators.</p>
<p>A fundraiser could be something like a math contest that students pay a small fee to enter. If you do something like this, make sure that the people who create the contest and judge it are people who would run an honest contest. An example would be asking local math profs to create the contest and to judge it.</p>
<p>Another possiblity would be to have a large jar of beans and to have people pay money to guess the amount of beans in the jar. The winner would win a prize that you could have a business donate. As long as you run the contest in coordination with an established nonprofit organization (such as with your school), you should be able to get donations because businesses can write off their donations.</p>
<p>You'd also have to have safeguards to ensure that the contest was run in an honest fashion.</p>
<p>I strongly suggest that you do the project in collaboration with others such as doing it with National Honor Society or Mu Alpha Theta or Future Educators. Doing things like this is a lot of work, and it truly helps to do it with other people.</p>
<p>Interesting idea!! I need to think a bit. Perhaps contacting some local computer stores and see about about prices. Or contacting the big national chains- Dell, etc and see if they may have a deal on some very basic machines if you bought 5 or more or something. </p>
<p>Even giving just one away to start is a wonderful thing. So don't worry if this time to begin with, its just one or two machines. That would be of great help to the students who get them.</p>
<p>Also, check with computer repair places, they may have older decent machines.</p>
<p>Raffles are good ways to raise money. Get someone to donate something cool.</p>
<p>Carwashes</p>
<p>It can be a combination of several events </p>
<p>What will help is if you have the computers "lined" up- you with pictures and the businesses that are helping you...people like to see that its real and serious. </p>
<p>Say- for every 100 5dollar ticket sold, we can donate a computer</p>
<p>Or for everyone 100 cars washed, we can donate a computer</p>
<p>Having real numbers and real goals and real kids in mind - we will be giving the laptops to deserving kids at Generic State Universty, or THe Local Boys and Girls CLub will help us (don't say anything to students yet or mention any names)</p>
<p>Do you have any kids in mind to get the computers or a particular college...Are the students receiving computers part of a particular program? If so, that group may have some ideas as well.</p>
<p>Many really well off private schools have computers for all their students. I bet they have models a couple of years old that are just fine they might be willing to donate.</p>
<p>What a great idea...just remember to not try and do so much that its to much to handle. Like I said, even a few computers is fantastic.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the great advice. :)</p>
<p>As for specific kids: One particular school in DC has been featured in the news a few times during the past year, mostly because of violence (a student was killed in a shooting not too long ago). 99% of the students are African American and 65% qualify for free lunch. Their graduating class is less than half the size of their freshman class. I couldn't find a statistic of how many graduates end up attending four-year colleges, but it can't be too high. There is a branch of the DC Boys & Girls Club at the high school, and I could look into collaborating with them.</p>
<p>I know some HTML and could easily set up a webpage with more information, to make more people aware of the initiative.</p>
<p>All of this is hypothetical, of course...but after doing some research it's starting to seem almost possible. ;) I'll keep you updated as I figure things out.</p>
<p>Have you thought about a party where everyone who attends has to buy a ticket?</p>
<p>That's one possibility. I'm still thinking about things I could do.</p>
<p>I know that you want the kids to have laptops, but I'm suggesting calculators because:</p>
<ol>
<li>You can help more kids</li>
<li>The calculators don't depend on a phone line. Many low income students live at home and go to college. Walking around in their neighborhoods or taking public transportation while carrying a laptop might make them vulnerable to thieves. Leaving it at home might lead to theft because of problems with break-ins. Low income students also are not likely to have their own bedrooms, so might have problems protecting their laptops from younger sibs.</li>
</ol>
<p>I also think that giving the calculators might encourage more low income students to take the college track math classes. One reason that low income black kids score so poorly on the SAT is that they don't take rigorous math classes. Calculators, a relatively minor expense for middle class and well off families, are major expenses for low income families.</p>
<p>Those are just my thoughts, though. It would be good for you to run your idea past a principal or guidance counselor at the school that you're considering. They could best tell you what might be helpful.</p>
<p>For all we know, it may be more helpful to give the students gift certificates to the campus bookstore. I assume that their college-bound students are going locally to college, and text books can cost hundreds of dollars a year, a very difficult expense to cover for low income students. </p>
<p>When I taught college, I had low income students who were on the verge of flunking out because they couldn't afford textbooks and were too proud to mention this to their professors.</p>
<p>Whatever you do, I think it's great that you care about other students. Please keep us posted on what you end up doing.</p>
<p>Those are excellent points, Northstarmom. I hadn't thought about the living at home situation. The textbook idea is great, too.</p>
<p>thisyearsgirl,
I like your idea of helping such students so much that I'm going to bring it up to S's school's parents' organization. Whatever happens, it would be a great way to make a difference in the lives of young people who are working hard to overcome some challenges.</p>
<p>I think that it's great that you want to help. Northstarmom recommended working with some organization like National Honor Society; that isn't totally necessary, but it's important that you get someone to help out.</p>
<p>The important thing is to pick the school that you want to donate to and contact the principal immediately. If you explain the idea to him or her, you'll be able to gauge much better what would be the most helpful to donate. I like the laptop idea, but I agree with Northstarmom that it's probably better to start off small, like with calculators or something. Many of those poorer schools don't have books/textbooks for their students. Maybe you could pick one such school and do book drives, calculator drives, etc. for it.</p>
<p>If you do a fundraiser, make sure to advertise for it in your area. Write to local papers and ask them to run stories about it, post flyers in local businesses, get the word out in any way you can.</p>
<p>Here's a link of really creative fundraisers:</p>