Fundraising has always been a leading source of income for many organisations like community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With restricted financial aid from governments, nearly all of these establishments wouldn’t be financially viable without the great and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. As an example sporting clubs charge membership fees but with expenses ever growing, it would not be possible for them to exist financially without fundraising.
The kinds of fundraising opportunities presently are many and varied. There’s a plethora of fundraising entities around trying to entice organisations to use their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to equine riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The choices are truly amazing and seemingly endless.
Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the occasion honoured techniques of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over old few years, still, because of child obesity issues from poor dietary habits and below physical workouts, most of these formal fundraising products have started to fall out of favour with fundraising entities.
This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to acquire a foot in the threshold so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.
So where do you turn to when you would like to get moving with fundraising? Say for instance your child is in their second year of school, and you have chosen to turn into more actively involved in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you find yourself on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You would like to impress your peers; you like to do something positive for the environment and do the job successfully.
There are many factors why the school may need to fundraise. It may need funds for quite a few extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or possibly they would love to see a roof over a fresh walkway. What to do, where to get moving to raise the required funds? Today most people are turning to the internet.
The internet has become the most popular and powerful tool for locating facts, much more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When looking for ideas or facts, most people now do not consider any options apart from the internet. There are many search engines accessible to the internet user, like Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the hottest search engine on the web is Google.
ComScore is a marketing study company that provides marketing information and services to most of the internet’s largest businesses. According to estimates released by comScore at the conclusion of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That’s a huge slice of the pie.
Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to information regarding the hottest search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The hottest search terms carried over to Google for fundraising are in fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.
The results from all of these searches show a broad variety of sites that the user can access, most of them being fundraising directories that list many hundreds of fundraising entities offering their services.
One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you’re looking for fundraising, fundraiser ideas or ideas for fundraising, check out Goldstar today.
