Get Funding

Here's something cool and interesting. It's GoQuests.com, a website dedicated to online fundraising. Here's what they say about themselves:

Our mission is to provide tools for people to help people anywhere in the World. GoQuests.com Allows for people to create fundraising pages with the ability to raise and collect funds for any worthwhile cause or challenge. This is what we call your Quest!!!.

Got a worthwhile cause? A Quest to do?. Create your very own fundraising page that will help you raise the funds you need to achieve your goal or Quest. Quest can be any cause, Task or Challenge that you are about to do and want to raise funds for it. examples:

• Raise Money for Diabetes
• Wedding Cash Registry
• Raising Funds for a Charity
• Running a Marathon for a Worthwhile cause.
• Rasing Funds for a Friend in Need
• A personal project
• Sailing around the world to raise funds
• Raising Funds for your School
• Any Cause can be your Quest

Members can then securely collect donations from sponsors and friends. Members can also through their pages upload pictures and videos to show their Quest progress.

Transactions are Securely processed by PayPal.com. All donations go straight to your Paypal account. GoQuest does not keep a cent.

At end of your Quest. GoQuest will request a 5% of total collected for administration fee. Totals of less than $100 are totally free of adminstration fee.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

• Join In
• Create Your Own Fundraising Pag
• Link it to your Paypal account
• Tell your friends about your Quest.
• Email Page Link or Share page through Facebook, Twitter etc
• Friends Donate to your Quest
• Funds raised go straight to your Paypal account.
• Total collected shows on your fundraising page
• Update Page. Upload Pictures or Videos of your Quest
• That's it. Easy

NOTE FROM SHIRLEY:
Interestingly, I think I am the very first person to join their site! How fun is that? I think I'm going to actually try it out. Now all I have to do is figure how what or who I want to raise money for, take some pictures, and see what happens.

And for those of you who remain interested in the Praying For Prosperity project, Here's A Concept.

Writing A Donation Request Letter

I'm still on a fundraising kick - as you can see... I found this little article about how to write a good donation request letter, and it got me thinking about my mom. She is 86 years old, and finding it harder and harder to really focus when she prays, so instead of silent prayer, she writes her prayers as letters to God.

So here's my idea. Why not write a really good "fund raising" letter to our higher power, the Master of the Universe, The Powers That Be, our Angels and Guides, or whoever it is that we generally speak to when asking (begging) for help.

With that in mind, here are hints and tips for a successful letter:

Writing a fundraising letter is not that difficult. However, you need to know what works and what doesn't before you invest your time composing your donation request.

Fundraising letters have some general rules of thumb:

• Keep in mind whenever you are asking for money that you are providing a service.
• Tell people what you've done and what you plan to do to achieve progress toward your goals.
• Make your fundraising letter compelling.
• Paragraphs and bullets should be no more than 3 sentences or items; break longer ones in half.

As for the length of the letter, longer letters do better. Here's why:

•  You can address all concerns and potential concerns.
• There are different kinds of readers - Long letters are OK for all of them.
• To those that throw unopened envelope away - the length of letter is irrelevant.
• To those that read only beginning and ending - the length of letter is irrelevant.
• Skimmers can pick up more points from a longer letter.
• Passionate readers love long letters

How to write a fundraising letter:

1. Good news - Always start the letter with a series of good news bullets to build momentum and make entire letter entertaining and informative.

• Use foreshadowing to tease reader and keep him or her reading.
• Create a "widow" at the end of the first page (a thought that's finished on second page)
• Make your reader turn the page.

2. Describe what you want to do next

• Tell what you're going to do.
• Why you're going to do it.
• How you're going to do it.
• What results you expect.

3. List suggested contribution amounts

• Use even numbers in graduated amounts
• Offer a monthly auto charge credit card option ($10 a month is $120 a year)
• Include a blank line for write-in amounts

4. Remind readers that their contribution is your budget

• Your successes have been possible because of their past contributions.
• Thank them!

 5. Use P.S.'s for skimmers

• May titillate skimmers and get them to read the entire letter.
• To create a sense of urgency.

Donation Letter Results:

• Expect results of $1.50 to $2.00 per letter mailed.
• Fundraising letters are easier to produce than newsletters and you can share news and the same information. If you can't do both a newsletter and a fundraising letter, it's better to just do the fundraising letter.
• Fundraising letters create a continuity of membership; the more letters you send, the amount per person should go up.
• 3% to 5% of people every month will respond.
• Regular fundraising letters will get people in the habit of giving.
• Ask for a monthly pledge (100% of credit card pledges are fulfilled; 70% of others are fulfilled)
• Under promise results and over-deliver.

Fundraising Letters - Final Tips

• Be yourself - Write with your own personal voice and style.
• Make it personal and passionate - That's the only way to really connect with people.
• Grab their attention - Put a big, bold headline at the top of your letter stating your case and cause.

Found at Fundraiser Help

Do you think it might be worth the effort to create a letter like this? Even if you don't actually send it out, the focus and the effort would have to have a beneficial effect, wouldn't it?

Our sister post from back in 2006 is all about Questions, and I'm thinking that those questions, as well as the related commetary, might give us some ideas about what we might want to put in our "fund raiser donation letter" to God or The Powers That Be. With that in mind, you might want to check it out. Please?

Egg and Beg Fundraising

Here are two fundraising ideas in line with our "begging" theme. It requires nothing more than a clear idea of what you are raising money for, one egg, and transportation. I found it at Fund Raising Ideas.

• Go to a home and ask them to donate one egg (convince them that you are not crazy and promise not to throw it at their home). Go to the next house and ask them to donate any amount of money for the aforementioned egg. Repeat cycle endlessly. For safety, it is best to work in pairs.

• For this fundraising idea, have volunteers go to area homes, asking for an egg. Have the volunteers explain what they are raising money for and then they ask the donor how much money they will give to perform various "wacky" acts with the egg.
  
  
  For example, "Will you give me $5.00 to crack the egg over my head?" or "Will you give me $5.00 to eat the egg raw?" The volunteer escalates the act until they get the most money they can from the donor.

And yes, these require a certain amount of courage. I'd have to be really really desperate before I'd go door to door for any reason. However - it's good to know that I do have that option. It also occurs to me that this might be an excellent way to get unemployed teenagers out of the house and on their way to entrepreneurial success.

And once again, for those of you following the original project on prayer, here's that link: A Prosperity Prayer. There are some great thought provoking comments on this post - definitely worth reading!

Fund Raising

It occured to me that fund raising is yet another form of begging. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this rather dry definition:

Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.

Ok... yes, it applies generally to non-profit organizations and enterprises. And those organizations and enterprises are usually in the business of helping people right? So why not cut out the middle man and go straight to fundraising for ourselves? And isn't that what we are trying to do here at the project? Raise our funds?

With that in mind, here's a link to a bunch of free do-it-yourself fundraising ideas at Fundraising Ideas.Org. Here's what they have to say about the list:

Our do-it-yourself fundraising ideas come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Some contain detailed instructions while others are just brief summaries of past fundraising activities of other organizations. Hopefully you can adapt some of them to have fun and raise funds for your group. We often include similar information from multiple sources to reflect possible variations. You will definitely find some repeats but ... just maybe ... that's because they have proven to be successful!

So, having begged the "Master of the Universe" or your guardian Angels, or God, or Allah, or whoever it is that you've been petitioning, why not put forth some action, maybe you could actually get out there and "do" something. What do you think, guys? Anything useful here?

And for those of you following our first project on prayer, here's that link: Talking To God. It's a nice little post and well worth the read.

Day Twenty-Two: Fund Raising

I think we need to plan how we can give the universe a really good opportunity and lots of avenues for our million dollars to come to us. I am pretty sure that my "day job" employer is not going to suddenly give me a raise of a million dollars, and I don't know about you guys, but I am ready for my million. I'd like to have it BEFORE I'm incontinent and in a walker and driving the assisted living nurses insane.

So, when Melissa and I met for lunch the other day, one of the things we talked about was next month's project. Melissa has graciously offered to enter us all in a number of sweepstakes, and we both thought it might be good to use some Gypsy Magic spells, and anything else we can come up with to try to win the lottery.

The postage for the sweepstakes entries will come to about $8 per person. I had hoped that we could use revenues from the Prosperity Project ads and affiliates for stuff like this, but so far we do not have enough accumulated for me to even get a check. Our Spring Garage sale will put some money in the cookie jar, but that's not until May. And we need something for the first of April which is right around the corner!

What we came up with was an eBay fund raiser. If each of us donated an item to auction on eBay, we could send Melissa the profits and she could apply that money to postage for our sweepstakes entries.

What do you guys think? We could either put items up for auction separtately, and I could make a paypal button for Melissa and post it here, and as the items sell, we could forward the money to Melissa's pay pal account. Or, you could send me pictures and other pertinent details and I could put the items on eBay and forward the money to Melissa.

Or maybe there's another way to do this that I haven't thought of? An eBay evening where we all get together with our items and list them right then and there? Whatever we decide, keep in mind that the best time for an eBay auction to end is on a Sunday late afternoon and/or evening.

I thought that if we each put at least one item up for auction, we might be able to come up with enough to cover the cost of the postage for the sweepstakes entries. And if not, we can all chip in. And if someone didn't have anything for eBay, they could just send the $8 to Melissa...

So, we need feedback on this idea.. Lots of comments, suggestions, etc. And then we need to get started.

Our Spring Garage Sale

On Memorial Day weekend we will be completing our De-Cluttering project by having a garage sale at Melissa's newly vacated townhouse. So lets get busy. If you are participating in the 200 Things Project, here's a perfect opportunity to really make some progress.

If you have any questions about location or logistics, email Shirley or Melissa, or post your question and we'll make sure you get the information.