I wanted to do something about Ovarian Cancer and help in it’s research.  So I was on a quest to raise $2,000 for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.  As part of my fundraising campaign, I signed up to do a Phoneraiser.com drive.  I was delighted when I was able to raise over $550 just through collecting used cell phones to be recycled!  Not only was I raising funds for my cause, I was helping the environment at the same time!

Thank you to Phoneraiser.com for helping me to achieve my goals in raising money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation!

Liz Gonzales

To help you set your goals, keep in mind that the average cell phone will bring you $3.00 each. PDAs average $10 each. Inkjet cartridges usually bring $0.50 each. Consider the size of your possible donation area, how much time you’re willing to spend on advertising your fundraiser, and how many donation boxes you plan to set out. With these things in mind, you can set a realistic, viable goal that will help you meet your total monetary needs.

Another way to make sure you meet your goal is to carefully plan how many and where you’re going to put your collection boxes. Local businesses, churches and schools are excellent places for donation boxes. You will have increased exposure if you place them in high traffic areas and that will help you reach your target even quicker.

Word of mouth is another excellent way to increase donations. Tell everyone you know, and ask them to tell everyone they know. If you work with people from different cities, towns, or neighborhoods, ask them to spread the word where they live, shop, or go to church. The more people you reach, the more you raise and the closer you are to meeting your goal.

One of the most important, but often overlooked, ways to make sure you’ll have the best Phoneraiser.com fundraiser ever is by advertising the event. Send letters home with students, send emails, put up posters and flyers all around the area, post signs anywhere store and business owners will let you. To reach even more people, send an article to your local newspapers, send a notice to your local radio stations, or advertise in community newsletters – online and offline.

A little planning and some good advertising can ensure that you not only meet, but exceed your goals for your next Phoneraiser.com fundraiser. If you follow these steps it will make your Phoneraiser run smoothly and easily, and maximize your potential for donations, as well. You’ll have the potential to reach more people and more areas and increase your donations exponentially.

And since more donations almost always means more money for your cause or organization, anything you can do to increase donations will be wonderful. These tips will help make sure this fundraiser is your best planned, best run and most successful yet. But we have even more tips for you. Keep checking our blog for new information, tips and tools you can use to have the best fundraising events you’ve ever had.

First and foremost, people are asking why they should choose a Phoneraiser fundraising event over a more conventional method. That’s simple. A fundraiser with Phoneraiser.com is simpler to plan and execute and has the added bonus of helping the environment, as well. It may very well be the most effective fundraiser you’ve ever had as people realize they can rid themselves of old items and do good things for the planet at the same time.

What exactly does Phoneraiser.com accept as donations? Cellphones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges are the only items that you can send to Phoneraiser.com. They don’t accept any kind of accessories like chargers, manuals, etc.

Do they take every phone and cartridge? While Phoneraiser.com will recycle phones and cartridges that are not on their list, only those found on their list of approved devices and cartridges will result in money for your fundraiser. You can check the list against your donations to see just how much you can expect to make before you even send the items to Phoneraiser.com.

What happens to the cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges that are sent to Phoneraiser.com? If a cell phone or PDA cannot be reused in another market, Phoneraiser.com will recycle the handsets based on all applicable state and federal guidelines. If the phones can, they will be refurbished and reused. All proceeds help Phoneraiser.com expand its recycling efforts. It also helps provide inexpensive cell phones to the economically disadvantaged.

What if someone forgets to remove some information from their phone? It is highly recommended that you remind everyone through your advertising or even your drop box itself that they need to remove any private information before donating their phone or PDA. Phoneraiser.com cannot be responsible for any information left on a phone or PDA.

If the phone or PDA is going to be recycled, the phones are completely disassembled and each part recycled as appropriate. These phones will not be reused and all information will be lost when the parts are recycled. If the cell phone/PDA is going to be reused, the refurbishing process clears out the phone’s memory so that new software can be loaded. This removes any information stored in the phone, as well.

Where can I get more information? You can visit Phoneraiser.com by clicking this link, by pasting their URL (www.phoneraiser.com) into your browser, or by searching for them in your favorite search engine. Don’t forget to check the FAQs on the site for even more answers to the most common questions about Phoneraiser.com fundraising events.

With the free templates, you’ll be able to advertise in any number of ways. You can:

Send letters to schools, neighborhoods or businesses. Depending on the cause you’re trying to raise money for, it may be more appropriate to send letters to one, two, or even to all three. You can send school letters with your children and have them give them to all their friends and classmates to take home to their parents (make sure you have permission from the principal first). For neighborhood letters, you can either hand deliver the letters or send them regular mail for an extra special touch. For businesses, it’s probably most appropriate to reach out to them and ask for the right contact person and then send them a letter in the mail.

Post flyers in the areas where you’re going to hold your fundraiser. Put them in your school, church, local stores, and other businesses. (Again, make sure you have permission before posting any flyers.) Have other parents or co-workers take flyers to post at their jobs or places of worship or local businesses to expand the number of people who will see your advertisements.

Issue press releases to all local newspapers and other media outlets explaining your cause, your goals, and how close you are to reaching that goal. Update those press releases throughout the fundraising period. (Don’t mass mail, as these will typically be ignored. Find the appropriate contact at each publication and send to his or her attention.)

Send emails to slightly distant friends and family and ask them to set up donation boxes where they work, shop or go to services. Alternatively ask them to simply spread the word about where your current boxes are or will be located.

Partner with local businesses to make sure your donation or drop off boxes are in areas that are consistently and heavily traveled. Restaurants, stores, movie theaters, churches, schools, video stores, and any other kind of business with walk in (and repeat) customers are excellent choices for a donation box. Have your child’s teachers or their friend’s parents ask where they work or go to church if it would be okay for you to put a donation box on their site. In essence, use your network.

Advertising is often the most overlooked element of a successful fundraiser. It may be that fundraiser organizers are unsure of how to advertise or it may be that they are simply unaware of how important marketing really is. Regardless, with Phoneraiser.com’s free templates, marketing is much easier and much more effective.

Meet Don and Patti Benjamin of Fairbanks, Alaska.  They have been Phoneraiser.com Partners since April 2010.  They raise funds for Relay for Life.

“We just had our Golden Days Parade here in Fairbanks.  The sign below was on the front of our float.  Our Relay at this point has raised over $264,000 for 2010.  Our Relay has 66 teams and our GCI Team has raised close to $25,000.  By the end of August we reached it.  Our team is the top team in Fairbanks.

Don and I co-chaired the event for the past 4 years.  It was a great experience, but we are passing the leadership on for next year.  We also have been the Online Chairs for the same amount of time.   We first started our team with Relay in 2002 – a year after Don was done with chemo from colon cancer.  Don is a 10 year colon cancer survivor and a 5 year prostate cancer survivor.  Participating in Relay is very important to us and we will always be involved at some level.

We did a Phoneraiser.com fundraising drive and raised $4,453.90 so far, by collecting used cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges to be recycled.  Not only did we raise money for Relay for Life, but we helped the environment as well!

The money we all raised helps fund research, education, advocacy and services in our community.  We truly believe that together we all do make a difference. They have a mission statement that I quote at every opportunity because it is a statement that has meaning to it.  “The American Cancer Society Relay For Life represents the HOPE that those lost to cancer will never be forgotten; those facing cancer will be supported and that one day cancer will be eliminated.”  That statement is why we do what we do.

We appreciate the money that we have raised from Phoneraiser.com  It has helped our totals grow and will continue to do so. We love the fact that it is a situation in which everyone wins.

You can see pictures and information at our Relay website: www.fairbanksrelay.com

We would recommend Phonerasier.com to anyone who is trying to raise money for Relay for Life, or any other cause.”

Patti & Don Benjamin

Fairbanks Relay For Life Volunteers

Make sure you have a plan. There aren’t many stages to a Phoneraiser fundraiser, but you still need to make sure everyone involved is clear on what needs to happen and when. You’ll need to decide several things.

Decide whether you’ll collect cell phones and PDAs and/or inkjet cartridges, or both. Check our price list to see which cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges we accept and how much each item is worth.

Choose start and end dates for your Phoneraiser. Leaving your fundraiser open ended may give people the idea that they have plenty of time to donate. This may result in people not donating at all. Give them a concrete date to go by.

Decide what your goal is and let everyone know. You can set a collective goal – your goal may be to raise $4,000, for example – or you can set individual goals by smaller variables. You may set daily goals for your Phoneraiser, for example, or have a goal for each area you have a donation box in, or for each person helping collect for the Phoneraiser.

Advertise, advertise, advertise. Word of mouth is a marvelous way to advertise your Phoneraiser, but don’t rely too heavily on just word of mouth. Take into consideration what groups and neighborhoods you want to advertise to, and decide what to use based on what you know about that particular group of people.  If you live in a friendly, open town, you may find that word of mouth and flyers posted in high traffic areas work very well. If you’re fundraising for a children’s organization, you may want to send information home to each family, as well. Email, advertising at other events, letters, posters, in person reminders; these are all wonderful ways to advertise your Phoneraiser and make sure it is truly as successful as it can be. You’ll find helpful, easy to use templates for many of these items right on Phoneraiser.com. These help make your marketing even easier and more effective.

Make sure you have copies of a Tax Deductible Donation Receipt. Be sure to offer a receipt to each person that donates to your Phoneraiser. There is a template for one on the Phoneraiser.com website. Be very careful not to offer any kind of advice about tax deduction. Let them know they’ll need to speak to their tax accountant or CPA for specific information on any deduction.

With a little planning, you can have a super successful Phoneraiser fundraiser that will be stress and problem free. We’ll cover more in the coming days about ways to make sure your next Phoneraiser goes smoothly and seamlessly. Stay tuned for more planning, training, and fundraising tips and tricks from Phoneraiser.com.

Not Just for Chatting with Aunt Sue

There’s a common misconception that social media outlets are only for personal use. There’s no doubt that’s probably the most common use for some social sites. However, more and more people are realizing the value of using these mediums to increase the number of people who will have the opportunity to get the information they want to share. For you, what you want is to let people know about your next or current Phoneraiser fundraiser.

You want to let people know what you’re raising the funds for and why it’s so important to you (and to them) that they help you do that. There are several different social media sites you can use to reach people, and for each you should use a slightly different version of your message – one that’s suited to the site you’re using and the people who will be reading your message.

How Many Sites are There Anyway?

There are hundreds of social media sites that you can go to let people know about your event. Should you try to leverage a large number of them to stir interest in your fundraiser? The answer to that is probably no. While there may be a large number of social media sites you can visit, concentrating on the ones with the most traffic is the most effective and efficient way to notify others of your news and create interest. Keep in mind that most social media marketing works best when you have an established network on a site. It would simply take too much time to try to build networks on all the social media sites on the web, and sites with low traffic would probably not help your cause very much, anyway.

Concentrate on the busiest sites and use them to let people know what’s going on with your fundraiser, how close you are to your goal, and how much more you need from them to reach that goal. Tweet total updates and donation locations on Twitter several times a day. Post the same information to your wall or fan page in Facebook. Join a relevant group on LinkedIn and setup news and send updates to your network there. Use YouTube to post short movies of past fundraisers or the organization or program you’re fundraising for. Include your fundraiser information in the description of your post.

The ways you can use social media marketing is as boundless as your own time and creativity. Take the time to get to know the top sites if you haven’t already, and see how much more interest you can generate by reaching more people. Reduce the need to go door to door collecting donations or picking up unused cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges. Let the World Wide Web do some of that work for you.

Whether you or your child’s team needs to get to an out of town game and has no transportation, the balls and other equipment are so worn out they barely work anymore, or the uniforms for the team are threadbare (or you have none at all), sports fundraising is often critical to being able to accomplish the goals the team or program may have. But what’s the best way to have a sports fundraiser? Is there a way to raise money quickly and effectively?

Yes, there are plenty of ideas for sports fundraising that can help meet your current goal. Your sports team could hold a meet and greet with the team so the community really gets to know the members of the team and becomes invested in making sure they help that team any way they can. Offer a nice sit down supper or a wonderful barbeque or buffet and sell tickets to the event. It can be a black tie affair, a simple barbeque at the local park or anything in between. Be sure to wear your uniforms (if you have them) and let everyone know what you’re raising funds for.

A bake sale is also a great way to raise money with a sports fundraiser. Ask the families of your sports team members to donate delicious baked goods to be sold to help raise money for the team. Most people love sweets and the thought of fresh sweet breads, cakes, pies, and cookies will guarantee they flock to your bake sale. Try to set up your bake sale in a high traffic area – outside a grocery store, for example. Make sure to get permission and tell the store or organization what your sports fundraiser is for. That may make them more eager to help you by allowing you to set up your bake sale on their walkway or in the parking lot. Just be careful to pick an unobtrusive but visible area that is relatively safe from the store’s traffic.

Phoneraiser.com’s sports fundraising event is also a wonderful program. Phoneraiser.com recycles unused cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges and pays cash for the qualifying items you collect. Your community will be able to recycle all those old phones and cartridges everyone seems to collect and all the dangerous elements that are present in those items are safely removed from ever being in contact with the environment.

Regardless of the sports fundraiser you choose, it’s very important to let the community know exactly who your team is and why they need money. You just may be surprised how much people are willing to help once they know you have a need. Sports fundraisers can be fun and very successful. What are you waiting for? Start your sports fundraiser today!

But what are you to do if the Programs your child is a part of need money or may have to close or scale back their activities because they just don’t have the funds they need to continue? That’s where kids fundraisers can be a godsend. Fundraisers are invaluable resources when your child’s favorite organizations need money.

There are many options for kids fundraising, and they vary in the amount of time and money you need to invest to make them truly profitable. One of the most popular and easiest kids fundraiser is a car wash. You can find an appropriate place to hold the car wash – like an uncrowded parking lot at a church, school, or store (be sure to get permission!) that has access to water – and gather the supplies you’ll need. With the proper safety precautions and supervision, the kids have fun washing the cars and raise the money their organization needs at the same time.

Another often overlooked kids fundraising idea is having a yard or rummage sale to help raise money. What could be better? The people in your community can finally clean out their closets and attics and donate items to be sold at the rummage sale. Shoppers scouring sales for a great bargain or a hidden treasure love a good yard sale and will help ensure that your kids fundraiser will be a resounding success.

Phoneraiser.com is another ingenious way to fundraise while teaching kids a valuable social lesson – the need for recycling and responsible ownership. Phoneraiser.com accepts old cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges for recycling and removes them from the environment where they can do damage and perhaps even enter our ecosystem. Your kids fundraiser will have the opportunity to help both their social organization and the community they live in.

Among the first things considered are after-school programs like band or sports. It may become harder for the baseball team to come up with the funds to travel to away games, for example, or they may have to play with inferior equipment because they simply can’t afford the extra expense of replacing it with new. In these cases, baseball fundraising can be an effective, highly valuable way to raise those much needed funds.

In reality, though, it can be hard to find volunteers who may be already overworked in their jobs or home life and it can take a significant amount of time to set up and prepare for a baseball fundraiser. Bake sales, car washes and rummage sales are all time tested ways to raise money for your baseball team, but also require quite an investment in time and materials to get them started. Is there a better alternative?

There is. Phoneraiser.com offers a very effective, very easy fundraising platform. In three simple steps, you can have the money you need for your baseball team. You simply sign up, collect cell phones/PDAs and inkjet cartridges from people in your community and send them in (free of charge with prepaid shipping labels from Phoneraiser.com). You will have your money in less than 10 business days. It really is that easy!

And best of all:

• Participation is absolutely FREE!

• Phoneraiser.com helps safeguard the environment by recycling.

• There is NO selling involved and no money to handle or get lost.

• Most donations are tax deductible (please encourage all donators to check with their accountant for specific details).

• There is no competition with other baseball fundraisers that may be going on at the same time.

• Shipping is FREE with prepaid labels from Phoneraiser.com.

• There is no limit to the number of Phoneraisers a company can have – so this is one baseball fundraiser that can be used whenever it’s needed.

Don’t delay another day. Visit www.phoneraiser.com today to sign up and get started raising the money you and your baseball team needs. You’ll have the money you need, and the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing your part to help save the environment. Nothing could be more rewarding than that.