How about fundraising using your time and talents for your next fund raising event or fundraiser!

Time & Talents Fundraising

Instead of asking for donations from your members and supporters or selling a specific product or service, consider giving money away! This relies on your volunteers and supporters individual ideas, talents, dedication, and their willingness to do something special for your organization. Each individual raises funds in a manner than interests them. How does it work? Your organization provides a small amount of "seed money" to each participant - $5 to $20 - and challenges them to use the money and their ingenuity to raise funds.

This could include buying ingredients and selling baked goods, purchasing materials for handmade crafts to sell, gasoline for a lawnmower to cut grass, printing flyers advertising a personal service, buying an inexpensive product and re-selling it, etc. The possibilities are endless and encourage individual creativity.

The participants will conduct their individual fundraiser at a time and place of their choosing. No major planning, space needs, or clean-up effort required. Just set a starting and ending date, provide the seed money, and then get out of the way! Depending on the type of projects chosen, think of the human interest publicity you could generate for your organization.

You can expect the participants to multiply their seed money several times, regardless of their project. This probably won't be a big money maker but can be great fun. On the other hand, if 100 participants took $10 each and just doubled their money (a very modest expectation), your group would net $1000. Not bad for minimal planning and it can definitely be a fun fundraiser!

If your group is short on funds, consider asking each participant to provide their own seed money. Since the amount is small, most will agree. While this idea will work for any group, it is especially good for church group fundraising.

Submitted by Rev. Mark H, Chicago, IL

We have included a number of do-it-yourself fundraising ideas in this section such as Time & Talents that offer a break from traditional product sales. They were developed by groups just like yours in an attempt have a little fun with their fundraiser. Some of them are tried and true while others show a lot of creativity ... and even wackiness in some cases. All of them are obviously not appropriate for every group, but sometimes, with only a little modification, your might find some fund raising ideas that are perfect for your group. If you have an idea for a do-it-yourself fund raiser you are willing to share with others, please send it to us via email at . Include anything and everything you would want to know if you were hearing the idea for the first time.