If your organization needs funds for an activity or project there’s one way to go about it quickly and effectively - a fundraiser, of course. Not only for getting funds, a fundraiser also is a community building exercise and social activity, which can strengthen your organizations ties with the larger community. There’s a lot of different ways to raise money, so pick one that will fit best for the needs of your organization and its goals.

Whatever you decide on as a fundraising event, make sure that it fits the time of year, the interests of your community and is realistic in terms of meeting your fundraising goals. Of course, there’s more than one way to pay for that church outing, new uniforms for the soccer team or whatever you group’s goal may be.

Besides the event based fundraising model, selling products is a terrific way to raise money for your organization. There are a lot of fundraising catalogs available featuring merchandise well suited for these purposes. These sorts of fundraisers are especially popular with schools and houses of worship as a fundraising tool. You’re probably familiar with these to some extent - children going door to door selling products, such as frozen cookie dough from a catalog and then sending the money to the catalog company with the products then being sent and delivered later by the children. There’s products in these catalogs to suit anyone’s needs or interests and as such make for a great fundraising strategy for any organization.

With so many different products available for fundraising purposes from these catalogs, they remain a popular choice for groups of all types. It is a certainty that you have had children knock on your door selling you candy or any number of other products in the past to raise money for their school. Catalogs featuring small gift items tend to be a good choice for holiday seasons. It all depends on the needs of your organization. Once again, keep the season in mind - you’re not likely to sell too many Christmas ornaments in April!

These catalog based fundraisers are far more labor intensive than some other fundraising models, so make sure that you will have the support of other volunteers to assist you with the operations. You’ll need people to distribute catalogs to students or group members and others to act as treasurers for the funds as they come in. These treasurers will also handle making the orders at the end of the fund drive, as well as ensuring the merchandise is correctly distributed to students as it comes in - and making sure the merchandise gets where it is supposed to go afterwards. As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done in these fundraisers, but the returns are well worth it for your organization.