What are other ways to raise money for a family in need?

I got tons of fundraising suggestions for you. It all depends on what the community is like and what your resources are.

The first resource is friends and family. If you start an online fundraising site then send it to your friends and family. Often this will get you the entire amount you need. The site is great because it allows them to donate anonymously which often brings in bigger donations when it comes to friends and family.

Fundraising letters are also very very useful. I could tell you how to put one together if you would like. Basically you put one together and then you send it to local businesses (not the big name ones). I’ve had Huge success in doing this. If you have a nonprofit sponsor you then you will get farther with this but it’s not necessary. Sometimes a local college student group will sponsor you and they are officially nonprofit, one of the easiest nonprofs to get on your side.

You can also do events to raise money. Obviously there is the bakesale. That can bring in 200.00 on a good day. Then there is bringing in a speaker and charging admission. A fun and good money getter involves food though. You could have a speaker or a performance (contact local hula dancers, the Step group at the local college, local Aztec dancers, local belly dancers, etc…) and have a dinner that goes with the performance. Charge admission. Often you can find a community center for free to host the event in. Colleges have them. Also community apartment complexes have them.

Then there are things like fashion shows, sell-a-date, krispy cremes, petting zoo if you know farmer friends etc..

I think this is a wonderful thing you are doing. I’m sending lots of positive vibes your way.

How does the site work? I noticed an expiration date. Where does the money go beyond that? Let me know, and I’ll help out.

@Knotmyday the money isnt actually taken out of your account until all money is gathered. If the goal isnt reached by the set date, no one pays.

@Redpowerlady Thank you so much for your input. I have sent out numerous messages , and bulletins to friends and just random people. But it seems no one wants to partake. I have no idea why not. I know some people can not afford it and that’s fine. Just bothers me that some of his friends have not donated.

@Trance24 I don’t understand why they wouldn’t donate either. Perhaps you could do something to get them involved in-person so they know you are serious. That is quite the odd thing, it would bother me too.

Down here in South Texas we rely on three things:

The first is selling tickets for barbecue plates. We are doing one right now to raise money to buy batting helmets for my son’s baseball team. Right now they are sharing a helmet. A variation on this is the Friday fish fry done by Catholic churches locally, and the waffle breakfast. A young man died of lymphoma last year in our town and the expenses were horrendous so his family put on several waffle breakfasts to raise cash to pay the hospital off.

The second thing folks do here is get a big, glass gallon jar, stick a picture of the person involved and a short discussion of what the problem is on the jar and then set it next to the cash register at an obliging business. Right now our IHOP has one set up for one of their waitresses who has cancer, the closest Mexican restaurant has one for an uninsured baby who needs surgery, and our convenience store has one for a family that was in a very bad auto accident.

The third is to sell tickets for a car wash on a particular date out behind Walgreen’s. Anyone with a ticket and anyone willing to make a donation gets their car washed by teenagers. You might try to get a youth group of some sort to take this on – if Gabe was ever a Scout or went to a particular church or whatever the group might be willing to donate the labor for the cause.

The last thing that folks do down here is dress up in some vaguely official outfit (matching t-shirts at the very least) and stand on the street corners with a donation bucket and fliers. When cars are trapped by the red light you go down the line essentially begging for cash. Several local churches do this fairly often and I have seen sports teams do it to raise money to go to a tournament or the state championship. Of course, the firemen do it, too, for Muscular Dystrophy through the “Fill the Boot” campaign.

@Darwin Good Ones!!

Something people will do around here is have a yard sale. Advertise what it’s for and more people will come. Get friends and family to make donations of things to sell. You could raise a lot of money that way.

There are some other ways to push your online marketing for the fundraiser:

Put the link to your site in your e-mail signature.

Create an e-mailing list and get lists from other folks.

Make good use of the “reply to all” option in your e-mail.

For sure, your site should have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, et al. (don’t just rely on the buttons from fundable.com

I see there is a PayPal button, but you should also have a TipJoy account which is becoming increasingly popular. You can see an example of how it looks at the bottom of my site.

Trade links with other websites.

Hope these ideas can help you out….good luck!

@chucklmiller The payment methods are set up by fundable. So I can’t make it to where you can pay with TipJoy.

I see. With TipJoy, you can get paid through Twitter, so if you don’t have a Twitter account yet I suggest setting up one for your cause and getting as many followers as you can.