Feb 19 2008
How To Do A Fundraiser For Your Community Theatre
Does your local community theatre need a fresh, new way to raise money? A fundraising campaign selling small, branded items can be an excellent way to raise money for your local theatre.
Using branded items gives a two-fold advantage, too. It helps you raise money, plus the items act as mini-advertisements for the theatre - each time someone sees a fundraiser item, they are reminded that their community has a local theatre!
There are many items you can use for a funraiser, ranging from baseball caps to bumper stickers. ARC Marketing is an online provider of fundraiser items offers several items, including custom silicone bracelets and custom car magnets. They allow you to design your own items, and still offer them to you at a price that allows you to raise plenty of money.
Once you choose a fundraiser item to sell, you’ll need to design the item so that your name and logo are on it. Make sure that you use a design that is attractive and catchy, but most importantly, easy to read.
Once you have the fundraiser items in hand, you’ll need to figure out how to sell the items. Here are a few ideas:
- Ask each of the actors and other people involved in the theatre to sell a certain number of fundraiser items
- Ask local businesses to sell the fundraisers
- Sell them items to your mailing list and contact list
- Sell the items at each show
You could probably sell tapes or DVDs of movies that have turned into broadway musicals or maybe even run a mock-play and charge people.
Hi
I like this article as fundraising can be such a problem for many but you have some great ideas here and another suggstion would be to get some of the local schools involved in selling the bracelets etc. Kids usually love this type of promotion.
I definitely agree with getting local schools involved. Kids look forward to these types of events, and getting them involved in local activities is great.
To make your fundraising campaign successful, you should choose products that would click to the taste of the people, and good promotion is important also.
To raise more money, I suggest you read over your script for some great one liners, paraphrase them if you have to, and put them on T-shirts. For example, in one scene from my musical “Big Feet, Big Love,” a pole dancer tries to teach a porn star to dance for an awards show. A T-shirt with “Shut-up and Dance,” might sell; so would a shirt that reads, “I’ve seen you dance–it’s not pretty.” You don’t need to use the show title, or an exact quote from the show (some short-sighted playwrights won’t allow this sort of marketing). You DO need a bit of creativity.
You might also consider using the website publishing platform over at CafePress.com. They are setup to do short runs from 1 T-shirt to 100 posters. Just browsing through the products they have available should get your creative juices flowing.