An efficient fundraising technique is crucial to any nonprofit’s survival. Due to this, you’ve in all probability already encountered a couple of well-liked strategies for doing so. From silent auctions to walk-a-thon races, many nonprofits have pinpointed profitable methods to lift cash for his or her causes.
Whereas there’s nothing fallacious with tried and true fundraising strategies, that doesn’t imply you possibly can’t improve them!
Sustainable and recognized for his or her excessive ROI, athletic shoe drives are the proper addition to your upcoming marketing campaign. In keeping with Sneakers4Good’s information to donating trainers, they observe 4 easy steps: gathering gently worn, used, and new athletic sneakers from donors, filling transport luggage out of your fundraising coordinators, transport the sneakers off, and receiving a examine.
Within the coming sections, we’ll break down athletic shoe drive fundamentals and a few efficient fundraising concepts so as to add to your present shoe drive. Let’s start!
Athletic Shoe Drives: A Step-by-Step Overview
Should you plan on including an athletic shoe drive to a bigger occasion, price range your time correctly. Fortunately, there’s an easy-to-follow course of that can assist you get began on the best foot.
Listed below are the steps:
- Arrange a working shoe assortment location. You need to use your workplace area, faculty homeroom, or nonprofit occasion desk to gather sneakers all through the fundraiser. A devoted area helps volunteers or college students keep in mind to usher in any spare pairs.
- Promote your athletic shoe drive. Use social media to get the phrase out. Should you work with a fundraising coordinator, you may make the most of social media templates, hyperlink to their how-to explainers, and use their flyers and press launch information to catch your neighborhood’s consideration.
- Accumulate gently worn, used, and new athletic sneakers. Preserve observe of shoe donations as they arrive in and incentivize donors with additional perks like reward playing cards or different prizes to spice up your numbers.
- Ship the sneakers. Place all collected athletic sneakers in a pre-paid transport bag and ship them to an athletic shoe drive supplier warehouse by way of your native UPS supplier. Every bag will maintain between 10 to fifteen pairs and get shipped to growing nations.
- Look ahead to a examine. As soon as the sneakers are shipped, you’ll obtain the corresponding examine out of your chosen athletic shoe drive supplier. Keep in mind, the extra sneakers you acquire, the extra money you’ll obtain.
An athletic shoe drive means that you can increase cash with out expending an excessive amount of value—from you or your donors! Moreover, you possibly can be ok with internet hosting an athletic shoe drive fundraiser due to its optimistic international influence, as they scale back waste, air pollution, and environmental harm.
Prime 3 Concepts for Your Athletic Shoe Drive
You’re able to conduct your athletic shoe drive, however now the query turns into: what’s the most effective occasion to host your drive?
The enjoyable factor about athletic shoe fundraisers is you could mix them with varied occasions and get inventive! Whether or not you’re simply beginning a nonprofit and tackling your very first occasion or are a seasoned fundraising skilled planning the yr’s largest occasion, an athletic shoe drive fundraiser could be a precious addition.
When you can take the planning of the bigger fundraising occasion in nearly any path, we’ve narrowed down a couple of classes which may assist in your brainstorming:
1. Discover the various kinds of 5K races
5K or 10K races match superbly with the idea of athletic shoe drive fundraisers. What do you put on when working? Sneakers, after all! Nonetheless, you don’t should confine your fundraiser to only a straight-forward highway race.
Think about including inventive twists on conventional 5Ks, like:
- Impediment course components
- Inviting leashed pets
- Including a fancy dress contest
- Including checkpoints with meals, or different athletic challenges
All of those can add a degree of pleasure to the normal 5K race idea! Plus, they will take the stress off contributors who wouldn’t contemplate themselves seasoned marathon runners. Think about inviting native working golf equipment to affix within the enjoyable too. Working in a bunch might be much less intimidating for newer runners or these simply getting again into working.
Take into consideration your goal supporter viewers. Are they older or youthful? Would they wish to do a enjoyable household race, or would they quite run solo? You may even create various kinds of races or ship out a survey forward of time to gauge particular person curiosity.
2. Associate with a college
Mother and father get inundated with faculty fundraising initiatives asking them to donate all year long. In the meantime, a college stuffed with rising kids means fairly a couple of pairs of outgrown sneakers. In keeping with Double the Donation’s Information to Faculty Fundraising, you should use athletic shoe drives to gather pairs from school and workers as effectively.
An athletic shoe drive is a refreshing solution to interact the college neighborhood whereas exposing your drive to a big pool of potential donors. Additional, schooling funding may help advance studying environments by way of upgraded assets, know-how, and classroom provides.
To host your athletic shoe drive, contemplate partnering with PE academics, the college PTA, and different instructors to get the fundraising ball rolling. You may even encourage courses to create peer-to-peer fundraising pages to encourage wholesome classroom competitors.
Simply you’ll want to present directions on the right way to become involved in your faculty’s web site and social media, and watch as sneakers pile up!
3. Associate with a health club
Stuffed with health junkies, the health club is a perfect place to run an athletic shoe drive. Plus, each health club might use additional wiggle room to rent further instructors, buy new top-of-the-line tools, or cowl recurring facility prices. And a health club that’s captivated with philanthropic causes can appeal to new members and add to a optimistic health model picture.
Listed below are some methods to get your health club neighborhood concerned:
- Leverage class instructors. Inform instructors to get the phrase out about your athletic shoe drive! Encourage them to begin and finish their courses or private coaching classes with a fast reminder to take part within the athletic shoe drive.
- Put up on social media. Observe your athletic shoe drive’s progress in your social media tales. Use a thermometer or different infographic to visualise what number of pairs of sneakers you want to attain your fundraising targets.
- Create a bodily assortment field. Station this field outdoors of your health club to behave as a bodily reminder to your members to donate. Simply keep in mind to make use of clear signage and supply further info, like a QR code, for members to be taught extra.
- Provide health perks. A free health class, private coaching session, or vitamin suggestions are a couple of inspiring perks you possibly can supply to health club members who donate a specific amount of sneakers. Simply guarantee your health club workers has sufficient coaching to ship on any promised perks.
Partnering with a health club may help you faucet into fundraising income. As a result of so many health club members try out new kicks (weight coaching sneakers, cardio tennis sneakers, and so forth.), simply ask them to donate their additional pairs!
No matter which fundraising kind you determine to go along with, simply be certain your thought is enjoyable and fascinating sufficient to encourage donations. So, analysis your neighborhood and plan occasions with their preferences in thoughts. As an example, in case your neighborhood is stuffed with rising households contemplate internet hosting a enjoyable area day occasion with actions for all ages.
Price-efficient and donor-inclusive, athletic shoe drive fundraisers are versatile fundraising choices for donors and organizations of all sizes and earnings ranges. As a company, you’ll relaxation assured that you just’re not over-asking, and donors really feel good that their new or gently used athletic sneakers are furthering a significant trigger.
Whether or not you utilize an athletic shoe drive so as to add an additional increase to your present end-of-yr marketing campaign or run a solo drive to gather some further funds, these footwear fundraisers are wonderful choices!
In regards to the Creator
Wayne Elsey is the founder and CEO of Elsey Enterprises (EE) and a member of the Forbes Enterprise Growth Council. Amongst his varied unbiased manufacturers, he’s additionally the founder and CEO of Sneakers4Funds, which is a social enterprise that helps faculties, church buildings, nonprofits, people and different organizations increase funds whereas serving to to assist micro-enterprise (small enterprise) alternatives in growing nations.