5 Philanthropy Chair Approved Tips to Organize Successful Fundraisers

Fundraising is one of the more important sorority and fraternity events held every year. Giving back to the community by donating to an organization of their choice is a commitment members of every greek organization make.

That being said, it's no easy feat to organize a truly successful fundraiser. It can be challenging to figure out creative ways to boost donations while making sure all participants have a good time. As true advocates of custom apparel who've made enough Philo merch in our day - we've worked with many philanthropy chairs across the states.

Here are some of the tips Philanthropy Chairs approve of:

Start Planning At least ~8 weeks ahead

Successful philanthropy events don't happen overnight. From our experience working with greek orgs, apparel chairs, and philo chairs start planning the event at least 2 months before the actual fundraiser.

This gives them enough time to work through getting their merch, getting permission from the college, getting all their equipment and volunteers, and promoting their event.

Make All your plans specific

Let's say Joey is your friend and a Philo chair. He writes down "Get 12 volunteers for the event" as a part of his plan - you should immediately stop him because that's not a good plan! You can tell because it leaves you with more questions - volunteers from where - within the org? How will we get them? Are we incentivizing their participation? Why 12? What will they all do? When do we need them? You get the idea.

It would be much more productive to write something like "Volunteers within the chapter: Send a sign-up form to full org. Need 4 volunteers for venue prep on the day and 4 for event promotion. Select volunteers for each team by 26th March." - It can definitely get more specific as you keep asking yourself. "What else do I need to add here to set myself up for success with this task?"

Go beyond the basic bake sale

Yeah, setting up a stall and selling a few cupcakes is cute, but you can do better. Here are 2 ideas we love:

• Rent a Brother: Auction off one chore a volunteer from your frat is down to do. Make sure to keep it light-hearted and fun, like - washing your car, walking your dog, etc. or it'll get weird fast. The highest bidder wins!
• Carnival Games: A classic that never fails! Set up fun play-to-win stalls around the venue and have people try their hand at winning a carnival prize like a huge teddy bear. With this idea, make sure you upcharge enough that the profits you make far exceed the cost of setting up the games.

Whatever you do - make sure you make it so fun that people happily engage. It's the best way to boost donations to your Philo. Need more ideas? Tap here!

Merch but more than just T-shirts

Everyone sells a shirt or two for their philos. But you're not everyone.

Merch can be shorts, decals, hats, sunglasses, water bottles - you'd be surprised how many items can be customized and called merch. You can highlight your charity on some and do trending designs on another to maximize sales. Here are a few products and designs to get you started:

If you want to set up an online store, you can ask us to set up a group order link for you. The link will open a small temporary online shop for people to choose the merch they like in their sizes and directly enter their address to get it shipped to their homes. This also makes it a lot easier to reach a wider audience because all you have to do is share a link!

Promote your events like your life depends on it

You always want to do more than just put up flyers on noticeboards.

You can do many different things to create awareness. Adding your event details on the bio of the merch store you set up, sharing your merch store link with everyone you know and asking them to share it with everyone they know, talking to whoever sends school-wide emails about promoting the event, working with popular school page admins on social media to talk about it and even asking that one kid with an online audience to talk about it - those are all smart ways to promote your Philo.

Ultimately, Philo events are successful when you start planning early and smart, build on creative ideas that get people excited enough to engage, and finally, do everything you can to get the word out there.

And of course - if you need help with merch, reach out to the masterminds: hi@freshprints.com