Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

Have you ever made someone put their money where their mouth is? Two years ago, as a college student, I was leading a fundraising campaign for our Annual American Humanics Golf Tournament. American Humanics is a campus organization that develops non profit leaders. The goal was $5,000 and it was going to come from HOLE sponsorships.

As the fundraising chair, I began to make it my personal goal to raise all the money as I loved the organization, and I wanted it to continue to grow for future nonprofit leaders. Chris Burk, was the president, Bryon Haverstick, was the vice president, Sheryl Guffy was the Dean of Humanics and Jack Beckerle was our Campus Advisor. Not to mention Jack was my fundraising teacher the semester prior.

Sitting in my dorm room I began to think back to last semester: What did Jack teach us?

Raising money lessons:
The Board of Directors, The volunteers, and the staff have to buy into the mission and support the organization with their time, talents, and money.
Ask for specific amounts, People will give you $100 if you ask for it but they could give you $20 if you ask for a donation
Have one major Goal for the entire campaign, and have all the specific reasons that you are raising money lined out for people to follow.
Before you can ask for money you must first have give your donation.

So I finished my planning, and I had three levels of sponsorships $50 silver, $75 gold, and the big $100 platinum donation levels. I also completed designing the pledge cards with all the future goals of American Humanics.

The next day I had a conversation with Jack our student advisor after his new fundraising class let out. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Hi JACK how are you?
Jack: Fine, how is the fundraising going
Me: Great! However, Last year I had this very WISE professor teach me that the first people to give during the annual campaign should be the people with the most invested interest. And I would say that the student Advisor has an Invested interest. What would you say!
Jack: Nathan you are killing me.
Me: Jack that $100 hole sponsorship pledge card is due by next Friday for all board member and advisors.
Jack: Nathan you made me put my money where my mouth is!

We laughed and I became $100 closer to our fundraising goal.

How much do you give?