Fundraising Tips
Below are some examples of how to fundraise for Reggie's Sleepout! We believe no amount is too small.
We encourage you to ask your friends, family, and community to support your participation in this fun and educational event. Naming the Iowa Homeless Youth Centers annual fundraiser after Reggie Kelsey reminds all of us to be diligent in our efforts to help young people leave the streets and find ways to move toward stability and self-sufficiency.
For a sample fundraising letter to send out to friends and family members, click here. To get back to the Reggie's Sleepout webpage, click on the back brower button.
How Can You Help?
- Place an article in your business, school, college, church, and local bulletin or newspaper about Reggie's Sleepout and the state of homeless youth in the Polk County metro area
- Choose to be a celebrity camper from your faith community, school, business, or college and/or create a Sleepout Team
- Invite members of the Sleepout planning committee to speak with your organization to learn more on how to get involved
- Use your email network to forward this onto other organizations and staff
- Create Sleepout boxes from the school team in art class.
- If your students are required to receive community service credit, suggest Sleepout participation
More Ideas! Use your creativity to ask your friends, family, and community to get involved.
The Water Bottle Fund
One individual can make a difference collecting pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Believe it or not, the old fashioned way of collecting spare change from people really adds up.
Reportedly one man did just that. He simply set up a 5 Gallon "water fountain" bottle at his desk at a large corporation and asked people to drop in their change. He set the bottle up one month prior to a marathon type event for a local charity he was participating in.
Every day during that month he reminded his co-workers of his challenge to them and simply asked for their spare change. His co-employees really came through and at the end of that one month period of time he collected well over $500.00 in loose change for his cause.
Pennies From Heaven
Pass out large see-through glass pickle jars to each member of your group. For children in your group you might try some type of see-through plastic jug.
Simply go through your community house to house asking the homeowner or business owner for any spare pennies that they have laying around. More than likely they will give you an even dollar up to several dollars depending on how well you present yourself and your charity.
At the end of the day you will be surprised how much money you will have raised. Then head to your local bank branch and ask the manager to run it through their change counting machine to assist you.
An alternative to going door-to-door, have a team of "donation workers" ask for spare change at local events like ball games, fairs, parks, flea markets, or festivals. Make sure you get permission from the event officials or public officials before beginning so that you don't create any misunderstandings or bad will for your cause.
For their safety make sure that children and teens are always accompanied by adults when going out asking for donations. If possible, ask for event security personnel or law enforcement at these locations to keep an eye on your group as your spare change grows to larger sums of money.
Challenge Gift Fundamentals
A Challenge Gift is usually a large gift that comes from an individual, corporation, or foundation that will challenge others to give a gift at a certain level and then will make a donation if the "challenge" is met.
In smaller gifts, a "challenge" gift is made (say one Reggie's Sleepout sleeper to give one gift of $50) by someone who asks an unknown number of other individuals of like mind to make the same type of gift (like 10 other family members and friends to give $50 each for a total of $500).
In both cases the outcome is the same which is to encourage others to maximize their gift with a challenge or matching gift from a key individual in your organization. This will energize all to give more than they would normally; thus, bringing in more funds for Reggie's Sleepout.
Donate Rewards Program Points To A Charity
Donors can now donate their rewards points from various credit cards to nonprofit groups and charities. This will directly help the organization by providing points to buy computers, printers, pay for airfare to meetings and more. Check out some that help.
American Express Point Transfers
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