Be one of the first ten people to respond to this month’s question to be entered in a drawing for the Omaha Steaks package!
Question: What year was Heritage founded?
Heritage is beginning our 50th year of service this month, and we could not be more grateful for the opportunity we have had to represent America’s finest charities through all these years! Since 1958, we have been blessed in many, many ways, so we want to do some giving back this year. There will be some special efforts to let our charity partners know how much we appreciate them coming your way, so be on the lookout for those!
This is his $16,000 project, this 9-yearold, and he wants to help, but there is only so much a 9-yearold can do.
Before Mason Archer’s mother, Linda, brought him into the room, grownups from Henderson State University formed a bank-bag brigade and handed $16,000 worth of pennies up two flights of stairs to the second floor gym.
Bag after canvas bank bag, each filled with 30 pounds of pennies.
Mason, a third-grader, is the face behind a fundraiser for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They call it “Think Change.” [read more..]
Having a celebrity spokesperson for a special event or a series of them can be a powerful fundraising tool for charities. Unfortunately, the demands and negative publicity surrounding some celebrities have made such arrangements dicey for some major charities. How can nonprofits make sure the relationship is a positive one? Careful screening, finding some personal connection to the cause, and studying the person’s background will all provide insights.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services provides grants to two major programs for the Vanished Children’s Alliance (VCA). Those programs are the Northern California Child Identification Program and the Child Abuse and Abduction Prevention Education Program. Through these programs, VCA is able to provide educational and assistance services directly related to its primary mission. Such grants can be difficult to obtain and then to retain over numerous funding cycles, but VCA has made great use of this opportunity.
At the end of each school year, college students across the nation leave behind mountains of items. The schools are left with the cost of getting rid of these things, and some nonprofits have turned that to their advantage. Programs have been instituted across the country that allow nonprofits to sell these items to the public and keep the revenue from the sales. This process allows nonprofits to take items they need (some students leave their laptops!), get individuals in the community items they want at great discounts, and cleans up a mess for the colleges—a benefit for everyone involved.
A recent Charity Navigator report on special events fundraising found that while nearly half of all nonprofits use special events to raise money, very few of those events were more efficient than other fundraising tools. However, one special event that received recognition in the study for its efficiency was the March of Dimes Jail and Bail event—a campaign that Heritage is proud to support in many areas of the country. Choosing the right invitation list, publicity campaigns, attractions, and events are all part of making special events an efficient fundraising tool. Done well, special events can improve community awareness of your mission and add to your list of annual fund donors, but they need to be part of an integrated fundraising campaign to be truly effective.
Last month, the US Postal Service increased rates on several types of mail. Most well-known is the first class rate hike from &0.39 to $0.41. Standard mail—which includes much nonprofit mail—also increased. However, buried in the rules are methods that mailers can use to bundle, sort, and otherwise process mail in a way to get better rates. Our Mail Services team has decades of experience with these systems, sending out over a million mail pieces each month. We are using these tools to deliver maximum postal discounts for our charity partners, and will continue to do so. Got mail? We do!