Mind and Health

Fundraising has always been a leading source of income for many organisations such as community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With restricted financial aid from governments, many of these establishments would not be financially viable without the wonderful and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. For instance sporting clubs charge membership fees but with outlays ever increasing, it wouldn’t be possible for them to exist financially without fundraising.

The sorts of fundraising opportunities presently are many and varied. There’s a plethora of fundraising entities around trying to entice organisations to use their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to equestrian riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The choices are truly amazing and seemingly endless.

Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the time honoured ways of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over early few years, nevertheless, because of child obesity issues from poor eating habits and under exercising, nearly all of these established fundraising products have started to fall out of favour with fundraising entities.

This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to acquire a foot in the entranceways so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.

So where do you become when you would like to get moving with fundraising? Say as an example your child is in their second year of school, and you have determined to turn into more actively engaged in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you end up on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You wish to impress your peers; you like to do something positive for the environment and do the job successfully.

There are many reasons why the school might have to fundraise. It might need funds for some extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or possibly they would love to see a roof over a new walkway. How you should behave, where to get moving to raise the required funds? These days most people are turning to the internet.

The internet has in a very short space of time become the hottest and powerful tool for locating details, much more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When searching for ideas or facts, most people now don’t think about any options other than the internet. There are many search engines accessible to the internet user, such as Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the hottest search engine on the web is Google.

ComScore is a marketing study company that provides marketing information and services to many of the internet’s largest businesses. According to estimates brought out by comScore at the end of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That is a large slice of the pie.

Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to info regarding the hottest search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The hottest search terms used on Google for fundraising are in point of fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.

The upshot from all of these searches show a broad variety of sites that the user can access, the majority of them being fundraising directories that list many fundraising entities offering their services.

One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you’re looking for fundraising, fundraiser ideas or ideas for fundraising, check out Goldstar today.