Four-Legged Friend Fundraiser:

In order to keep facilites up and running animal shelters, rescues and welfare groups are always in desperate need of fundraising activities. A great fundraising idea to help these compassionate organizations is to hold a neighborhood or regional fundraising event.

Whether you are a rescue volunteer, animal rights advocate, pet owner or animal lover, you can get involved in the cause by helping to plan an animal friendly event in your area. Here are some tips to help you get started:

Choose your event

Brainstorm for ideas that are fun, accessible and most importantly, animal friendly. One excellent fundraising idea is to team up with a local rescue and hold a regional Dog Park Day. Dog owners, potential owners and lovers can head down to the nearest dog park to show their support and bring their furry friends along to socialize.

This type of event is great way to generate both donations and adoption interest.The shelter can set up info tables on animals available for adoption. Attendees can meet certain dogs and gain vital information on pet adoption in general. The neutral ground also allows the shelter to pre-screen potential applicants and see first-hand how they interact with the animals at the park.

Maximize potential

The key to making the most of your animal fundraising event is to do more than simply generating direct donations. A donation table should be present at the event but the addition of a customized fundraising product will leave a lasting impression on supporters and yield better results. Customized T-Shirt fundraisers are an excellent choice because supporters are not only able to contribute to the cause through their purchase, but will have a tangible memory of their support and be spreading the word to others every time they wear their new t-shirt.

Broad-based communication

News of an upcoming fundraising event can be spread  several ways. Word-of-mouth is a free and easy way to communicate the details, but this method doesn’t always have the farthest reach. For best results, combine word-of-mouth, with social networking tools. Twitter allows you to broadcast info to a large group of people all at once, and on Facebook you can create an event page with all necessary info and have your volunteers send invitations to all of their friends. You can also monitor the RSVP’s by yes, no and maybe. Homemade flyers are another inexpensive supplementary option.

Have a backup plan

One thing to keep in mind when coordinating an event is that there should always be a backup date in case of bad weather or other surprises. It is best to communicate the backup date on every piece of correspondence you send out, along with a phone number, email address or web site link for potential attendees to access the morning of the event, to find out if it has been postponed. This is another reason why communicating via a social networking page is optimal. For instance, when you create an event page on Facebook, everyone who is on the list of attendees will receive an email when there is an event update. Updates can be time or date changes or they can be as simple as a “bring sunscreen” message.

There are so many ways for you to demonstrate your compassion and love for animals. We can’t wait to hear what you come up with!

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