Imagine the school needs funds, the hospital needs the latest medical equipment or your church needs a new roof. You assemble your volunteers; pick your fundraising company and product. You hit the streets but the money is just not coming in for your annual drive. You need to make this work and your back is up against the wall. What do you do now?

Expand Your Audience

Your particular product may sell well at a different location or to a different demographic. Try changing the location of where your booth or fundraiser is run. Maybe it’s not getting the traffic it should get if it was in another location in the mall. Is the area of town your selling the product in older or younger based? Should the volunteers try an afternoon or evening shift to get the most response? Play with the variables and see what kind of results you get.

Change the Product for Sale / Get Feedback from Your Volunteers

When an American school ran a fundraising campaign a few years ago with coupon booklets they noticed their returns were very slow. Elisabeth Jonas, owner and president of Encore Fundraising, near Atlanta. "If your profits or sales are going down over a period of time, it’s important to first of all research why by polling the parents and asking them how they feel about the product and the fundraising program they’ve been doing," As a result of the feedback the parents combined the campaign with another fundraising campaign through the year. In the future the volunteers will look to replace the coupon booklet drive with something else.

Changing the product doesn’t have to be an intimidating decision for you. Once people find out there’s something new you’re offering they’re likely to donate, changing product just increases the number of orders. This isn’t a hard edged audience the previous feedback was just to let you know something wasn’t working as it should.

Advertise the Change

If after talking to your street team or parents, you decide that a change of product is appropriate let the donors know. Advertise through word of mouth, posters or email campaigns. Create excitement about the new item. If people see that you’ve listened to them and changed they’ll be more likely to give you another try. You may even want to give the new fundraiser a quiet trial run for a couple days just to get the feel of it.

Beck, Evelyn, Save Your Sagging Fundraiser, http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/34-save-your-sagging-fundraiser , October 30, 2008