Fundraising Goals in AAA Hockey

Interview with Sheila Campbell

Fundrazr.ca: Hi Sheila, thanks for helping us out with this interview. Can you start by telling us a little on what your fundraising project is all about?

Sheila: Oh, sure. My daughter plays on a hockey team – midget AAA hockey in Edmonton, and they have a huge budget. I volunteered to be the fundraising person for the team because our budget runs about 19 thousand dollars. So, I was on the Internet one day and saw FundScrip – sorta didn’t think much at the time, but then I went back to it and thought, you know, this has some merit. However, our group is very small – we only have 17 players – so that means 34 parents. Anyway, to make a long story short, I got talking to Shauna and then brought it forward to the parents and sold it. We started out with a Christmas blitz, because I wanted them to see how easy it is and how it could work, and with larger numbers what we could gross instead of just keeping it within our families.

Fundraizr.ca: Ok, so what made you specifically get involved?

Sheila: Myself?

Fundrazr.ca: Yeah, what made you take it on?

Sheila: Well I’m just that kind of person. I guess I was a nurse for years, and I retired from that part of my life. I felt that everybody else was probably just too busy with full-time jobs – so I thought that I always, even as a kid, loved organising things and putting together proposals and seeing things happen. We also sold calendars this year and had a bottle drive because I was hoping, you know, we could lower our expenses. Each month we have to write a cheque to the club because we pay for buses and hotels and food and it gets expensive. It’s my daughter’s second of three years in the program so I was just trying to help everybody out by lowering the costs of hockey.

Everybody shops, and I’m just sold because now when I go shopping I feel like I don’t have to have cash and I don’t have to worry about a credit card or debit and everything seems free because I’ve got all these gift cards!

Fundrazr.ca: [laughing] Well, we wish we could make it free for you, but I’m not certain that’s actually the case…

Sheila: But we’ve only got February and March left to go and then we’ll see what the families decide. I’d like to keep doing it so that we can set aside some money for when we start next year. Fortunately we have 13 girls that will be staying on this team; we have 3 graduating, so those families won’t be involved anymore, but I’ll have to do another sales pitch and hopefully we can carry on doing this throughout the summer until next fall when we start up again.

I’d like to see it grow even more than it has, but you know you can only push it so much with people and then I’m sure they’ll get tired of hearing me…

Fundrazr.ca: Well what do you do to get others to participate?

Sheila: You know, I just talked it up – like I said to Shauna, I didn’t really give them any options. I just said “You know the best way to do this you guys is to use the EFT process and so I need a void cheque from everybody” and I had the registration forms there the night I presented it to the families. I downloaded all the information from FundScrip to give to the families so they knew it was a legit operation, it was Canadian and so on.

So I got all their signatures and information really quickly – I told them, you know I want a quick turn-around time and then we can get going on this process. So, everybody bought into it. There was one family that didn’t initially, and now they’re probably more excited about it than anybody!

Fundrazr.ca: So what has been the general reaction of the people involved, now that you’ve had the program running for a while?

Sheila: Well they’re always saying to me something like “Oh, I got my order in Sheila, you know Feb. 4^th is coming!” and I think they’re really enjoying it. I haven’t asked for a lot of feedback, but there haven’t been any hassles – you know all our cards come. These girls see each other 5 or 6 times a week, so I go to a practice – let’s say I get them Monday – I go to a practice Tuesday and they’re in their parent’s hands Tuesday night. So the turn-around time is really good. That’s one of the questions people were asking: “Well how do we get the cards?” and then when they were being mailed to me, then everybody said “Oh, well how are you going to get them to us?” Because we see each other so often, that hasn’t been an issue at all. It’s just been very positive.

You know I’m hoping – I tried to sell it to the whole organisation, because I think gift cards are the way to go these days – they’re everywhere – and I’m really liking being able to go to Safeway and you know, I’ve just got these cards… I don’t have to take any cash with me. I don’t know, I’m just sold on it; so maybe my attitude towards it has rubbed off on them.

You know also, Shauna’s been wonderful. You can phone her or text her and she’d be right back with an answer to me so I felt like I had someone in my corner which helped me along with the whole process.

Fundrazr.ca: So how long have you been running the program for?

Sheila: We started in October because our first blitz was in November.

Fundrazr.ca: Ok, and how much money have you folks raised to date?

Sheila: Just over a thousand dollars in that short time. At Christmas I think I collected about $25,000 worth of purchases so we took cash and cheques from families and that was very successful.

Fundrazr.ca: So in three months you folks have made a thousand bucks with only how many people again?

Sheila: 34 people…

Fundrazr.ca: So just 17 families. Well that’s pretty amazing I think. What are your plans to gain more supporters and higher volumes?

Sheila: Well I just sent an email out last week to the families, saying “Let’s do it again, you know if each of us get 3 or 4 other friends and family members contributing to the team, then our profits go higher.”

The other thing I did was take the delivery charge – there used to be a five thousand dollar minimum, (now I think it’s $4400), and divided that by 17 and said ok everybody has to order a minimum of $300 a month to make this thing viable.

Fundrazr.ca: Sure, and how was that received?

Sheila: Good, good – yeah. One family said to me “Oh well, we don’t shop…” and then I think when they saw all the available retailers I’m sure they felt they should join in and be part of the team. Now, people are ordering more than $300 a month. One family orders like $1400 every month, just because they know what they spend on gas and groceries…

Fundrazr.ca: And that’s mostly what you see people using the cards for – the staples gas and groceries?

Sheila: Yep, I told everybody to look at their Visa bill and see where your money’s going every month and figure out how much you spend on gas and groceries and then order what you’re comfortable with. So that was my basis for getting this thing off the ground.

Fundrazr.ca: Now how do you go about maintaining people’s interest in the program? I guess you’re saying they’re on EFT – are they all on recurring orders so you don’t have to manage that so much or are you constantly prodding them in order to maintain interest?

Sheila: We have 6 or 7 on recurring orders. That was one thing that people were sort of sceptical of, that once they’ve signed up for $600 a month they couldn’t change that. But I encouraged them to go online and read how you can change your recurring order any time you want, and that you can cancel any time you want. So I think it’s just continually talking to them. When people send me emails with questions I would have an answer back to them really quickly, either through Shauna or by referring them to the website. Then I also send out an email saying “ok, we’ve got 6 days left until our next order”. At the beginning I also said that it would be every Thursday – the first Thursday of every month before 7:30am.

So I guess just little reminders and talking about it at the hockey games or practices, just to remind them that, you know, we’re due for another order.

Fundrazr.ca: So, you understand we’re conducting this interview for the blog in an attempt to capture best practices in gift card fundraising and so that others starting a new program can benefit from your experience, you having already launched a successful fundraising program. What advice would you give to those just starting out?

Sheila: I think you’ve got to gain people’s trust and prove to them that this could be very successful and that we all have to be in it. You have to believe in it too. I think it was gaining people’s trust initially that this could be a good form of making money. So I just kept talking about it and referring them to the website, getting them to read it. Then when we did the successful Christmas blitz.

I think they want someone to take it upon themselves – to be responsible for it. There’s a lot of people that don’t want to do fundraising, at least they don’t want to be responsible for it; but I get quite a kick out of it and it kind of drives me.

I’d say make sure you understand the program before you start talking other people about it. If they feel you have a good handle on it and I guess they trust you, and that you’re making a wise decision for the team, then they buy into it.

I found the program very simple and very straightforward. You know if I had any questions I could just call Shauna or fire them off to her and she’d always get back to me – so the support was there to get the program off the ground and make it successful.