Someone just told me about a really cool website!

On Twitter someone let me know about a website called http://www.fundraisingtips.com/. I checked it out and it has a lot of good info! It gave me some great ideas.

Here are my ideas so far (these are all for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society currently but would also be used, if they work, for other causes):

1. Silent auction with donated goods. These will be donations from businesses, my paintings, art work or crafts donated by others, and anything else I can get.

2. An art work auction on-line. I saw a group on-line that is doing an art auction to raise money for Haiti. It was a little more complex than mine would be but still an awesome idea I can use. Mine would most likely be mostly my paintings, but I think I can get some other artists to donate pieces as well, such as my niece. She is a wonderful artist and I'm sure would love to help out. I would set up either a web page or maybe just a facebook page (probably easier) where people could bid on certain pieces and I could have about 75% of the proceeds go to my fund raising.

3. A great big raffle. I guess the good thing about a raffle is you don't really have to have a location, you just have to have the items and set a time for it. Then you have to get the prizes delivered. This would be a fairly simple one.

4. A bake sale. I love to bake and I'm sure I have friends that would help out. Once again though, this comes down to location. Maybe a friend's front yard? Or in front of a business?

These are my ideas. Any assistance, input or others ideas are welcome! Everyone has been so great with all kinds of help so far :)

Does anyone know of some good fund raising ideas?

I want to be able to hold a big fund raiser but I don't even know where to start. How do you get a location? Should I ask a catering company to donate food or just include that in the cost of a ticket to it? I have lots of good ideas I just don't know how to make them happen.

I would love to do a silent auction, but once again, where would I have it? I don't think I'd have a problem getting items for the auction, I guess it would mainly be the location and the food that I would need to figure out.

I'm going to head out the door to get some art supplies right now but I will continue this later...

To blog, or not to blog...

I know some people blog every day, but I don't think I should do this. I've been blogging whenever something relatively significant has occurred and I hope they've been an interesting read, and I would love any feed back on how I can specifically improve my blog.

On other notes, I have over 32 fans for my artist page after just 1 day, which is not bad at all. I have only been able to post 4 pictures so far (it's hard when both the baby and the cat are trying to crawl all over them as you're trying to take a picture of them) but will be doing more by the end of tomorrow. Much of my original art work has been given away, so it's also time to do some more!

I haven't moved very far on finding someone to make prints, so if anyone has any suggestions in the San Diego or LA area, let me know. I have a friend in LA who is a professional photographer and I'm going to ask her if she can take some good photos of some of my art work, so that I can get prints made easier.

Once again, any feedback is more than welcome!!! :)

Starting to sell my art work

I just created a facebook page to sell my artwork through. I have posted a few of the pieces so far and will be posting more as soon as I can. 40% of the proceeds from this will go towards Raising Money to Help My Family and 40% will go towards my fund raising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. The rest will cover materials, etc.

Here's the link if you want to check it out: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marcy-Eibens-Artist-Page/275043828838?ref=nf#/pages/Marcy-Eibens-Artist-Page/275043828838?ref=nf

I'll be promoting it on facebook and twitter. Any help with this would be great and I'm trying to get as many fans of the page as possible.

Right now I only have the originals so I'm researching how to get prints made. If anyone has any advice on how to do this, let me know.

Held the first fund raiser for Haiti

Last Wednesday I got up the nerve to go to Starbucks and ask for donations for my meet-up group for the Haiti fund raiser. It was actually surprisingly easy. They gave me 2 awesome gift bags to auction off! I was then a little disappointed because I had to cancel our fund raiser for Wed night. I only had 2 RSVPs and a raffle can't really work with 2 people.

Yesterday was the "second" fund raiser (it was actually the 1st since the Wed one was cancelled). It was only 5 people but it was so much fun! We went to the beach and had some signs and buckets. We raised $107.30. Not bad for a couple hours. There was no real way to do a raffle, so I still have the 2 gift bags from Starbucks. I'm thinking I will either try to do another meet-up with a raffle, or just raffle them off at work. We shall see...

After this I'm taking a break from the Haiti fund raising for a while. I still have a lot of fund raising to go for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (I'm at about $300 and need to get to $3500) and I still want to do a bit more fund raising for my brother. Then I want to expand that to raising money for other families.

I will keep this updated with my progress!

The widget for Team in Training

Posting the links one more time

Once again, the link to donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for my Team in Training is:

http://pages.teamintraining.org/sd/rnr10/TeamEiben


And the link to donate to Raising Money to Help my family is:

I think I'm getting the hang of this fundraising thing

I have to admit, twitter is actually an amazing networking tool. I have yet to actually physically meet anyone from it, but I've made some good "virtual" friends and I know I will meet some of them in the future. It's such a great network for everyone to help each other (of course some peope abuse it and some people are just kids playing around but that's unavoidable).

I've also found that when you're working towards a good cause, you will be able to find many good people to step forth and help you, even complete strangers. This has been working with raising money for cancer and I hope that it will continue to help with my Haiti fundraising as well. I plan to go out this weekend with a group of friends (I'm praying that it won't rain that one day) to raise money from complete strangers on the street. That ought to be interesting!

I want to learn how to get businesses to help out, specifically with donating items to be raffled and donating their space to have a fundraiser. I'm not sure how to approach this so I will be talking to some people from Team in Training to see who has done this before and how they have done it. They should be able to help me.

So far I am at $145 towards my fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I have a feeling I will actually surpass my goal, which would be awesome. I also have a feeling I will be doing most, if not all of my husband's fundraising (I need to get him off his butt!), which will mean that I will be raising at least $3500 for the both of us. We shall see...

I do still want to continue with my Raising Money for Families idea and see if I can set that up as an actual non-profit organization, but I still have a LOT of research to do for this (at least I have someone who will be able to do my logo! Yay!). I still haven't decided on the name and I need to sit down and write an actual business plan for it. Coming soon, to a blog near you :)

Here's what I'm up to recently....

There's just so much going on! I want to do 100 things at once! How does anyone keep all this organized?

I'm still raising money for my brother and his family, but it has taken a slight back burner. I just joined Team in Training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and I have to raise $1750 for them by June! This is a very important and personal cause for me. My mother died of lymphoma in 2007. She was my best friend and I miss her more than anything. I feel like I gave up on her in the end and that I didn't do all I could to help her, so this is my way of trying to make up for that. My husband is also doing it and needs to raise the same amount by June (totaling $3500 between us). Here's my website for that if you want to check it out or help out http://pages.teamintraining.org/sd/rnr10/meiben6mr5.

I just got started on that fund raising, then this huge earthquake happens. I am now trying to organize my friends into a fundraiser to raise money for the Red Cross and also the Volunteer Ministers for Haiti. I am the organizer of a group on meetup.com and I added up some figures. If everyone in my group just donated $10 we'd have over $1700! That would go a long way towards relief for Haiti.

There's just so much going on and I'm not even sure what to push anymore. I'm just going to do it all at once and see what happens :) Did I mention I'm also a new first time mom, I work full time and I'm starting my own financial services business? Sheesh! I have a lot to do!

Slowed down a little, still doing research

The cause has slowed down again. I need to promote more! Any help with this is much appreciated. I know I need to add a pic to the facebook page, which I will be doing very, very soon. I wish I had pictures at work that I could upload but they're all at home :(

I am still researching the idea of starting a non-profit. From what I have read so far, I need to talk to a lawyer who is familiar with non-profits and get their advice of how to go about doing it and all the legalities of setting it up. So now I'm on the hunt for a good lawyer who will do a free consultation! I will keep everyone updated.

In terms of a name for the cause, I'm thinking "Raising Money to Help My Family" is a pretty good name. Any feedback on this? It could be "Raising Money to Help Families" but I kind of like the first wording better. Let me know if you have any suggestions.