Affording Adoption

Power Shopping – PureCharity.com Launches Adoption Fundraising Platform

05.17.2013 by juliegumm@yahoo.com //

About a year ago via a few blogs and Twitter, I began to hear about PureCharity.com.

Pure Charity gives “power shopping” new meaning. By creating a Pure Charity account and installing a simple browser plug-in, you can earn “Rewards” each time you shop at a Pure Charity partner. Partners include companies like Walmart, Old Navy, Target, Apple, Expedia…the list goes on and on.

It’s fun to see my little Pure Charity icon pop up when I’m shopping. A quick click and I’m earning money to go into my own Rewards Network. Then I can browse the hundreds of projects registered with Pure Charity and choose where that money goes.

Some of my favorite charities like Mercy House Kenya & Help One Now have used Pure Charity to raise funds for projects.

Last fall at Together for Adoption I asked one of the Pure Charity staff, “What about adoptions?” I knew there was huge potential!

I was ecstatic when I heard from Mike Rusch, COO of Pure Charity, that they were indeed rolling out a platform for adoption fundraisers. I even got a sneak peak before they launched it at CAFO Summit 9 🙂

Their first adoptive family (their beta testers) has already met their $8,000 funding goal!!

I walked through the process myself, setting up a fundraiser for my brother’s family. It was super simple and only took me about 15-20 minutes. Pure Charity has tons of videos to walk you through the process but the instructions are pretty clear. You can upload pictures, videos – whatever helps you tell your story.

When you’re done, embed their widget on your blog and use their social media sharing tools to spread the word. Invite ALL your friends to join Pure Charity. They make it super simple with Facebook integration and a personalized link. When someone joins your “Advocate Network” you also earn rewards off their purchases. This goes 10 levels down. So ask your friends to invite their friends, etc. It all adds up!

Your friends and family can also make straight tax-deductible donations into your fund!

Couple things you should know:

Money from your Pure Charity fundraiser gets paid directly to your agency so set your fundraiser goal for your agency expenses only. (Not travel, etc.)
Pure Charity charges a 5% fee on fundraisers to cover the cost of credit card fees and administration. They recommend adding that percentage to your overall fundraising goal.

Of course when your adoption is complete, you’ll still be earning Pure Charity rewards you can give generously to one of the 600+ projects on the site.

JOIN PURE CHARITY

Also, Pure Charity’s Mike Rusch and successful Adoption Fundraiser, Jenny Marrs are conducting a webinar to share tips on how to best use the Pure Charity platform to make your fundraiser successful!

Date: June 4th, 2013
Time: 12:00-1:00 CST

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/296800303

“Freezer Pleaser” Adoption Fundraiser

05.13.2013 by juliegumm@yahoo.com //

Whenever I speak on fundraising I love to leave some time at the end of the session to answer it up to questions. But I always ask those in attendance to share any unique ideas they’ve done/seen/heard. I LOVE the stuff that comes out of this!

At the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit 9 I did a breakout titled “Creative Fundraising for Your Adoption & Ministry.” During the Q & A time Victoria from New Beginnings shared about their “Freezer Pleaser” fundraiser. They did it as a fundraiser for their Junior Auxiliary but I’m sure it would translate well to a local adoption fundraiser.

First, they had a former member that worked for Sears and arranged to donate a small chest freezer (value of about $125). If you know someone who works for Sears, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc. talk with them and see if they can connect you with a store manager. If they can’t donate, perhaps you could get it at cost?

Next, recruit 30 of your friends to prepare one freezer meal. There are hundreds of blogs devoted solely to freezer cooking, so if they’re not sure what to prepare it’s not hard to find the answer. Make sure they label their meal well and include directions. During the JA fundraiser each member prepared a main dish, bread and dessert as part of their meal.

Then they raffled off the freezer with a month’s worth of meals!

The sold raffle tickets for $5 each or 5 for $20. Most people just chose to buy 5 tickets. Each member of the JA (30 of them) sold tickets face-to-face and collected funds. Living in a small town they also set up a table in front of the football and softball games. The raffle drawing was held during the homecoming football game. (If you have kids, maybe their school would allow you to do the same thing? Or your church?)

They raised $7,000!!!!

Of course your mileage may vary and I think they definitely had an advantage being an organization and living in a small town. But could you raise $4,000? If you sold 200 of the 5 for $20 tickets, you’d make $4,000.

P.S. One tip from Victoria – don’t put the meals IN the freezer. Let the winner pick up the freezer from Sears and then coordinate delivery of the meals. In their case they had a local food factory that let them store all the meals in their commercial freezer and the winner came and picked them up. You don’t want to have to try and move a freezer full of meals 🙂