tanyalouise

Hello all! I’m cofounder for Green Mountain Foster Bikes here in Vermont. We take donated bikes (often saving them from landfills), fix them, and give them to foster kids! We love what we do so much, but as it’s just two of us who run it while both working full time, we have been doing so basically out of a field with no proper storage. Now we have an opportunity to buy a building to be able to run the nonprofit properly, but need to raise $140,000 to do so (and quickly).
SO to cut to the chase, I’m trying to come up with ideas for an event that can raise that kind of cash. We do take donations any time on our website, but we need to do something much larger. Please, if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them! So far we have talked about doing a silent auction as we have many friends who are artists etc, and maybe a benefit concert. The issue we hit is that Vermont is small and rural, so it’s harder to have these do as well as in a city. Please help me…. <3

For context you can watch our video about what we do, just google us and it will come up on YouTube.

thank you so much for any thoughts you might have!

our website is greenmountainfosterbikes . Org

KenCT

I have been, and still am, involved with several non-profits. Fundraising can consume a good part of the operations of the organization. $140,000 is a lot of money to raise and it can take years doing it by the events type (concerts, auctions, food festivals, etc) fundraising; been there, done that. I assume you have also considered the annual funding required in maintaining the building and other related expenses such as heat, electricity, insurance, etc..

Have you reached out to any charitable foundations? While you may not get the entire amount it never hurts to ask. I am currently president of a non-profit ambulance association. We recently asked the owner of a local company to donate for the purchase of some equipment for our ambulances. The meeting took 8 minutes and we had a check for $32,000. Another foundation in the area has a longer process but is expected to match that donation.

Sounds like you have a good program, best of luck to you.

downtube42

I ran a bike co op for a number of years, and held numerous fundraisers. My conclusion is thinking small is a waste of time. Selling small donated things or local (unknown) artist's creations will net peanuts. Calculating the hourly wage of everyone involved is telling.

You need big donors who want to do big things, and for that you need to pay professional fundraisers. Everyone gets excited about the percentage of donations that go to the program. But 100% of $500 is only $500, whereas 60% of $50,000 is $30,000.

RustySpokeTech

But a combination of income streams may work best. Partnering with a local brewery (ies) and bars for charity rides has been workable for our shop. Having some volunteer's build bikes for sale has been our largest income source (something like 140 bikes sold in the last 18 months) of late.

RustySpokeTech

Often times getting the word out can make a big difference. Not just social media, try and drum up interest through local news outlets helps a lot. Older folks ( the ones, as individuals, who generally have the most disposable income ) just aren't as social media reliant.