Australian Content Blog

Fundraising has always been a primary source of income for many organisations such as community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With only limited financial aid from governments, many of these establishments would not be financially viable without the good and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. As an example sporting clubs charge membership fees but with expenses ever increasing, it would not be possible for them to exist financially without fundraising.

The sorts of fundraising opportunities these days are many and varied. There’s a plethora of fundraising entities out there going to try and entice organisations to use their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to horse back riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The options are truly amazing and seemingly endless.

Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the occasion honoured methods of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over early few years, nevertheless, due to child obesity issues from poor eating traits and beneath working out, nearly all of these orthodox fundraising products have started to fall from favour with fundraising entities.

This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to buy a foot in the doorway so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.

So where do you turn to when you wish to get going with fundraising? Say as an example your child is in their second year of school, and you have determined to become more actively involved in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you find yourself on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You would like to impress your peers; you wish to make a difference and do the job successfully.

There are many reasons why the school might need to fundraise. It may need funds for some extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or maybe they would like to see a roof over an innovative walkway. How you should behave, where to get started to raise the required funds? Today the majority of people are turning to the internet.

The internet has in a very short space of time become the hottest and powerful tool for locating facts, much more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When searching for ideas or details, most people now do not consider any options other than the internet. There are many search engines accessible to the internet user, like Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the most popular search engine online is Google.

ComScore is a marketing research company that provides marketing information and services to many of the internet’s largest businesses. According to estimates brought out by comScore at the conclusion of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That is a huge slice of the pie.

Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to info regarding the hottest search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The most popular search terms used with Google for fundraising are in fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.

The results from all of these searches show a broad variety of sites that the user can access, most of them being fundraising directories that list many hundreds of fundraising entities offering their services.

One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you’re looking for fundraising, fundraising ideas or fundraisers, check out Goldstar today.