Every year in my city, a group of teenagers raises hundreds of thousands
of dollars for charity -- in four months! How do they do that?
I know plenty of experienced adult fundraisers who can't meet that level of
success in that short period of time. In this video, I'll dive into how I and
others - including the teenagers themselves - think that they're pulling it
off. Welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith. If this is your first time
here, I am a nonprofit founder, executive director, and speaker on social impact,
leadership, service, and more. I make weekly videos here on YouTube to help
aspiring changemakers with tips and strategies to help you change the world
while living a life of impact and purpose.
So every year, myself and other nonprofit professionals in our area have just
marveled at the success of Enloe high school's "Enloe Charity Ball".
So the Enloe charity ball has been coordinated for the past 15 years.
by the Enloe High School student council and student body, and it has
grown a huge amount since that first year when it raised about two thousand
dollars as part of a contest between the different grade levels to see who could
raise the most money for charity, to now, this year, raising two hundred and seven
thousand dollars but what is really striking is that they do it in just four
or less months. So over the course of a few months during usually the fall
semester of their school here's basically how the process works first
they put out a call to local charities to apply to be their partner for the
year so nonprofits around the area will apply and then the student council will
vet the nonprofit's they'll look through the applications and they'll pick a
handful to move on to the next level of the application process they interview
their top choices and then end up picking their final charity usually just
before the school year begins so some of the prep work is being done over the
semester or over the summer between school years once a charity is selected
announced the partnership to the public and begin a series of smaller campaigns
and events to raise awareness and raise money throughout the semester leading up
to one big event the Enloe charity ball that is the culmination of everything
else and totals of all the money that has been raised throughout the past
several months and money raised through the charity ball itself to provide that
grand total of amount raised to the charity that they chose fundraising is
done through these small events such as art shows or bake sales etc so smaller
things leading up to the larger event also through sponsorship asks through
grant applications and good old-fashioned pitch meetings where
they're going in to talk to a potential funder making their case and hoping for
the best I've talked extensively in past videos
about how it's so amazing the world does not give teenagers enough credit but the
fact is that with some planning preparation and hard work kids
can make a huge huge impact and when it happens
adults are left in awe and inspired and hopefully will take action and do a
little bit more as well like the rest of us and the best of us I have personally
struggled with fundraising and it's just hard out there when you are a nonprofit
to get together the funds that you need to stay afloat and make an impact so the
fact that these kids are able to raise this much money I mean think about it
too many organizations what they raise could cover an entire years worth of
operations and programming if not more so really depending on the charity this
is making an enormous impact for whatever nonprofit they choose I really
wanted to understand how they were having this much success because I
really think that adults could learn a lot from their strategies and in talking
to the teens themselves some of their parents and outside observers other
nonprofit professionals in the area I came up with four strategies that I
think are really helping them succeed okay so the first strategy that I have
observed them doing that I think is really helpful to
any effort to help charity and especially a large-scale fundraising
campaign is delegating so each person each leader in the student council has a
very specific role that they play and that they own so I talked to a logistics
coordinator so this person is making sure the big event that the charity ball
was running smoothly had everything it needed and was gonna work
you know fundraising sponsorship chairs volunteer chairs everything that it
takes to make the whole shebang work out the second strategy that's really really
important in any organization that the Enloe student council did really well
was making helping out and making fundraising efforts towards their end
goal just be part of the culture of not just the student council but of the
entire school so even though on the student council itself each person had a
special role that they owned that they played towards the end goal each one of
them also undertook some fundraising responsibilities asking parents friends
others in their network for support when you make something like helping out or
fundraising part of your community culture or organizational culture just
make it part of that identity then people are going to be much more likely
to do it because they want to fulfill this image and this idea of and their
own idea for themselves of who they think they are so when you say something
like well we are the type of person who would help out the community they want
to live up to that standard and that vision of themselves so making a part of
the culture will encourage them to do just that this has the added effect of
increasing fundraising potential because there's about 2,500 students at that
school and each Club each class is challenged to sort of do their part
towards the end goal so you've got different clubs hosting miniature events
miniature campaigns concerts dance recitals etc all towards the big goal so
they're all working together as a collective
Zillah I'm the vice president of governing procedures and logistics for
at l'chayim I like to call it organized chaos
this comes this big ball comes through two months of teamwork
hard work passion and feeling alive with purpose this comes through reaching out
to the community believing in themselves to host events and go well the active
duty Council members go canvass go Carol in the rain just because they care about
this so very much this wouldn't be possible without our community it
wouldn't be possible without our student council members thanks so much time and
dedication into this mission I would I wouldn't spend my time anybody else
another great aspect of making and lo charity ball and the responsibility of
fundraising part of the school's culture and identity is that every year you know
in different leaders cycle in to the student council and you get new students
in and students graduating you have a constant influx of fresh ideas and new
people with new energy and this really helps prevent something that gets
experienced adult fundraisers all the time and that is burnout so when you
have people getting a new chance to participate each year and you know kind
of bringing your term to a close and concluding it with pride and
satisfaction as to all you've been able to accomplish then you get to escape
that that burnout feeling that often exhausts nonprofit professionals and
perhaps makes us less successful than we could be the third strategy that I think
really helped the Enloe charity ball succeed is the group's focus on
authentic emotion and storytelling so many others that I talk to in the
community agree that when you you talk to these teens who are doing this they
just have this glow this authentic passion that just comes out and it's
hard not to root for that and on the storytelling side you know we see in
fundraising and any kind of marketing honestly that
storytelling and talking about the personal impact of something is gonna be
a bit more effective than sharing hard data and statistics which I observed the
team doing very little of focusing way more on that storytelling piece
the fourth strategy that I alluded to earlier is the use of social capital
social capital is of course you know the ability of your collective network to
get something done or to acquire a resource so thinking of how there's
twenty five hundred students there they all have you know families parents
friends teachers etc that's a pretty extensive community to potentially draw
resources from so you know how this translates to other fundraising efforts
is just think about how you can make something relatable enough that others
will want to participate in the fifth strategy I saw that was really inspiring
was there was a heavy focus on recognizing and appreciating those who
donated and participated on all levels what is that to believe in us and our
mission which is to be alive with purpose ok so let's summarize all this
and translate it into some actionable items for the rest of us how can we take
what we've learned from these amazing teenagers and try to improve our own
fundraising success for the causes we care about so here are a couple of ideas
number one people power so you want to think about ways that you can mobilize
the community to do the fundraising for and with you two things are really key
to being able to do this the first is to make participation easy so don't make it
a big barrier to get involved to sign up to begin helping out the second piece is
you really want to equip your supporters with the tools they need to succeed do
not assume that all of them know how to articulate your mission how the
fundraising will help without your guidance so you want to provide that
language you want to explain to them how the fundraising will support your cause
your mission give them that language and that information up front before they
even sign up so that they oh how to be the best advocate for your
efforts possible the second thing is year round all the time you want to be
in graining fundraising and participating in the success of your
organization's efforts throughout the whole year into team culture so sharing
this idea that fundraising is not just for the people whose title is fund
raiser anybody and everyone in the organization from all board of directors
volunteers staff anyone should be and could be helping support the work of
fundraising to support the organization encouraging passionate storytelling is
the third strategy we can take from this ask the people who support you in your
network why they got involved it's gonna be about their personal story of
involvement that's gonna encourage the other people the other friends and their
own networks to get involved not someone else's story but their story so give
them the tools to be able to reflect on what that story is so that they can
articulate it to others and the fourth is the all-important thank you you want
to build a donor appreciation mechanism right into all fundraising efforts from
the very beginning of planning stages that's all I got thank you so much for
joining me once again my name is Amber Melanie Smith and I make these weekly
videos here on YouTube about social impact nonprofits service leadership and
more I really hope that this was helpful to you got your wheels turning please go
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you