shawn farner [dot com]

So, it seems we’re in a bit of trouble.

The Mu Chi chapter of Alpha Phi Omega is now, for all intensive purposes, broke.  We were sitting on a hefty sum of money at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, and we’re now in the red.  How did we get this way?  Reckless spending, failure to collect dues and little to no income from fundraising projects.

For the 2008-2009 year, there are new officers with totally different philosophies on how things should be done.  I am totally confident that each one realizes we’re in a bad situation at the moment and is doing their best to get us out of it.  In this post, I’m going to lay a little bit of my fundraising plan out.

1.  Ask Businesses for Donations

I am not above begging local businesses to donate to APO.  We do a lot of service projects in the community, probably the most out of any group on campus, and that is not cheap.  I have already drafted a letter I”ll send out which kindly asks for any donation, big or small.

2.  Sell Advertising

The Alpha Phi Omega web site is not even finished yet, but when it is, I plan on selling some ad spots to any business that will pay the price.  Paying for an ad might be more of a goodwill gesture by a business at the start, since we won’t have much traffic.  It will at least give a business something in return for contributing to us.

3.  Find a Sponsor for Everything We Do

I mean everything.  I will look into getting a sponsor for homecoming t-shirts, date auctions or whatever other ideas we come up with.  I want to spend as little of our own money as possible and I’m going to try my hardest to spend zero of it.

As we get closer to the beginning of the semester, things will begin to take shape.  By then, the web site should be complete and I will have hopefully heard from businesses regarding donations and advertising.  At that point, I’ll be able to judge how successful these tactics are going to be for the coming year.

Have ideas?  Drop me an email or leave a comment.