Relay For Life - Easy Summer Fundraising with Direct Sales

Today is June 1st, which means most of us are either wrapping up our 2014 Relay's or will be soon!  If you are like me, you are all sorts of fired up and ready to keep going though.  While summer is a GREAT time for fundraising, many of us are ready for a few months of down time before revving up for another high intensity Relay season. 

But the problem is, cancer doesn't take the summer off.

Imagine how much MORE we could raise for American Cancer Society of we did just one summer fundraiser each. 

So today, I want to encourage you to get out there and do just one summer fundraiser that you wouldn't have done before while taking a few months off.  The best part?  I have a list of some awesome direct sales people who are willing to do parties for you, and give a portion of the profit back to you for Relay For Life.  Why is this so awesome?  Most of these companies are rock stars at setting up a party for you online.  You invite your friends to shop, shop yourself, and stay at home in your PJ's while raising funds to cure cancer.  This my friends, is as easy as it gets(and you know how I like my PJs!)!

 

Now, keep in mind this list has been made for teams in the Oklahoma area, however, if you found this blog through pinterest, many if not all of these vendors can probably help you out by setting up an online party for you as well! 

So take a peek at the list below and pick out one that you would love to buy stuff from anyway, and make it happen!  If you are in the direct sales business and would like to be included in this list, please comment below with:

Your name
Your company
Your website
Your phone number
Your email
What percentage will go to Relay For Life

Name: Vallerie sheldon
Company: Tupperware
Website: www.my2.tupperware.com/valleriesheldon
Phone: 580-481-0427
Email: Raiwen79@gmail.com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  40% goes to organization

Name:  Jami Burnes
Company: Thirty One Gifts
Website: www.mythirtyone.com/jamiburnes
Phone:  409-454-0720
Email: eeyore1809@yahoo.com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  Up to 50% commission depending on the fundraiser

Name:  Danelle Delp
Company:  Scentsy
Website: Https://danelledelp.scentsy.us
Email: Danelle4yall@aol.com
Phone:  (405)203-7333
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  75% of commission donated! (The remaining percent is to cover her cost of materials provided)

Name:  Debra Gamble
Company:  Pampered Chef
Website: www.pamperedchef.biz/debragamble
Phone: 509-855-3555
Email: Pcdeb13@gmail.com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  15-25%

Name:  Bonny Moulton
Company:  Velata
Phone:  580 302 1774
Email: fonduefun7@yahoo.com
Website:  http://bonnymoulton.velata.us
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  100% of commission

Name:  Erika Cerda
Company:  Jamberry Nails
Website:  buynow.jamberrynails.net
Phone:  405.474.5152
Email: Inexorable@gmail.com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  Base 10% but can go up to 25% depending on sales, the extra would be my commission which is cool.  We could do it entirely online or we can host an in person party alongside it

Name:  Jennifer Mandell - I sell Origami owl - I have already done a fundraiser for Cassi. :-) Cancer took my Mom from me 14 years ago so I am always happy to help out! I donate 50% proceeds to your cause and the other 50% goes to my Autism cause.
Company: Origami Owl
Website:  http://samsvoice.origamiowl.com/
Email: JenniferMandell@optonline.net
 Designer# 25818

Name:  Teri Tolbert (Teri is a breast cancer survivor!)
Company:  Origami Owl
Independent Designer
#40037
Website:  teritolbert.origamiowl.com
Email: teri.tolbert@yahoo.com
Phone:  580-668-0369
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life: 20% of total sales
If someone wants to actually host a party, I'll do 25% of total sales.

Name: Brandi Walstrom
Company:  O2 Origami Owl
designer #43365
Website: brandiw.origamiowl.com
Phone: Denver, CO 720-369-4482
Email: walstrombn@hotmail.com
Percentage that will go to Relay: 50%

Name: Kayla Shantz
Company: Damsel in Defense
Website: Www.mydamselpro.net/okiedamsel
Phone: (580) 819-3085
Email: Okiedamselpro@gmail. Com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life:  60% of commission

Name: Ashley Dickens
Company: Plexus Worldwide
Website: http://www.facebook.com/l/sAQG6vS8TAQFna4ZAXhel-ztRdqnuM_AoWXU1iQR7470--Q/www.plexusslim.com/AshleyMarie
Phone: 580-302-2598
Email: AshleyDickens.Plexus@gmail.com
Percentage that will go to Relay For Life: 50%

Magic Memories Mayhem:  Jessica is a Disney travel agent who will give a portion of her commission to Relay For Life if you and your friends use her for booking your vacations!  She is my personal travel agent, and I can honestly highly recommend her to you.  You can email her at   magicmemoriesandmayhem@live.com or visit her website at http://www.magicamemoriesmayhem.com

Gold Party:
Now, this is one that I have told you all about before, and I really love it.  Shelly with Party of Gold will come to you, and all you have to do is invite your friends to come over and sell their old, unwanted gold.  Instead of spending money, you and your friends will MAKE money!  Shelly writes them a check on the spot, and your Relay team gets a percentage of her commission.  It may not seem like a lot, but let me tell you- it adds up FAST.  Besides, who doesn't like making money while helping a good cause?  My team has done this one, and it is definitely on our list to repeat again.  Be sure to tell her I sent you, because she also gives $50 for each referred party that does over $400 in sales to your cause!

Name: Shelly Collins
Company: Party of Gold
Website: partyofgold.com
Email: shelly@partyofgold.com
Phone: 405-371-8784

Let me know which one you choose if you are part of Relay For Life of Custer County, and I will be sure to help you get the word out!

Happy Relaying friends!
Cassi

Relay For Life Campsite Decorating and On Site Fundraiser Ideas

Hello Relay friends!  Relay For Life of Custer County has another GREAT year in the books ($132,000 event total!), and I am excited to share all of the awesome ideas from this years event!  Over the next few weeks I will be sharing them with you- but I want to start with everyone's favorite (according to my stats!) DECORATING and onsite fundraisers! To check out last years decorating, go here.

First things first- this years theme was Lights, Camera, CURE!  Life on the purple carpet.  Each team picked a movie, and we made sure there were no duplicates.  The teams were all really excited about this theme, because it could be so diverse.  Everyone really went all out!  If you are doing a movie theme, you can look here for theme ideas.

My team, The Mighty Misfits, went with a super hero theme- Super Heroes Unite to Finish The Fight! It fit us perfect since Cancer Man is on our team, and we have a lot of kiddos who Relay with us.  We all had a great time putting costumes together for the event.

 For our area, we used a plastic Starry Night Scene Setters roll to create stars behind our city scene.  This stuff couldn't be easier to work with- we just used magnets to attach it to our canopy!  We even had enough left over to cover the top of our pop up by taping it in place.  For the buildings, we used boxes covered with silver wrapping paper, and black vinyl to create the windows. 

On the other side I used a king sized sheet that I cut holes in and zip tied to the canopy (If I would have realized how easy the scene setter was, I would have used it for this side to!) Cancer Man brought his car (with working lights and steering wheel!) and we also put Cancer Man's purple phone booth to the side.  We made the phone booth by cutting a water heater box, and painting it purple. 

 

 One thing I didn't realize ahead of time is how much the adults would like the kids props!  If I could do it over again, I would have def. gone with a refrigerator box for the phone booth, so that the adults could fit to! 

 

 Next up we have the Etc. Shop's team- these ladies always do something really fun with decor, and the whole team gets involved!  This year they went with Willy Wonka- Wishing and Working at a cure factory!  It was complete with a candy bar for their onsite fundraiser!  These girls do something really neat with their canopy- they cover it with plastic table cloths!

  For directions on how to do that, go here! 

 

 Next up we have the girls from IBC Bank!  This team is headed up by a set of sisters who REALLY know how to bring a movie theme to life!  Check out this Land Before Time decor!

 How cool is this!?  They used a projector to get the image on cardboard, and then traced and cut them out.  Then they painted them!  I can only imagine the amount of time that went into this.  Cathy told me they had been working on them since Christmas!

 

Then there is this little bit of brilliant.  To stand them up, they taped the cardboard to PVC pipe that was attached to weighted boxes! 

 

 They had a fun onsite fundraiser of S'mores!  They used little burners like caterers use to roast the marshmallows!

Last but not least is an idea for all of you salon owners out there.  Kadillac Barbies went all out by bringing the salon to Relay!  For a donation of $10 or more you could get an updo, or a massage!  They also offered Pantene Beautiful Lengths cuts- where girls with 7" or more to donate could get a cut and donate their hair on the spot!  For those of you that aren't familiar with this, Pantene makes high quality human hair wigs that they give to ACS for free for cancer patients!  

You can read more about this amazing service here.

 

 Like what you see?  Be sure to subscribe for more awesome Relay ideas from a 20K plus TC! 

Relay For Life Fundraising and Event Calendar

Does your Relay have a lot of events going on this time of year?  Like, so many you can't seem to keep track of what team is doing what on which day and you missed out on an awesome fundraiser, because your phone calendar can only hold so many dots?  Can you tell I have had some personal experience here?  Check out this great idea from my friend Sarah of The Little Things in Life, and how we implemented it at our local event!

Sarah made this cute little postcard to send out to all of her survivors, post locally, and give out at team captain meetings.  It has important information on upcoming events on it in calendar form!

Sarah is the event chair for Relay For Life of Washita County, which is the next event area over from our event, so we talk Relay on a pretty regular basis.  When I saw this, I knew we should do it for our event to!  Especially because we have a fairly large Relay, and there are a lot of things that go on here in March and April fundraising wise!  So, this is what I came up with.  It is great for posting on your Relay facebook page, instagram, twitter- you name it!  You can even add it to your event website (you can see mine here)

Now of course, I want to share my template with you in case you want to do the same thing!  Just right click and save the image below :)

In case you are curious, I do all of my editing in Adobe Photoshop, however Sarah does hers in an online program called picmonkey.com in case you don't have Photo Shop- it is a free service!

Happy Relay season everyone!
<3
Cassi

Relay For Life Passive Fundraising

I know, I know- I am the guru of posting out of the box and creative fundraising ideas, but did you know my 10K team doesn't get to our goal each year by only hosting BIG fundraisers?  That's right- I like to stagger BIG fundraisers with passive ones, so that my team doesn't get burned out, and we can spend more time concentrating on our big yearly events.  This really helps if you want to start fundraising all year, but you are not sure where to start!

So, what is a passive fundraiser?  Well, put simply, it is a fundraiser where you don't have to do a whole heck of a lot, but you still make money for Relay!  Who doesn't love the idea of that?  These ideas are all a great way to get your feet wet if you are a new team as well.

Here are a few of my favorites, but remember, use the connections that you have to make something happen!

Direct Sales Parties-
You know what I am talking about- that friend you have who is always giving you catalogs and asking you to have a party?  But you really don't want to, because that would mean cleaning the whole house, feeding people, and being a hostess?  Well, call the friend up- because having an ONLINE party is the perfect way to host a passive fundraiser!  With modern technology you can invite everyone, no one has to leave the house, and people can buy something they want!  Here's the catch- ask your friend if they would be willing to donate more to you than the normal hostess commission since you aren't doing this for profit (and of course, you will forgo the normal freebies you get from having a party so you can get more Relay funds!) Let them know that they can write the check directly to American Cancer Society, so they will get the tax write off that comes with the donation!  Distributors (or Consultants depending on the company) have always been really happy to help us out.  Think: Origami Owl, Scentsy, Avon, Mary Kay, Thirty-One, Tupperware, and Pampered Chef just to name a few.  Did a light bulb just go off?  I know you know someone who sells one of those things!

Before Christmas my team did one of these fundraisers with Origami Owl, partly because I was planning on buying some O2 for Christmas gifts anyway!  I figured, if I was going to buy some, other people were probably going to order to!  Jennifer (my friend who is the rep for them) took care of all of the hard work for us- she created a Facebook page, posted pictures, and answered everyone's questions.  I literally just shared what she posted with my Facebook friends!  When it was all said and done, I had Christmas done for hard to shop for people on my list, and we raised $237.05 for Relay.  Seriously- do you know how many cookies you have to bake to make that much at a bake sale?  Too many!  The furthest I had to go for this fundraiser was my mailbox when my order came in!  If you need an Origami Owl Rep, leave me a note below and I will send you Jenn's email address- she will take good care of you!

Party Of Gold
So speaking of "parties" have you ever been to one where you got PAID instead of spending money?  Yeah.  You and your guests will walk away with a check in your hands, and not just a check for Relay.  How?  Party Of Gold.  You have a rep come to you, and you bring your old, broken, x boyfriend, and out of style gold.  They weigh it, and make you an offer on the spot.  If you accept (which you will, because they have the most competitive rates) the rep writes you a check ON THE SPOT!  How is this a fundraiser?  The rep will write your event a check for 15% of their total profit from the event.  No, 15% doesn't sound like much, but when everyone you know comes to the party to make money, it adds up extremely fast.  Even better?  if someone can't make it the day of, they can fill out a form to leave with you, and they will get a call the day of the party with an offer.  Bonus points if you can find a local business to let you have it at their location- then you can invite your entire Relay and community out!  Here's another neat little bonus, for every party booked through you that does $500 in sales or more, the rep will give you an additional $50 donation.  So, uh, shameless promotion, if you live in Oklahoma, talk to my rep, Shelley, at (405) 371-8784 and tell her Cheryl Smith and Cassi Selby sent ya!  Our next gold party is Saturday, I will let you know how much we raise!

Work with a company or business to earn a percentage

One of my team mates, Jacy, made this sweet little deal happen.  She found a local distributor who was selling breast cancer awareness sports socks.  She originally contacted him to see if we could get some at wholesale to resell for profit, but the owner had an even better idea.  For every pair of socks sold in our town, he is donating $2 of his profit to us!  The socks were already all set up to sell at a really popular local boutique called It's All About Moi!, so all we had to do was tell people they were there!

The event chair for Relay For Life of Washita County told me about something they do that is similar to this when we had lunch today.  They have a local gas station that gives them a percentage of every fountain drink they sell!  Sarah has a nifty little Relay blog to, if you want to check it out, you can find it here. 

But don't think this concept stops at products! Small business owners are your BFF when it comes to passive fundraising.

Cancer Man has a partnership with Jessica Ma'ilo who is a travel agent that specializes in Disney trips and cruises.  If someone mentions Cancer Man when booking, she gives a percentage of her commission to him!  How easy is that? 

If you are a Disney freak like me (guilty as charged!), you might also enjoy her blog- Magic, Memories, Mayhem

He also has a partnership with Crystal Klear Images.  Crystal is an amazing photographer (she shot our wedding!), and she generously offered to come to our town for a day of mini sessions, and is donating 50% to Wesley's fundraising! 

Recycling
Have a printer?  Know someone who does?  Of course you do!  Did you know you can recycle your empty printer cartridges for cash?  My team uses Empties 4 Cash for this service, and it couldn't be easier.  They will send you a pre paid shipping label, you fill up a box with empties, and send it in.  In a few weeks, you get a check!  You can ask local businesses to donate their old cartridges to you to- it is a super easy way for them to help you out without spending any money!

There you have it!  The easiest fundraisers out there!  Try one out today, and see how easy passive fundraising can be!

As always, thank you for joining the mission to finish the fight against cancer!

Cassi

February Facebook Relay For Life Challenge

Are you ready for an awesome 2014 Relay For Life season?  We are all fired up here in Custer County to finish the fight!  Share your love and passion about Relay by participating in Cancer Man's February Facebook Relay For Life challenge!  A Facebook challenge is a great way to get your Relay participants actively posting about your event on a daily basis.  I wrote this challenge to feature the best parts of Relay- when the posters friends see it, they should feel like they are missing out if they don't sign up (and hey, let's be honest- they are!)

Need a copy of the challenge to share or post on your Facebook wall?  Just Right click and save the image below!  Good luck!

UPDATE:  Your wish is my command!  You can find a March challenge here!

Relay For Life Fundraising Letters - make it fun and personal!

It's a new year, and Cancer Man and I have been busy getting letters ready to go out to potential donors for Relay For Life!  I thought I would take a break from all of the folding and stuffing to share this years letters with you guys.  It is really amazing to me to see how much Wesley's letter writing skills have grown over the years.  Since he started Relaying on his own in kindergarten, the first ones were short and sweet.  But as he has grown they have gotten more detailed and informative!  To see previous years letters, look here!

First let's talk about some key points in fundraising letters that are effective.   I am known to encourage people all day long to ask online through email and Facebook, but there is something about getting an actual letter in the mail that really means something during our technology driven age.  Here's how to make the most of the letters you are writing once you get them in someones hands.

-Make it personal.  Why is Relay important to you?  How have you been personally affected by cancer?  Who are you walking for? Your friends and family know you- speak from your heart!

-Make it unique.  How many times have you just glanced over a letter asking for a donation because it looks boring?  Let's face it, we have short attention spans.  How can you make your letter unique to draw people in?  Some of my favorite letter have had a really creative edge.  A drawing, a picture, and hand made paper have topped the list on my favorites from kids- but you grown ups can do that to! Not into drawing?  Write from a creative edge (check out my letter from my dogs!)

-Share the details.  When is the event?  How can they donate online?  Who should the check be made out to?

Cancer Man writes a LOT of letters, and they are a huge part of what makes him the top fundraiser for our event.  We separate his letters into three categories- previous donors, in town friends, and out of town family and friends.  Check them out!

Previous donors:

In town friends:

Out of town family and friends:

So now that you know what direction we are going for the year- let me share my favorite little secret for speeding things up.  Adding a return envelope with your address on it increases your likelihood of getting a donation back.  But addressing them all (on top of putting your return address on all of the envelopes you are sending) is a lot of work.  We have streamlined that process by having Jessica Lynn Original create a custom return address stamp for us.  Let me tell you, it saves my hands!  So check her out- she has even created a special Relay for Life stamp, and will donate to Cancer Man every time one is sold.  If you are going to spend money, it might as well come back to the cause, right!?  She even made us one with his face on it, which he adores!

It is always more fun to write letters, and stuff envelopes with friends.  So, think about hosting a letter writing party at your next team captain or team meeting!  It's a great time to sit and talk about your upcoming Relay plans, and get ideas from other Relayers to!

So get out your favorite purple pen, and get to writing!  Together, we can finish the fight against cancer.

Peace, love, CURE!
Cassi