A recent two day event in Kansas City raised $90,000 for No Kid Hungry. Those are big results for a personal fundraising effort. With the average bake sale for No Kid Hungry raising approximately $1000, what made this bake sale so successful in helping connect kids with 900,000 meals? Let’s look at four tips learned from Gina Reardon, who was the organizer of this personal fundraising event.
Before we dive into the four tips, here’s a little background on Gina and her bake sale. This was the third year Gina hosted a Bake Sale for No Kid Hungry. The first year raised $7500, last year raised over $27,000 and you already know what she’s done this year. Gina is a professional caterer and is the owner of Catering By Design. With the help of brunch co-chair Nancy Smith, this year, the one day bake sale turned into a two-day culinary event with the community bake sale on Saturday and a country brunch and bloody mary smack down on Sunday. The country brunch included a band, over a dozen restaurants serving tasting plates, a silent and live auction and much more.
It Takes A Village
Gina deserves credit for hosting this bake sale, but she is always giving credit to those who came together to help her. And there are many who shared their strengths. She had someone help chair the culinary event, manage the silent auction and help with the event planning. There are many more ways, but the important thing is to know that Gina brought people together who contributed to not only baking for the bake sale but also marketing/PR, signage, flyers, interviews, deliveries and working that day. For the brunch, it took getting the tables, linens, signs, auction items, restaurants and bartenders, registration, marketing, celebrity MC, raffle tickets, and more. It's important to remember that it takes a village but doesn't happen without YOU.
Attention To Details
At the bake sale, Gina pointed out the little things she did to make everything look nice. There were bows and orange colored wrapping and every little thing reminded you this wasn’t just brownies on a paper plate in a ZipLoc bag. It was a professional event with the tent, tables and tablecloths donated by a rental company, to the signs donated by a local sign company to the No Kid Hungry bracelets and buttons she had for everyone to wear when they checked out. Gina is a caterer by profession, so she makes it look easy to look good. From individually wrapping everything, to the bags people were given when making a purchase, to the aprons that every chef wore at the brunch, it looked professional. It was the little touches that made everyone say, "What a great event!" without even having to think why.
Goals
When Gina first started 3 years ago, she asked for suggestions from NKH on what her goal should be. They said the average for a bake sale was around $1000. Gina set her's for $3500 and crushed it. Last year she went bigger and crushed that. This year she went for the home run and it's yet to be seen how she'll end up for the year, but she’s already crossed the $90,000 threshold with the culinary weekend. Gina shared that when she hosted her first bake sale, she knew she should have a goal. After knowing she was going to be one of the top fundraising teams last year, she set a more ambitious goal. This year, she set an audacious goal. When you don’t have something to aim for, you never know where you are heading. Set a goal and then back into a plan to get there. Gina’s plan came with a couple years of experience and connections that helped her expand her goal in a big way.
Start Early
While most people will see the $90,000 raised and the two-day culinary weekend, the event was being planned for a year. Gina, and her team, have been working on the culinary weekend since the bake sale last year. From planning to fundraising to getting more people on board, this was something that took a year of planning a preparation. Getting the ideal space to host the bake sale (in a walkable downtown shopping district and next to a residential family neighborhood) and the country brunch (an event space with room for food trucks out back and outdoor seating area) were just two things that had to be reserved well in advance. Coordinating getting the Mayor of KC to be a guest baker for the bake sale and then showing up to deliver his baked creations along with timing the local news to show up and do a segment on the bake sale with the Mayor and Gina, all took people and planning to make it happen. The earlier you can get on people’s calendars, the more likely you are to get their commitment.
There are so many lessons we can learn from Gina about hosting a successful fundraising event for No Kid Hungry. By learning from what works, we can become more success ourselves. What tips do you have to share on hosting a successful fundraising event for No Kid Hungry? Let’s Share Our Strength and help end child hunger in America.
