The Beggs Golden Demons took on a challenge this fall to help their elementary school raise money and they were able to attain that goal by creating an online apparel fundraiser to sell spirit wear like tees, sweatshirts, hoodies and more through their apparel store! Read on to see how this small elementary school used an online t-shirt fundraiser to bring in the big bucks!
Timing is Everything
This online apparel fundraiser made it big by choosing just the right time of year to set up their spirit wear fundraiser. Choosing the right dates to spread the word is such an integral part of creating a successful t-shirt fundraiser campaign. So many schools make sure to have fundraisers ready to go at the beginning of the school year; however, the best time of year to do an apparel fundraiser is once all of the new school year hustle and bustle have died down a bit. Wait to open your fundraiser store until there aren’t a bunch of other competing fundraisers (this includes the cookie dough). Time it so that it opens and covers at least one typical pay day for family and friends. Leaving your online fundraiser campaign open for just the right amount of time is also crucial. If you leave your fundraiser open for pre-orders for too long, you chance the buyers procrastinating and end up forgetting about it completely. If you make your t-shirt campaign too short, then you chance the word not getting out in enough time. So do yourself and your organization (School, church, business, non-profit and more) a favor, and really set aside some time to plan out just the perfect dates for your online fundraiser.
Sharing your store, marketing your products
Along with choosing the right time for your sales of your fundraiser items, it is also very important to share your store. In this case, our small-town elementary school chose to use social media, flyers, text messages, class dojo, and emails to get the word out. Just as in anything you need to sell, it is important to let your buyers know what you have to offer. At American Tees, we are glad to offer free flyers to show off the products with an included QR code for your buyers to scan to place their orders!
Using the school’s messaging service is another fantastic way to make sure the entire school knows the store is open and ready for sales. Make the
Marketing your store by seeing what holidays are close to your online store pick up/shipping date is a great way to advertise more sales. If you choose to open your fundraiser store in October, advertise that these items would make great Christmas presents and that shipping directly to the buyer is available to keep the items a secret!
Choosing Designs THAT SELL, WITH YOUR BUYERS IN MIND
Although printing just any design may be a decent idea when setting up an online store, it is important to know your audience. Don’t get too specific with any design by adding a year or specific design feature that could date the shirt and lose value and wear time for the buyer… UNLESS, this is a commemorative shirt for winning when doing things like State Tees, Regionals Tees, District Tees and Contest Tees. When it comes to those types of shirts, it is important that you add a date and specific design elements to commemorate those products.
When thinking through your design styles, think through your target audience. Do you need to keep it trendy and up with the times so that teenagers and fashion-forward buyers will be interested, or maybe you have more of a feminine audience and more girly-style tees would be a better solution. Make sure to keep your buyers in mind when picking ideas. Even though it may be fun to design a shirt that you love, it is more important to design a shirt that the entire school, business or organization will love. Sometimes the Ol’ “Keep It Simple Stupid” cliché is a great sentiment when thinking through design ideas. Don’t get so wrapped up in using all the colors and designs that you forget your audience and buyers who just want a simple spirit wear item. In the case of the Elementary school fundraiser here, they chose two standard, more unisex designs and two designs that were more femininely designed.
Diverse pick up and shipping methods to cover all buyers NEEDS
Making sure, again, to keep your buyers in mind when making decisions for your online apparel store is crucial to creating a successful fundraiser. This doesn’t exclude making the products easily picked up or shipped! When creating your online apparel store, choose options like shipping directly to the buyer along with pick up at school so that extended family and friends can also purchase items to support the school and get some of their own spirit wear!
Sit Back, Relax & Let Our Team Go To WOrk!
After you do your part of sharing and marketing your store, it is American Tees’ Job to complete the printed apparel orders. We will even sort, bag and ship your orders directly to your buyers leaving you to sit back and collect the fundraiser check while we take care of all the work.
