Selling candy door to door simply wasn’t my favorite activity during our last fundraiser for my daughter’s school. Someone actually had the bright idea of having us conduct the fundraising activities in May shortly before school let out for summer. The temperatures were less than pleasant. In addition, I had to go with my daughter on all candy sales routes for safety reasons and frankly I didn’t have time for that after a full day of work at the office.

Needless to say, not only did we do a lot of sweating and coming in late and tired in the evening, we really didn’t sell that much. I’m not sure I have the exact answer as to why we didn’t sell that much other than the fact that I assumed people were possibly "candied out?" Perhaps another reason for low sales was because of reaching many homes where people weren’t home.

As the chairperson for fundraising, I made the decision that I had agreed to go along with the candy selling requests reluctantly and in hindsight I knew I had made a mistake.

I began to investigate other ways we could hold fundraisers and actually raise money – real money, and not exert what I refer to as "wasted effort." We really needed a reward for our hard work and that reward was money. We had so many projects to fund privately.

I discovered Fundcraft Publishing and their Cookbook Fundraising program while searching online for successful fundraising options. Their website was full of so much helpful information explaining how to begin a successful cookbook fundraiser. I liked the fact that they had a sales guarantee as well. All we needed to do, was follow their proven formula on cookbook sales. Since they have been in businesses for a century, I thought I would give them a try!

The first thing I did was gather recipes from my own stash and then I called up all the parents I could find and asked them to do the same. We all came up with 2 recipes that were our favorites and submitted them to publish in the cookbook. We then had the children submit a favorite recipe that they were able to cook as well. Finally, we sent out letters in the community explaining our fundraiser, what the funds were for, and asked them to support us by sending in one of their favorite recipes.

Soon, we had so many recipes we were ready to put a cookbook together! I was so happy because I knew we were on our way to success and we hadn’t even had one sweaty uneventful evening of "empty selling." I volunteered to put the cookbook together and received strong support from Fundcraft with any questions I had.

The strong customer support really impressed me. We had everyone’s recipe printed in the cookbook and printed their name next to their recipe. Everyone wanted to buy a cookbook! We decided to follow Fundcraft’s cookbook selling method and it worked!

We ended up making over $2,500 in fundraising dollars, which was $1,000 more than we had even anticipated. To this day, we all remember that successful cookbook fundraiser and we all use the cookbooks! I purchased extra copies myself just to give as gifts to family and friends on special occasions.

Cookbook Fundraising works! And, fundraising with cookbooks the Fundcraft Way is fun and profitable! You should try it – No sweat!

~Terri C.

Louisiana

Find out how your organization, church, school or club can raise needed funds with cookbook fundraising with Fundraft Publishing.