Welcome back to the Connect FCS Ed podcast! In today’s final episode of our FCCLA series, we will be learning about Fundraising, and with me today is our amazing co-host and FCCLA National Partnership manager, Abigail Lee. Abby, I’m so grateful to have you with us today, welcome!
Episode Notes:
• If you are starting out brand new, you don’t have a chapter and you’re interested in starting a chapter, I’d recommend first starting on our website, we have our join page that list out what it looks like, and then I also encourage you to check out the FCCLA advisors Facebook group. That’s a great support group for those that… I know myself, sometimes I’m like, I see it, I understand what it says, that I need someone to walk me through it. And so we have a lot of advisors that are on stand-by and a lot of our staff members to help through that process, but that would be the first start step and then you’ll affiliate through the portal. If your school has had a chapter before and you’re a new advisor, there’s some that might have a different processes, but then our staff members are happy to walk you through it, if you do need further assistance with that. (7:15)
• So we have our set numbers for what our affiliation costs are, and then you can find out what your state does, and then it’ll be up to the advisor to determine if they wanna do a chapter dues. We do have some of our ones that they might have a goal of fundraising or to offset the cost, 50% for chapter members, or like we’ve done on the national level, we started this year was through our ultimate leadership fund, where we provide an affiliation support grant opportunity that chapter advisors can apply for. We have some chapters that maybe fundraise an amount to help those student members that can’t pay for affiliation themselves, so that can be determined on that a lot, your advisors or your educators will know maybe how many of your students are low-income students, what percentage of that that’s where your numbers in your data for your school that are specific to your school, what your demographics look like will really help you determine that number when fundraising. (9:40)
• How can we go about mixing it up so we don’t have the same people helping fundraise? With that, I would say looking at what the students passions are… for some of them, you might have one that’s very successful in your town, so I know in college we did bingo with the college organization I was in, and that was extremely successful every year you could count on those funds, so for that… In that way, I would say, keep going with that. So a lot of times when we see it takes like three years, if you’re wanting to do a big community event as your fundraiser, it’s gonna take three to four years for it to catch on with the community and start raising those funds. So I’d recommend if you’re thinking, we do the same fundraiser every year, sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes if your community comes to expect it now, if you’ve seen you’re in year three and you’re not seeing a progressive increase in your fundraising funds or the amount of individuals participating, that’s when you should rethink, maybe let’s have a new idea come in, but if you’re seeing a progression in that, that’s a good thing because then you want your community to come to know. (14:38)
• I had a lot of community support and family members that donated and contributed, so she also let us know that if you hit your goal, if you want to choose to have the rest that you earn the split amongst the chapter. You could do that. And so we did, so I did do that. I had a lot of family members that wanted to donate because sometimes your family members feel good if they say, This is going to Barbara, I know I’m writing this check to support Barbara, but then our chapter, we’re able to… (20:55)
• So as a recap, because that was a lot of great, five great tips. One set realistic goals to decide what you want to fundraise for, is that a conference or membership… Three, practice your pitch. And that is something I think we all are constantly doing when it comes to defending FCCLA as well as being a family and consumer sciences educator for student members on the same page. This is a student-led organization, so if they don’t back it up, then we need to re-calculate and then finally, promotion and recruitment, open it up, and don’t be afraid to ask for questions. (29:04)
CONNECT WITH ABIGAIL LEE:
• Email: Partnerships@fcclainc.org
• Twitter: @NationalFCCLA
• Pinterest: NationalFCCLA
CONNECT WITH BARBARA:
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WHEN DOES IT AIR…
DECEMBER 15th, 2021