When I’m walking through the Brickyard, I often see scattered bake sales hosted by various student organizations. Upon these tables sit assorted baked goods, donuts or even store-bought cookies from the Target on Hillsborough.
At my high school, student organizations were never allowed to host bake sales for the sole reason of how inefficient they are for educating and gaining student support. Instead, organizations should implement issue-based fundraising in order to emphasize the significance of both their organization and the issue within the community.
Issue-based fundraising is not an official term and has not been researched in the field of service learning, but my high school used the phrase frequently to describe proper fundraising techniques. The general meaning is rather straightforward: the focus of the fundraising is on the issue, not the money. This means that the main goal of having a fundraiser should be on the education of others about the issue or organization.
The first half of issue-based fundraising is basic education about the issue. Fundraisers need to have information readily available for community members to learn about the topic. This is a very simple add-on to fundraisers and can easily be implemented by student organizations.
As an example, this can include having a poster board available with information about the issue, its importance and why the money is needed. Moreover, the group can provide students with brochures or fliers with more information in order to educate the community and spread the importance of the issue outside of the Brickyard and into conversations across campus.
The second half of issue-based fundraising revolves around the fundraiser itself and ties it to the education aspect. The student organizations need to plan creative fundraising concepts that relate to the organization and enhance the students’ understanding of the topic. This simply means that the mode of fundraising needs to match the reason for fundraising.
For example, if an organization is trying to fundraise in order to buy flu prevention kits to distribute to low-income areas, then a bake sale doesn’t match the issue at hand. How are students meant to understand the importance of flu prevention kits and why the money is important if they are simply buying a baked good?
The iceberg model illustrates how changing or adjusting deeper elements such as mental models or patterns of behavior increase leverage with a person and lead to longer-lasting change. In other words, the model explains the need to go deeper than surface level if one wants to create conversations and student change that persists after the fundraiser ends.
When student organizations follow the issue-based fundraising model to focus on education first and fundraising second, then they can expect to see longer-lasting changes in the community. Not to mention, more creative fundraisers (anything but bake sales) have the ability to gain just as much attention and revenue because of their ingenuity.
Although they are a cakewalk, bake sales are the most surface-level of all possible fundraisers and the least effective at educating the community. Student organizations need to think out of the box in order to develop fundraisers that change the perceptions and behaviors of the community.
