Fundraise

Help the IFOPA!

On April 23, 2006, researchers a the Univeristy of Pennsylvania School of Medicine announced they had discovered the gene that causes FOP.

In order to speed up the investigation into possible treatments, the IFOPA is committed to insuring a constant flow of funds to Drs. Kaplan, Glaser & Shore at the FOP Lab at Penn. That yearly contribution to the lab's budget is now over $600,000. In addition, the IFOPA continues to help those with FOP in other ways: supporting member conferences, assisting fundraisers, educating the general & medical communities, connecting members via our newsletters & website, and addressing patient needs. Without the dedication and commitment of compassionate supporters, the IFOPA could not fulfill our mission.

These commitments strain our pocketbooks, but we meet the challenge every year thanks to the collective efforts of FOP families doing individual fundraising events both big and small, bake sales to golf tournaments. Until now, a small number of families have provided the bulk of funds to support the IFOPA & FOP research, but in order to maintain this level of activity and research, WE NEED YOU!

Please consider getting involved with fundraising! It can be tons of fun, and the best way to insure a bright future for the one in your life with FOP. Take a look at the variety of fundraising possibilities listed below and, perhaps, you will find one that fits with your friends and family. When making your choice, please don't think only of how much you can make, but also about how much time you have, volunteers to help, potential publicity, etc. Remember: Every fundraiser is important, big, small & in-between.

For more information, (including written outlines for certain events and "Ways to Raise," an even longer list of possible fundraisers), please contact the IFOPA's main office at 407-365-4194 or together@ifopa.org. Thank you.

Letter Drive
Many families have raised a lot of money for FOP research simply by mailing letters to friends and family. Holiday time is an especially good time to do this since people are already in a giving mood and many are thinking about year-end charitable giving. The IFOPA can even help you write these letters, if you'd like! Please contact Peter & Jeri Licht, the mentors for this program, at jpdlicht@aol.com for more information.

"Change" the World
Ask 5-10 people to save all their change for 3-5 months. You save yours. Count it at the end of the prescribed time and you may be surprised to find how much you've raised.

Garage Sales, Bake Sales, Book Sales
Ask 2-5 friends to help with a bake sale, book sale, or garage sale. You and your friends bake the goodies, or get the books or other stuff required for the sale, staff it, and help clean up afterwards. This is an excellent way to get people involved in fundraising without ever actually asking them for money.

Another idea: Have a sidewalk sale or garage sale for your whole neighborhood or building. Go around to your neighbors and tell them you will take their stuff outside and sit with it all day to sell it if they will donate half or all of the proceeds to your group. Since this is stuff people want to rid of anyway, it is a good deal for them. In one apartment building with ten units participating in donating stuff, an organization netted $3,000 in one day. Three people from the organization helped with the selling. With a few high-ticket items, such as a washer/dryer or some nice lamps, you can make good money.

Happy Birthday
Invite people to your birthday party and ask that in lieu of gifts they give money to the IFOPA.

Matching Gifts
Find out which of your friends (perhaps this is true for you also) work in corporations with matching gift programs. Then ask them to donate and get their gift matched, and ask them to ask their co-workers to donate and get their gifts matched.

Resolve to Quit a Bad Habit for a Good Cause
Offer to do something your friends and family have been nagging you to do anyway, and attach a price to it. For example, quit smoking on the condition that your friends donate to your group, or get your friends to pay a certain amount for every day you don't smoke up to 30 days. Agree to match their gifts at the end of thirty days if you didn't smoke. Give them their money back if you did. (This method could be applied to other healthy behaviors, such as exercising or not eating sugar.)

Childhood Collections
If as a child, you collected something avidly that you now store in a basement, consider selling it. Coins and stamps are particularly valuable and have usually increased in value over the years. But your collection of rocks, toy ships, rockets, arrowheads, or dolls can also be valuable. When you donate the income from the sale, you can deduct that amount from your taxes -- an added bonus of this strategy since you probably paid little or nothing for the items in the collection.

Have a Sundae Party
Hold an ice cream social after church or on a hot, summer afternoon. This is an event that could involve kids and get them involved in doing something good for the community.

Walk-a-thons, Bowl-a-thons, Swim-a-thons, etc.
Hold some type of a-thon event, a walk-a-thon, a bike-a-thon, a swim-a-thon, a bowl-a-thon, etc. People collect pledges for how far they walk, how many laps they swim, how many strikes or points they get, etc. Consider holding the event at a local school or even in a mall.

Service Clubs
Solicit small businesses or service clubs for $500. If you own your own business and are involved in business organizations or service clubs, this can be very effective. You can often raise $200-$500 with a simple proposal and oral presentation. Research all the service clubs in town and see what their giving policies are. They often have formal giving guidelines for large grants of $2,000 and up, but have smaller amounts of money available for specific small projects.

Ask friends who belong to service clubs, sororities, antique collecting groups, support groups, bridge clubs, etc.to discuss the IFOPA in their group and pass the hat for donations. A once-a-year sweep of even small organizations can yield $100 from each.

Churches
If you belong to a church, research whether your church or theirs has a discretionary fund. Many churches have small pools of money available to groups through a women's fellowship or pastor's discretionary fund or various seldom-used endowments. Grants are often in the $50-$500 range and so go largely untouched by fundraisers. Sometimes simply writing a letter will free up this money. and it tends to be renewable if someone is willing to ask the church yearly.

Ask if you can do a "second collection." The church passes the plate for its own collection and then you give a brief talk (or sometimes the whole sermon) about FOP and the plate is passed again.

Make A Wish
A "Make a Wish Upon a Star" fundraiser works well with schools, churches, scout groups, etc.

To have one, make your own stars out of colored paper and then ask people to buy them for $1.00 (or amount of your choice) a piece. By doing so, they can "make a wish" for themselves and for your cause.

Then, to show off the support you've received, you can hang the stars you've sold on a wall with a person's name on each.

Dinner Ideas
With 4 or 5 friends, have a Spaghetti Dinner at a church or union hall or other big room with a large kitchen. Charge $10 per person and feed more than 50 people. You can charge extra for wine or garlic bread or for dessert.

Have a Fancy Dinner at your home or a regular dinner at someone's fancy home. Serve unusual or gourmet food, or have special entertainment. Charge $25 or more per person, and have 20 or more guests.

Get three friends to help you have a Progressive Dinner. Start at one person's home for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, progress to the next person's house for soup or salad, the next person's for the main course, and the last person for dessert. Either charge by course, or for the whole package. To make it extra special (and much more expensive), get a limousine for the evening that carries guests from house to house.

Host a Wine and Cheese Party. Do not charge admission and invite as many people as you can. During the party, give a short talk about FOP, and ask everyone to consider a gift of $25, $50, or $100 or more (depending on the crowd). Either pass out envelopes and ask people to give then, or after the party contact everyone individually who came and ask for a major gift. Indicate that you have given, and if appropriate, how much you have given.

Start a Pyramid Dinner or a Chain Dinner. Invite 12 people and charge $12 each. Get two people of the twelve you invited to invite 12 people each at $12, and two people from each of those two dinners to invite 12 people at @$12, and so on. Here's the income: Your dinner 12x$12 = $144, From your dinner 12x(12+12) = $288, From those dinners 12x(12+12+12+12) = $576. Twelve is used in this example because it worked very well for the Nuclear Freeze Campaign in California, which was Proposition 12. In many communities, most of the income for the campaign was generated by 12x12 dinners.

"I'm Not Afraid" Auction

Hold an "I'm Not Afraid" Auction. You do this with just a few friends or hundreds of people if you have enough items to auction. You survey a few people (and use your own common sense) about what things need to be done in their home or office that they are afraid of or would really rather not do. This is different from a service auction&emdash;there has to be an element of dread in the activity. For example, some people cannot wash their windows because their apartment is too high or the second story of their house is too high and they suffer from vertigo. If you are not afraid of heights, you can sell your window-washing service. This goes for drain cleaning, minor roof repairs, antenna fixing, etc. Or, if you are unafraid of cockroaches or waterbugs or spiders, you can offer to clean out that dark corner of a garage or basement for a small fee. Snakes can be found in gardens and woodsheds, but maybe that doesn't bother you. The problem doesn't need to be as serious as a phobia. How about allergies to dust, pollen, weeds? if you don't have them, you can mow, sweep, clean for a fee. By marketing it as an "I'm Not Afraid" Auction, you also have the option for people to name something they need done to a group of volunteers, and then have a volunteer say, "I'm not afraid to do that." In that case, you need a set fee for the service.

"I'll Do It" Auction
Similar to the suggestion above is the "I'll Do It Auction." This is for all your friends whose desks are overflowing with papers or who can't get their receipts in order to give to the tax preparer or who complain they can never find anything. If you are well organized, offer to clean up their desk, get their rolodex in order, file their papers, etc. If you like to shop, sell that to people who don't and do all their holiday shopping for them, or buy birthday, baby shower or niece/nephew presents for them. Anything that people feel they cannot control is the organized person's fundraising dream come true.

Service Sale
Organize a service sale. Get four people (one can be you) to donate a simple but valuable service that many people could use and sell changes for $3-$5 each. Keep the price a little high so you don't have to sell so many and so that the buyers have a higher chance of winning. Services can include child care for a weekend or for any weekend night two weekends in a row; one day of housecleaning; yard work; house painting (interior or exterior), etc. Sell the tickets to neighbors, work mates, etc. Encourage people to buy several by offering discounts for multiple purchases, such as one for $5, 3 for $13, 4 for $17, 5 for $20. If you are really bold or live in a more affluent area, sell the tickets for $20 each. A full day of housecleaning for $20 is a real bargain, and buyers have a high chance of winning with fewer tickets sold.

Split the Pot
Get your gambling friends together. Charge a $5 entrance fee, and have a poker evening, asking that every "pot" be split with the IFOPA. Individuals win and so do we. You can charge extra for refreshments, or include one or two glasses of something with the price of admission. (Watch the laws in your community on this one. In some communities it is illegal to gamble, even in your own home.)

Challenges
Set up a challenge campaign. Challenge gifts can be quite small. Tell people you'll give $5 for every $25 they give, or will match every $10 gift up to ten gifts. For added suspense, make this challenge during a fundraising event. You or the host can announce, "We now have the Dave Buckstretch Challenge for the next five minutes. Dave will give $5 for every person who makes a donation."

Teach What You Know
Lead or get someone to lead a nature walk, an architectural tour, a historic tour, a sailing trip, a rafting trip, or a horseback ride. Charge $15-25 per person, or charge $35 and provide lunch.

Teach a seminar on a topic you know: fundraising, knitting, organic gardening, organizing, proposal writing, environmental impact reports, gourmet cooking, dog grooming, starting your own business. Charge $20-50 per person, with a goal of 20-30 people. Either absorb the cost of promotion, or have enough participants to cover it.

Are you Artistic?
If you have an artistic bent, offer to design greeting cards to specification for organizations or individuals for a fee. If you are good at calligraphy, sell your skills to schools for graduation announcement, friends for classy but low-cost wedding invitations, or just fun certificates such as "World's Greatest Dad" for Father's Day or "Outstanding Friend." Create unique Halloween costumes or masks. Donate the proceeds from your artistry.

Money Multiplies
How to raise $500 or more through small efforts: Do one fundraising event every other month that nets at least $75. This might look like: Poker party raises $100...Fancy dinner (8 people at $25) raises $200...Book sale raises $50...Recycle newspapers raises $100.

Give part of the $500. Then ask your friends to join you in giving $25, $50, or whatever your gift is. This is most effective because you are not asking them to do anything you haven't done.

List all your friends who would be interested in our organization. Decide how much each one should give. Write to them on your own stationery, include a brochure and a return envelope. Phone those people who don't respond in two weeks, Some people will need 10 friends to give $50, and some people need 50 friends to give $10. Most people will need a combination such as: 2-3 @ $50, 4-5 @ $25, 15 @ $10.

A Nice Getaway
If you have a vacation home and would like to rent it out to give someone a nice getaway. The proceeds can be donated to the IFOPA.

Leave a Bequest
A strategy with a long-deferred payoff (we hope) is to include the IFOPA in your Will. If you would like information on how to make such a bequest, please contact the IFOPA office at 1-407-365-4194.

FOP Awareness Bracelets
Show off your FOP advocacy by wearing an FOP Awareness Bracelet. The bracelet is green and is embossed with "FOP AWARENESS WWW.IFOPA.ORG."

The bracelets are $2 each and must be ordered in batches of 10 or 25. The bracelets are available in both youth and adult sizes. By wearing the official green IFOPA wristband, you are visually supporting our efforts to raise public awareness about FOP.

Contact the IFOPA office at together@ifopa.org or 407-365-4194 if you are interested in ordering bracelets. If paying by check, please send to:

IFOPA
PO Box 196217
Winter Springs, FL 32719-6217

You may pay online through PayPal by clicking on the icon below. International requests are encouraged to pay through PayPal.

When ordering, please indicate your payment is for “bracelets,” quantity desired (in batches of 10 or 25) and size (adult or youth).

Special Occasion Scrolls: Gifts to Remember
Honor guests of your next wedding, bar mitzvah or other special occasion by giving them their own IFOPA scroll.

By making a $2-5 donation (per guest) to the IFOPA, the IFOPA will create and send scrolls (similar to the one pictured below) to you. An elegant white ribbon will tie around each scroll.

The scrolls can be placed on reception tables or other locations of your choosing. Each will thank your guest for sharing this special day with you, as well as recognize the donation you made in lieu of a traditional gift.

Phone in your gift today by calling 407-365-4194 or by emailing us at together@ifopa.org.

As you can see, the possibilities for fundraising are endless!
Most fundraising involves the simple strategy of asking for money and giving something back in gratitude (fun, music, food, etc). It is not always easy, but with imagination, creativity, and a sense of fun, it can be a wonderful opportunity for your friends and family to show their support. At the same time, you will also be helping make a real difference in the lives of those with FOP. It's a true win-win situation!

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Some of these ideas are reprinted with permission. Copyright 1986 Chardon Press/Grassroots Fundraising Journal.