BBN Guides: Starfish and DNSI Fundraising Ideas

 
Looking for new and creative ideas to mobilize your community and maximize your impact? This month host a fundraiser for one of Foundation Beyond Belief’s beneficiaries. Beyond Belief Network teams are in the unique position of being able to connect with several of FBB’s programs while bolstering their own team. Your team doesn’t have to be huge to have a huge impact either. In 2015, BBN team Camden County Humanists raised $1000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society with just three members planning and five members running the event on the day.

BBN team Minnesota Atheists set up two educational tables at a Saint Paul Saints baseballgame–renamed
Mr. Paul Aints for the day–and collected over 400 shoes that were donated to Soles4Souls.

This quarter, the Humanist Giving program renewed grants to two exceptional organizations: Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) and Starfish.

DSNI works in the Roxbury/Dorchester neighborhood of Boston to raise families out of poverty, community projects, housing issues, and social justice. DSNI was our 2014 Compassionate Impact Grant beneficiary and used that grant for phase II of their Fair Chance for Family Success Initiative, an initiative focused on empowering individual families to develop strong community relationships while setting financial goals and receiving education and training to strengthen their economic security.

Starfish identifies girls and families in native Mayan communities in Guatemala that will be most successful in their education program and uses a whole family model of support. Starfish was our 2015 Compassionate Impact Grant beneficiary and their grant went toward their teacher education process as part of piloting their first high expectation upper grades school.

Fundraising Event Ideas

Fundraising events can be fun, social, and can have positive effects in your own community while raising money for a beneficiary.

• Make your meeting a fundraiser. Leading up to Halloween Corpus Christi Atheists collected donations at their regular meetings for candy and costumes that they donated to a local women’s shelter. Choose to sponsor DSNI or Starfish and collect donations at all your meetings this month.

• Consume consciously. Fundraise for DSNI by organizing a ‘Consume Consciously’ pledge drive. Each volunteer gives up a particular habit (for example, purchasing a morning coffee, daily soft drinks, or smoking) for a week and donates the savings to DSNI.

• Workout your mind and body. Learning and moving go hand in hand. Host a sporting event and pledge a percentage of the funds to Starfish. You can raise additional donations during the event with a snack bar.  

• Clean up the neighborhood. Organize a neighborhood-wide litter removal. Beforehand collect sponsorships from community members that benefit DSNI. For example, for every soda can picked up a member might donate 5 cents or $5 for every pound of trash picked up. Members can be divided into teams with prizes for most bags filled and strangest item found.

• Host a Read-A-Thon. Plan a night where people read portions by books written by their favorite authors. For each participant that pledges to read, collect a donation for Starfish. Multiply your impact by encouraging participants to bring a book to donate to a local library or school.

If your volunteer group is part of Beyond Belief Network and donates the proceeds to Foundation Beyond Belief earmarked to Starfish, DSNI, or any of our beneficiaries the event is considered as a Foundation Partners Program event, which means it will count as two events. Perfect for teams looking to quickly raise their BBN team level! Send the donation to Foundation Beyond Belief and we’ll include the donation in their grant.

Need other ideas?  Check out other guides we have created for Starfish and DSNI.

Questions or Concerns?

If you need help with planning your event or have additional questions, the best way to contact Beyond Belief Network is to use the contact webform, which enables us to track the resolution of your question: foundationbeyondbelief.org/contact-bbn. You can also email us at bbn@foundationbeyondbelief.org.