School signs up for our Fund Raising scheme

Just a quick update on our 'fabulous' fund raising scheme for schools, clubs, groups, charities etc, Mandy went to see a local school last week and they were really impressed with the work and thought that had gone into our Funds for Life scheme.

So much so that they're using our leaflet design (designed especially for the schools ready to hand out to parents) this week in the first parent newsletter.

And whilst we're on the subject of Schools....

Fabulous Photo Gifts will be putting on a display of just some of the marvellous Christmas gift ideas they personalise, including the full range of engraved crystals, at Heanor Gate Science College Christmas Fair on Wednesday 18th November so if you're in the area, why not pop in and say hello to Jonathan. He'll be somewhere in the main hall.

What's Wrong With Our Fund Raising Scheme?

What's wrong with our fund raising scheme?

It's a question we've been asking ourselves for quite some time now. Originally, when we came up with the idea of people being able to fund raise for their own causes just by forwarding visitors to our photo gift website and imputing a unique code – we thought we'd answered the prayers of a local family who approached us to do just that – raise funds for their two little boys born with SMA - http://www.twinswithsma.co.uk

At the time, we thought we couldn't just offer this scheme to anybody so we had a 'rule' of a minimum bulk order to then obtain your code, thinking clubs, teams, charities and schools etc would have no problem with this basic requirement.

However, after a lack of interest, we decided to drop the 'qualifying bulk order' requirement and just offered it as another service to our customers, their friends and families and the public in general.

And it really is easy to use.

When placing an order, all the visitor has to do is use your special code (which they'll know as its printed beside the 'click here' button to take them from your site to ours) either before they start shopping and enter the code at the foot of the home page or when they're checking out at PayPal, just include the code in their additional comments. If they forget, they can even email us afterwards and we'll sort it out.

We do all the rest.

What is in it exactly for the participants? Well, basically we donate 10% of every basket total that has their code on it back to themselves or their nominated 'good cause'.

We make a quarterly payment by cheque (monthly for larger amounts) to them and that's it.

There's no joining or membership fee. Obviously the more they promote the 'scheme membership', the more orders we'll receive and the more money they'll make.

And lets be clear – this isn't a one off deal. The 10% applies to every order, every time from whoever uses their code so in the example of a school, long after the kids have left, their families and friends could still be raising money for the school etc.

And because of the year round appeal of personalised photo gifts, we're confident that people using our scheme will be able to raise funds all year round. Apart from Birthdays, Anniversaries and Holidays, there are a number of special celebration days throughout the year – Mother's Day, Christmas etc that make excellent photo gift giving opportunities.

We've also worked very hard to keep adding to the range of gift ideas we offer so there's always new ideas to choose from for returning customers. All prices for all pockets.

So a year later and although we have a few people using the scheme, we've received very few orders bearing the codes.

Is the 'scheme' too simple? We're beginning to wonder. More now so than ever when various good causes are crying out for funds, we feel frustrated more than anything else that nobody is taking us up on our offer of what amounts to 'free money'.

Lets recap the scheme:-

Your website has a link button to Fabulous Photo Gifts (with your code written beside it)
Your visitor/friend/family member/yourself uses the link and the code
You / your visitor orders a personalised photo gift from Fabulous Photo Gifts
They use your code, either in the 'home page' or the checkout comments on PayPal – they can even email us after placing their order if they forgot.
We donate 10% of the basket total back to you.

Can you see a flaw? We're stumped but we'd welcome some input on how we can make this scheme work better for people and increase its usage.

Thanks for your time – It's really appreciated. Leave your suggestions in comments.

Jonathan – Technical Partner – Fabulous Photo Gifts.

If you'd like to have your own 'Funds for Life' scheme membership code, just email us with your cause, we'll come back to you with your scheme code and do the registration sheet then (just so we know who to make the cheques payable to!). You can design your own button or we can supply one for you to use along with the html required.

To see an example of our fund raising scheme in action, visit our newest 'member' Steve who's planning to trek Nepal raising money for Unicef – see it by clicking here.

*Please note that bulk orders are excluded from the Funds for Life scheme. You do not have to be a registered charity. Please bear in mind our delivery charges for non UK orders which are available upon request and quoted on actual costs per order weight/destination. Sorry, due to Insurance terms and conditions, we cannot deliver to the USA.

Fabulous Photo Gifts chosen by Steve's Trek to Nepal

A friend of a friend is going to be trekking in Nepal for Unicef to help raise funds for Unicef's work with the People and in particular the children of Nepal.

He's funding the entire cost of the trip himself so that every penny he raises goes straight to Unicef.

We're delighted to announce that Steve has now teamed up with Fabulous Photo Gifts' fund raising scheme - 'Funds for Life'. Place an order with Fabulous Photo Gifts using his special fund raising code and 10% of your orders basket total will be going straight to Steve's fund raising goal.

To find out more, visit Steve's Blog which he'll be updating with his training schedule as well as pictures of the trek itself once it starts.

Good luck Steve from everyone at Fabulous Photo Gifts.

Steve's trekking Nepal for Unicef

Hi Photo Gift blog watchers - a quick bit of news for you.

A friend of a friend is going to be trekking in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal on behalf of Unicef - well here's the point of the journey in Steve's own words....

"On 8th May 2009 I will be joining a group of volunteers on a 10 day trek in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal on behalf of UNICEF to raise funds to support child vaccination and education projects in the region.

The trek will reach the summit of Pike Peak at just over 4000m in altitude, from where we should be able to view neighbouring Mount Everest.

Representing a physical challenge, requiring a lot of preparation; we will be travelling light across steep and rough terrain and camping in temperatures around -10 oC (a challenge in itself!). I am also aiming to raise a minimum of £3000 to support this much needed cause. Any support you can give me towards this goal will be greatly appreciated and extremely well received by UNICEF to support the children of Nepal in need of basic health and education.

As I am covering all my own travel costs, ALL The money raised will directly benefit the children of Nepal."

Well we'd like to wish Steve our own very good wishes for his upcoming trek as I'm sure you would want to too.

To find out more, please click here and visit Steve's own blog which he hopes to keep updated with training preparations as well as photo's of the actual journey via his mobile phone!

We look forward to joining him on the adventure.

Two new charities sign up for Funds for Life

Two new fund raisers joined our 'Funds for Life' scheme this weekend.

The first - Twins With SMA (www.twinswithsma.co.uk) is raising awareness of Spinal Muscular Atrophy as well as raising funds for two very special little boys who were recently diagnosed as suffering from SMA type 2. The funds raised will help provide for specialist equipment helping to make their lives as normal as possible.

The other fund raisers are raising funds to enable another little boy to also live as normal a life as possible and they've welcomed the new Funds for LIfe scheme calling it "A fantastic opportunity". You can contact them via their website for Ashley at www.ashleysraceforwheels.com

If you'd like to find out more about how your school, group, team, club or charity could benefit for life from our innovative and admin' free scheme, then either contact Fabulous Photo Gifts or get your own copy of the 'Funds for Life' scheme details by clicking here.



http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk/funds_for_life.doc

Need a website design to host your funds for life scheme participation?

Now that we've launched our exciting fund raising scheme – 'Funds for Life' – for the benefit of all schools, clubs, teams, charities etc, and after taking an enquiry earlier today, we appreciate that many of you might be thinking to yourselves “If only we had our own website to help us raise money”.

Well, believe it or not, we can help you with that as well. Fabulous Photo Gifts has its own web designer (also our technical partner), and to stop him fiddling with our own website “you know engineers, they love to change things” kind of approach, we thought he'd be better occupied designing websites for other people.

In fact apart from Fabulous Photo Gifts and Purple13, which he's always updating etc, he's also recently completed several websites design and builds.

You can view them here – www.edt.uk.com: a motor retail industry training provider, www.tvwindows.com: a double glazing company and www.twinswithsma.co.uk: a focal information and fund raising site for two twins diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

In fact, twinswithsma.co.uk has already joined our 'Funds for Life' scheme so their website is a good example of how you can integrate your own scheme membership into an existing website.

All of these projects were 'blank canvas' jobs, meaning clients preferred to leave design choices and functionality to us, whilst just providing the text and pictures.

Price is dependent on the level of functionality and the amount of pages involved. One thing we will stress is that you will always get more than you pay for.

We can offer the full package – web design, maintenance and updates, Blog and RSS management, even domain registration and hosting (.co.uk or .com's only). Website optimisation is built in as standard and we'll even include search engine submission (by hand) and participation of the Google Site Map program.

So fret no more. Fabulous Photo Gifts really can help you make your web dreams a reality.

Visit our contact page and drop us a line outlining our needs and ambitions and we'll be in touch, all without obligation of course. It may just be we're able to impart some of our hard earned knowledge to you during our conversation.

Funds for Life - fund raising scheme launch

It's took us a while but we finally launched possibly the most exciting fund raising scheme ever with our innovative 'Funds for Life' scheme – a lifetime of fund raising opportunity for your school, group, club, team, charity or other good cause.

And because we know the last thing you want is to be bogged down with more admin, we've taken care of that too.

Here's how it all works.

Your school, club, team etc makes a single bulk purchase of at least 50 photo jigsaws from any of the range available. When we deliver the jigsaws, we also include an information sheet about the Funds for Life scheme and your unique order code.

Thereafter, every single personal order we receive with your unique scheme number, we'll donate 5% of the total basket total to your 'good cause'. And that's it! For Life!

Your parents, team members etc can spread the word and encourage their families and friends to use your special scheme order code when they're shopping for personalised gifts and raise even more money for you.

There's no limit on the number of orders allowed and the 5% applies to any of our photo gifts – not just the jigsaws. And because we're always adding new and exciting personalised photo gift ideas, you'll be able to raise even more funds.

We send you a cheque for your 'commission' every quarter, plus any personal orders we receive, whether online or by post get a reminder of your groups unique code ready for their next order.

All we ask is that your personal scheme code is used at least 5 times a year and that's it.

How to use your unique order code:
Visit Fabulous Photo Gifts (www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk)
Enter your unique code and submit it.
Then 'click' to start personalising the photo gift of your choice.

When we receive your order, your unique code is displayed beside each basket item so we know exactly which school, team, charity etc to send the funds too.

Remember, you must type in and submit your unique code before starting you photo gift shopping experience!

For more information or to find out how your 'good cause' can benefit from the life-long fund raising iniative from Fabulous Photo Gifts, please contact us.

Click here to view the Funds for Life scheme in more detail
Click here to contact Fabulous Photo Gifts and get your good cause 'enrolled' with your own bulk jigsaw order.

Funds for Life – from Fabulous Photo Gifts.