Fund Raising made easy with Fabulous Photo Gifts

When we sat down and thought long and hard about starting a fundraising scheme that schools, clubs, groups and charities would really use and benefit from, we came up with a shortlist of key features:

1) The scheme had got to be incredibly easy to administer for the schools, groups etc.
2) The rewards had got to be worthwhile a school, group etc taking part.
3) There should be no time limits or restrictions on use.

The result - Funds for Life! A ground-breaking fund raising scheme that any school, group or charity etc can take part in, raising much needed funds for their individual 'good causes' without any complications or form filling. You can earn 20% commission on all qualifying gift orders (certain gifts are excluded from the scheme), for each and every order.

That's £1 for every £5 you spend!

Here's how Funds for Life works:

Your school, group or charity etc contacts Fabulous Photo Gifts for your FREE info pack and 'membership' number.

We send you a few sheets of information about the scheme, what gifts are included etc and a poster/flyer for you to fill in with your own 'scheme member number'.

That's it! You're up and running.

Now all you have to do is remind parents, members etc to use the code whenever they need a gift for someone on our website.

They simply type in your member code once they've finished personalising their items before proceeding to checkout.

We get the order and send you the commission earned on that order to your specified bank account.

There's no time limits or limits on the amount of orders we'll accept - it really is funds for life. All you've got to do is keep reminding your parents or members with your regular newsletters and communiques.

If you've got a website or blog, we can supply a FREE banner (to your size specs) for you to encourage even more people to use your code. Just contact us if you need a banner making.

Funds for LIfe - earn 20% commission on every qualifying order your members or families (and their friends and families - spread the word) place with Fabulous Photo Gifts.

Why are we being so generous?
Well we've got 5 children ourselves between us and we've served on numerous fund raising committee's and PTA's etc so we know hard it can be to raise funds in a way that doesn't involve any work and will work all year round.

Click here to find out more about our brilliant fund raising scheme.

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.

Fund Raising - money for your local RSPCA or animal shelter

Sometimes the Fabulous Photo Gifts family home seems more like an animal ark or RSPCA pet rescue centre. We could do with some fund raising of our own just to keep them all fed and watered.

There's the family dog – a lurcher called Wanda (as in fish called), 2 rats, 5 mice and 5 cats (1 each – yummy!) – Amy, Storm, Molly Mackerel, Doodle and Bunny-Boo (don't ask – that's what you get when you leave name decisions to a 8 year old!)

If you think we're barking – we're not (it's not the cats either!), but when we announced our fund raising 'Funds for Life' scheme – Open to any school, group, team or charity etc just a one off bulk photo jigsaw purchase which you can use to sell and raise funds from and then any personal orders made using your unique code afterwards, Fabulous Photo Gifts donates 5% of the basket total to your nominated good cause, every order, every time, for Life! - people thought we were, well, one jigsaw piece short of the full picture.

However, we ploughed bravely on and now have 3 scheme members set up and hopefully, they'll raise lots of money for their good causes.

If you'd like to see an example of how one of our scheme members has used our fund raising scheme in their website – visit www.twinswithsma.co.uk – 2 local boys suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy. They're raising funds for specialist equipment.

So you could also be using our innovative fund raising scheme to raise funds for your own animal shelter etc. With the minimum qualifying order at just 50 jigsaws, we really want to include as many of you as we can.

We're both parents ourselves and we've done our own fair share of fund raising committees etc at local school PFA's, Scout Groups, Toddler groups, Playgroups and Nurseries etc so we know how difficult it can be to come up with original fund raising ideas that really work.

We think our Funds for Life scheme is attractive and a sure fire winner. And we do all the work too. We total up your commissions and send a cheque every quarter. When we despatch an order, we'll remind the customer of your unique scheme number for next time they need a personalised photo gift present idea – indeed, they can share the code with other family members, friends, work colleagues, neighbours etc.

We do suggest you promote the code yourself – your regular member mailouts, your websites, meetings and open days etc.

Fabulous Photo Gifts is always adding new personalised gift ideas to it's website so there will always be new and exciting gift ideas to choose from.

Click here to download your own Fabulous Photo Gifts 'Funds for Life' information pack or call us on 0845 003 4118 to discuss getting your good cause added into our fund raising scheme.

We also offer a full postal order service which includes FREE scanning of photographs or slides so your members or supporters don't have to be on the Internet to be able to take part. Gifts for them, funds for you!