Most club fundraising advice assumes you're trying to reach the public. Usually you aren't — you're trying to reach your own members, and you already have their numbers.
The furnace in the post hall quit in the second week of October. The quote to replace it is $4,500. There are thirty-eight members, a hall that hosts a fish fry twice a month and two outside groups who rent it on weeknights, and heating season has already started.
The next fish fry is in eleven days. It will net somewhere around $600.
This is the part worth saying out loud.
That fish fry takes twelve people a Friday night. It nets $600. And if you look at who bought the tickets, most of them were members, their spouses, and their families — the same people who'd put in $100 each if somebody asked them for a furnace.
So the event isn't really a fundraiser that reaches outsiders. It's a membership social that happens to clear $600. That's worth keeping. It just won't cover $4,500.
| What the club keeps | 100% of every contribution. The 6.9% fee is added at checkout and paid by the contributor, not taken out of what you receive. |
| When it arrives | Standard payouts reach the bank in 2-3 business days. |
| Who sees it | Only the people you send the link to, unless you choose to make it public. Nothing is listed or searchable by default. |
$4,500 is forty-five contributions of $100.
You have thirty-eight members. Add the two groups that rent the hall, the families who come to the fish fry, and the three or four local businesses that have put something in every year. Forty-five is not a stretch — it's roughly the room on a Friday night.
Nothing to create a request. Nothing to send it. The only fee is the 6.9% a contributor pays on top of their own contribution — a $100 contribution costs the giver $106.90, and the club receives $100.00.
One specific thing with a number on it. A furnace, a roof, a set of gear, a van repair. "The furnace, $4,500" asks better than "support the post," because the member reading it knows exactly what their hundred dollars buys.
Groups that already have a roster. Veterans posts, volunteer fire departments and their auxiliaries, Rotary and Lions clubs, booster clubs, youth clubs, neighborhood associations, alumni groups. The membership list is the whole requirement, and every one of these already has one.
Something that broke, or a date you can't move. A furnace in October, a hall that fails inspection, an entry fee with a cutoff. These are the things the annual calendar wasn't built to absorb.
Contributions start at $100. That's the scale this is built for — a member putting in a hundred toward a furnace, a local business covering a tenth of it. Forty-five people and the hall is warm.
Keep every one of them. They reach people your roster doesn't, and several of them are why the club exists.
A request is for the thing that comes up between them, with a bill attached.
