One of the most devastating cancers of all is leukemia, and the costs to combat it are immensely high. When a child has leukemia, it is even more devastating and threatens to take their life. Many times communities will come together to raise funds to cover costs. Generally, the entire community and various fundraisers can contribute the funds with a couple of large donations. To attract large donors, it pays to have public relations and show a conscientious effort to reach the treatment goal. Every year the costs of bone marrow transplants increase. One of the fundraisers you may want to consider is a car wash fundraiser. A car wash fundraiser with pre-sale tickets can generate significantly larger dollars than a regular car wash fundraiser. Let’s discuss advance ticket sales strategies for a moment.
PRE-SALE TICKETS
You should seriously consider selling pre-sale tickets for your car wash. There are many advantages to selling your tickets in advance, such as:
Do you know how many people will come to your car wash ahead of time?
66% of ticket buyers never show up but you already have the money
If it rains you are washed but not washed
You will also have use of the money in advance even in case of rain. Your rain date might be three weeks later, but now you have most of the money in your coffers. Significant money that can go toward your goal for treatment.
Take one of our 1990 car washes. It was for the local high school band. There were a hundred other students in the band. The average student sold twenty tickets for $5.00 each. The presale ended at around $10,000. That in itself would be great, but it gets better. The day of the event we raised $985.00 in self-service. Some of the drill team girls waved tall flags and others held signs indicating the cars were okay. We wash 408 cars. Boy, were we tired! We had two solid lines of cars at least fifteen deep all day. 201 cars were driven without presale tickets. With tips included that made up the $985.00. That left 207 pre-sale cars with tickets. But you say, “How can that be?” 207 for $5.00 = only $1,035.00. That’s how it is. Because our lines were so long, many people didn’t claim their tickets or never intended to come in the first place or forgot or had something else to do that day. I think it was a combination of all these reasons. Whatever the reason, the money went to a good cause. We have had many equally successful fundraisers over the years.
Now someone will have to write these tickets and print them. There is probably someone in your group who is a graphic artist or very good with a PC or MAC computer. They will do well. Tickets should be eight to ten to a page. You should print them on colored paper so they are not easily duplicated. You should choose a color that matches your church, club, or school colors. Have them cut the tickets. Put the individual tickets in stacks of twenty. Place an exactly sized piece of cardboard or poster board under each stack. Buy some rubber cement. Place about ten stacks of twenty tickets on top of each other and place them in a vise. Paint rubber cement on the left side of the ticket book and allow to dry for one hour. Repeat until you have enough handouts for each member. You may want to print another dozen flyers just in case. If the tickets are selling fast, you don’t want to be without them. That will break your momentum.
You should have frequent meetings on the progress of the ticket sales with the people who sell the car wash tickets. That way, if sales don’t meet targets, you can help motivate members or reorganize the group.
Tickets can be expensive to print. Ask a local printer to advertise on the back and become a sponsor for half price or free printing of tickets. Most printers bind, so you may be able to trade for that and save yourself the time and trouble of binding ticket books yourself. Printers will do a more professional binding job than you could the first time you try it. Professional tickets are more presentable and look more official when sold to clients. This will help your group in their sales efforts.
When a community comes together in a common cause, miracles can happen, all this positive energy and brain power can significantly help the child win his battle against leukemia. Please work together and work smart to raise the necessary funds and awareness to rid the world of this terrible problem and save your local VIP from leukemia. Think about this.
