5 Tips for Recognizing Product Fundraising Volunteers

Product fundraising involves selling a product to raise money for a nonprofit, school, student group, or other charitable organization. Whether you’re selling cookie dough, popcorn, branded merchandise, or something in between, you offer donors something in exchange for their contributions, creating a win-win situation for your organization and its supporters.

At the center of the product fundraising process are your volunteers. From promoting your fundraiser to selling and distributing products, volunteers are crucial to a successful product fundraising campaign.

As such, you must properly thank these volunteers to show your appreciation, build strong relationships with them, and retain their support. Explore how your organization can effectively recognize its product fundraising volunteers with these tips.

1. Personalize Your Thank You Messages

Each volunteer makes a unique impact on your campaign and organization. Recognize them as individual contributors to your success by personalizing your thank-you messages.

Individualize your thank-you notes by:

Segmenting volunteers

Use your constituent relationship management system (CRM) to place your volunteers in relevant groups and tailor your thank-you messages accordingly. For example, you may create different thank-you message templates for first-time and past product fundraising volunteers or use segmentation to send thank-you messages through each group’s preferred channels.

Addressing them by name

Although it’s a simple fix, starting your thank-you message with “Dear Alice” or “Dear Samuel” instead of “Dear Volunteer” makes a big difference in customizing your appreciation outreach. Configure your CRM to automatically insert each product fundraising volunteer’s name into their respective thank-you messages.

Referencing their specific involvement in your organization

Add details about volunteers’ involvement to show you recognize all the ways they’ve supported your organization. For instance, you may thank a certain volunteer for taking the lead during your product fundraiser and rallying the rest of the volunteer team. Or, demonstrate your appreciation for a long-time volunteer’s continuous support at various events and campaigns over the years.

For an extra special touch, you may handwrite these messages and send them through the mail. Make them even more personal by having beneficiaries write some of your volunteer thank-you messages. For example, if your school ran a product fundraising campaign, you may have participating students write thank-you messages to the parents and guardians who helped organize it.

2. Report on their impact.

Volunteers want to know that they made a true difference for your organization and community. When thanking your product fundraising volunteers, report on their specific impact by sharing:

Data

Inform product fundraising volunteers of specific statistics that illustrate your campaign’s success. You may include data about the number of dollars raised, the number of beneficiaries helped, and the number of products sold.

Stories

While numbers illustrate the concrete impact of your campaign, storytelling evokes emotion and shows volunteers how they’ve touched people’s lives. For instance, when thanking volunteers for a cheerleading team’s product fundraising campaign, you may explain how their help allowed the team to raise enough money to purchase new uniforms and fund their trip to their upcoming national competition. Include photos to bring your stories to life for volunteers.

Testimonials

Adding testimonials can make your appreciation messages even more heartfelt and encourage volunteers to continue supporting your organization. Let’s say your animal shelter ran a discount card fundraiser, which involves selling cards that offer discounts to local businesses, merchants, and restaurants. You may interview a family who recently took home a cat from the shelter about how the funds raised offset the cost of their new pet’s vaccinations. You might also include a quote from a local restaurant that received significantly more business because of the fundraiser.

Don’t forget to include volunteers in your regular impact updates as well. That way, they can stay connected to your organization and see how their support continues to help your nonprofit grow.

3. Use a Variety of Appreciation Strategies

Keep your volunteer recognition approach fresh, interesting, and engaging by using a variety of appreciation strategies. There are so many ways you can demonstrate your gratitude for volunteers, such as:

• Traditional thank-you notes
• Animated appreciation eCards
• Social media shoutouts
• Phone calls
• Samples of your fundraising product
• Volunteer appreciation events
• Newsletter highlights
• Volunteer profiles on your website

Match volunteers with appreciation strategies that are most likely to resonate with them. For example, younger product fundraising volunteers may enjoy seeing themselves featured on your social media profiles, whereas older product fundraising volunteers may prefer to receive a physical thank-you note in the mail.

Additionally, remember to respect volunteers’ wishes and ask them if they’re comfortable with public recognition beforehand. Keep track of any volunteers who prefer more private appreciation strategies in your CRM to ensure you thank them appropriately.

4. Offer Additional Engagement Opportunities

When thanking volunteers, invite them to continue making an impact on your organization. While it may be tempting to try to convert volunteers into donors, refrain from making the ask right away.

Instead, provide non-monetary engagement opportunities, such as:

• More volunteer outings: If volunteers enjoyed participating in your product fundraiser, give them a rundown of your upcoming volunteer opportunities to keep them involved in the program.

• Volunteer grants: Volunteer grants are funds that companies contribute to the nonprofits where their employees volunteer. Encourage product fundraising volunteers to research their employers’ volunteer grant programs to see if they're eligible to make an even larger impact on your organization.

• Leadership within your volunteer program: Some volunteers may be interested in taking on a larger role in your program. Notify them of any openings for leadership positions, and let them know how to apply.

• Membership program participation: Explain the benefits volunteers can receive by joining your membership program and how they can sign up.
• Advocacy work: Your product fundraising volunteers may be interested in sharing petitions, canvassing, or contacting local representatives on behalf of your cause.

Ultimately, your goal should be to form long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with your product fundraising volunteers that encourage them to become part of your nonprofit’s broader community. Include clear instructions and resources for how volunteers can take advantage of any of these opportunities.

5. Ask for Feedback

Show product fundraising volunteers that you care about their input by asking for feedback. Surveying volunteers not only helps you improve your volunteer program and recognition strategy but also demonstrates that you value volunteers and want to provide them with the best possible experience.

Ask your product volunteers questions like:

• How would you rate your overall experience as a product fundraising volunteer?
• Did you have a clear understanding of your role and responsibilities? Why or why not?
• Do you think the product we sold was appropriate for our audience? Why or why not?
• Is there a different product that you think would be better suited to this type of campaign?
• What aspects of the product did donors seem to enjoy most?
• Did you run into any problems during the fundraising process?
• Do you feel recognized for your contributions to the campaign?
• Is there anything we could do to improve your volunteer experience in the future?

Once you’ve received your volunteers’ responses, analyze them with your team and implement any viable suggestions. Then, reach out to individual volunteers to explain how you’ve incorporated their feedback to show you took their input into account.

Product fundraisers wouldn’t be possible without the help of volunteers. Show them just how much you appreciate their hard work and dedication to emphasize their positive impact and retain them as members of your nonprofit’s community.

About the Author

Debbie Salat
Director of Fundraising and Product Development

Debbie Salat is the director of fundraising activities and product development at ABC Fundraising®. Debbie joined ABC Fundraising® in 2010 and has helped launch over 6,500 fundraising campaigns for schools, churches, youth sports teams, and nonprofit organizations all across the USA. With over 20 years of fundraising experience, Debbie knows the path to success for fundraisers, which she shares with groups on a daily basis so they can achieve their fundraising goals.

About ABC Fundraising

ABC Fundraising® provides fundraising products that have helped groups raise over 50 million dollars! Since 1993 our unique and highly profitable fundraising products have helped over 50,000 schools, youth sports teams, churches, and non-profits of all shapes and sizes. ABC Fundraising® is committed to providing the most profitable fundraisers in the industry.

The fundraisers provided on the website have been carefully hand picked by experts with over 60 years of experience in the fundraising industry. Only the most profitable and successful fundraising products make it through our selection process.