Using Discount Cards & Points as Fundraisers

Discount cards or credit card points are ideal for groups such as schools, churches or other large groups.

Popular now are schemes which make use of credit cards in collecting points or airmiles , which can often be use jointly or collected, transferred over to a charity or organization.

There's even schemes which donate a percentage of your credit card spending to your chosen charity - so as a charity it'll be well worth your while getting your name on those lists.

A good time to get any new scheme in place and launch is in the months before Christmas , to benefit most from holiday spending.

For charities where a significant part of your budget is air travel, asking supporters to donate their airmiles can mount up surprisingly - even a few hundred small donations, could help to make a dent in your budget and allow you to allocate that funding elsewhere.

Using Discount Cards for Fundraising

Essential this kind of scheme is set up to buy through a large supplier, typically the local grocery store, gas station or supermarket.  Vouchers or discount cards are purchased direct and group members purchase their goods using the vouchers or cards.  

The discounted rate negotiated by the group forms the profits raised.  

If all member of the group buy in to this it can be a great fundraiser, but people need to have a reason to use the cards, so need to know what the benefit is for them.

Does it work?
One example where this worked very well is of a local brass band, who all purchased their groceries via this method and, with the proceeds, paid for the annual overseas tour of their band.  

Those guys were a committed bunch, but they managed to pay for their trip every year with this simple commitment from themselves and their spouses.

Most trips of this kind cost several hundreds of pounds, if not well over a thousand, the sort of sum that few families have available for events.

Are discount cards for you?
As you can see, this method would be ideal for any group struggling to raise funds with a conventional method, but who have a high buy-in from members to the benefits of the fundraising effort.

If you've got a group like this, or a group of people who share a common purpose, this may be an option worth considering.   

In order to involve everyone in your group in such an intensive fundraiser, calling a meeting of interested parties to explain the idea, answer questions and distribute information may be a good way to start.

Being creative in how you collect is also good - as well as shopping, it can be possible to collect points on other purchases, particularly online, such as insurance or travel.

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