Raise money and literacy selling magazines

by Michael H.
(Baltimore, MD, USA)

I work with a local community run sports league and we needed money in order to pay for equipment and fees for entering tournaments that involved other community teams and also to fund our mini social events.

I had been a writer and editor for my school newspaper and part of the training we did was to learn how to sell our work, being that many of us wanted careers in journalism after graduation.

Since I had experience with written work, and no one else had any other ideas, I suggested that we see about selling subscriptions to magazines, and the local newspaper.

Most people assume that to sell these things for fundraisers is to beg or seem 'down and desperate.' On the contrary, I encouraged everyone to tell people about the magazine and why it was worth having it delivered.

Many people are casual readers of magazines, but what I've noticed, in my experience, is that we always end up missing that one issue out of the year we want, because we seem never to make it to the store when it is out.

I would tell people how the subscription to most magazines is the cost of 3 newsstand editions of the same magazine and that the convenience of paying one time and getting every issue for that year more than makes up for the upfront cost.

Selling this way actually ended up getting us almost fifty percent more than we needed, so we used some of that money to help other teams and organizations associated with our community.

Just remember that while sympathy can get you a few sales, there is nothing like factual, hard knowledge of a product. And once you know that information, knowing how to relate it to your customer and showing them how that can help their life even just by adding a little convenience is key to any successful fundraising.