What Do You Do When the Ink is Gone
by Carol
(Tampa, Florida)
We started collecting empty ink cartridges for recycling. Since we are a private school we got the whole parish involved. We raised quite a bit of money that was used for school books, and especially for computers. Unfortunately the school has closed but the parish members decided to keep going with the fundraising but to redirect the use of the proceeds. We are now using the proceeds to improve the parish buildings and grounds.
We found that it is very important that parishioners be constantly reminded that we still collecting the cartridges. We do this by updating the specific ways we are using the funds, such as new plants, trees, etc. in the Parish bulletin. There are also containers (a parishioner built really nice looking ones on wheels) are outside the Church before and after services and outside of the Church Office during the week.
When we were doing it for the school, we encouraged the school children to participate by offering incentives as small as an extra cookie at lunch to bigger items like stuffed animals and other items donated by parishioners.
We found the most important thing to remember in fund raising is to keep the participants updated and in the loop. When people feel they are part of the process they are more willing to participate. And even those who did not have computers or printers could still participate by donating prizes.
This is an ongoing fundraiser and I think it will go on for a long time - as long as their are empty ink cartridges our there somewhere.
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