Calendar fundraisers have always been popular with nonprofit and school groups. The idea is pretty basic - assemble some great photos, have a batch of calendars printed up, and offer them for sale to your supporters.

Now a new twist has been added to this tried and true fundraiser - adding a cash raffle and including it in the cost of the calendar.

A cash calendar fundraiser offers a way to increase the net profit without requiring much in the way of additional work. Let's take a look at the pricing and see where the extra profit comes from.

A calendar fundraiser is ordinarily priced around $10 with an upper range of $15 for custom calendars with your group's submitted pictures.

A cash calendar fundraiser bumps that price up to $20 with the extra funds going toward the cash prize raffle. Depending on total sales, there can be a single prize drawing or a series of drawings with ever larger prizes.

So, in a situation where 1,000 calendars are sold, a plain calendar would go for an average of $12 or $12,000 total. Net profit would be $5 per calendar or $5,000.

By adding the cash raffle ticket, the 1,000 calendars gross a total of $20,000 with the same calendar production expense. That means that an additional $8,000 in revenue has been produced.

The cash raffle prizes awarded would be approximately 50% of that additional revenue, or $4,000. That money could be distributed in weekly prize drawings or in a single raffle drawing.

The bottom line is that the cash raffle adds the other 50%, or $4,000, of the additional revenue to the net profit. So the cash calendar nets your group an extra $4,000 for the fundraiser with little additional effort.

Considerations
Of course, there are some important considerations. Many localities require a permit for raffles and other games of chance. A few even ban them as gambling related activities.

In addition, your calendar sales volume needs to be fairly high to offer large cash prize drawings. If your group is only selling a hundred calendars, it might not be worthwhile to add the raffle aspect.

And a higher priced calendar won't sell as well as a lower-priced one, unless the prize money is sufficiently large enough to get people excited about winning.

And lastly, don't forget that a calendar with great pictures will almost sell itself. If that means paying a little extra to have the pictures your group wants instead of generic ones, the extra sales will cover the extra costs.

After all, who wants to look at an ugly calendar all year?

Kimberly Reynolds writes about fundraising ideas and calendar fundraisers on her website. Find hundreds of fundraising ideas on her website.

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