Posted on 12/14/2009Coffee fundraising is simple and usually requires no money upfront to get started. Your group uses coffee order forms or brochures showing the wide variety of gourmet flavors for your customers to choose between. Most coffee for fundraisers is already ground since many people may not grind their own coffee. This is far better than offering both ground and un-ground coffee because it eliminates possible mistakes.
Using the brochure, your group shows them to potential customers, takes orders and collects payment upfront. When you accept payment in the form of a check you need to make sure the checks are made out to your group, not the coffee fundraising company. Typical coffee fundraisers last for two weeks. At that time you collect all the order forms from your participants and tally up the total for each flavor.
Once you have the totals you call the coffee fundraising company and place your wholesale order. Usually your coffee will arrive within a couple weeks of placing your order. Some groups prefer to purchase the coffee from the coffee fundraiser company in advance and have it on hand to sell.
Many more people will purchase coffee on the spur of the moment if you can hand them a bag of coffee right then. The only problem with this type of coffee fundraiser is that it requires an upfront investment and you need to guess which flavors will sell.
Regardless of the method you choose, your group should make 40% profit or more with a coffee fundraiser. The best time of year for coffee fundraising is during the fall and early winter months, but successful sales are run all year long.
The benefits of coffee fundraising are obvious. The market is just extraordinarily large. Just about every American household has at least one coffee drinking member. The same is true of most businesses and offices where a lot of coffee fundraising orders will be generated anyway.
Major questions you should ask potential coffee fundraising companies are:
• Is there a minimum order?
• Will your coffee fund raiser order qualify for free shipping?
• Are order forms provided free of charge?
• How many different flavors are available? People may say they want Costa Rica coffee in your fundraiser for example? But typically customers want the basics like a good house blend.
• What is the typical lead time after I place my order?
• How do I pay?
Once you have the answers to those questions, you are well on your way to having a very successful coffee fund raiser.
