The Top 10 Things to Consider in a Discount Card Fundraiser

  

 delicious  

  

Discount card fundraisers are becoming more and more popular as a means for youth sports organizations to generate revenue.  Soccer clubs, Little League baseball organizations, youth football and cheerleading organizations, and many other youth sports leagues are turning to fundraising discount cards more than ever.  And why not?  In this recovering economy more and more people are looking to save a dollar—and they find they are more willing to spend $10 for a discount card than $20 or more for a pizza kit or a cheesecake.

Nevertheless, discount cards can vary quite a bit in the work required to secure merchant listings, the quality of the card and the merchant listings, the profit they offer to the youth organization, and in their policies regarding the return of unsold cards.  Here is what to look for:

(1)   Who secures the Merchant Agreements—you (the sponsor) or the discount card company?  It can require a lot of work to visit merchants and secure their agreement to a listed offer.  You’ll pay more for the discount cards if the discount card company sends a representative to sign up the merchants, but you’ll usually get better discounts—and you won’t have to do any of the work. 

(2)   Will the merchants listed on your discount card be relevant to your sports organization’s location?  Consider that many of your players’ parents may travel 10 or 15 miles to get to their place of work, or that they may have friends or relatives who live a similar distance from their home.  Since you will want your fundraising discount card to be sold in the workplace and in nearby towns, make sure that the discount card company will include businesses with multiple locations within a 15- or 20-mile radius of your organization’s location. 

(3)   Will the discount card company rely upon national or regional listings approved only by a chain’s headquarters, or will they secure the approvals of the chain’s local franchisees?  Local franchisees may not be required to—and sometimes don’t—accept national or regional discounts that were only authorized by their franchise headquarters.  The last thing you need is for your discount card customers to complain that their discounts aren’t being honored by your local merchants.  Always check to make sure that your local merchants have approved of—or will approve of—the discounts being offered for their listed business locations.

(4)   Will the discount card carry discounts that are perceived as valuable?  Discount card fundraising customers want to see that the cards list offers from places they are likely to frequent, and they want to know that they can easily get back—in the form of discounts—the money they spent for the card.  If the discount card lists popular businesses offering strong discounts, then that is a customer’s assurance the card will be worth the price paid for it. 

(5)   Will the discount card hold up over the useful life of the card—and are the discounts easy to read?  Is the card printed on coated paper or cardboard—or is it made of durable plastic or a laminated synthetic material?  Most discount cards have a one-year expiration date . . . and they should last at least that long with frequent use.  The card should be rigid, waterproof, and the printed discounts should be protected from wear and it should be easy to read.  A fundraising discount card that has the look and feel of quality—and is easy to read—will be easier for your members to sell.  Your best bet is to ask the company to send to you a couple of samples of their card.

(6)   What is the real profit your organization will be earning on its discount card order?  The percentage profit you receive should bear some relationship to the quality of your discount card and to the services you receive.  Some discount card companies tout that their sponsors will earn 90%, 100%, or even 110% profit!  That should send up a red flag in your mind.  A company may try to disguise or inflate the percentage of profit your organization will earn by awarding “free cards” or “bonus cards” (usually for larger orders) and then deducting the profit earned on these cards from the cost of the base order.  Believe it or not, a lot of organizations fall for this “fuzzy math”.  Here, caveat emptor and the old saw, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”, should come to mind.       

(7)   Does the discount card company offer a return policy for unsold discount cards?  If a discount card company is confident that their discount cards will sell well in your marketplace, then they should back up that confidence with a return policy for unsold discount cards.  However, the terms of the return policy will reflect how much of an investment the company made in creating your discount cards.  It should make sense that a company that has invested considerable time and expense in creating a custom discount card will probably have a limited return policy. 

(8)   Will the discount card company place an order-taker in each member’s discount card packet?  An order-taker is simply a form that has at least three elements:  (1) A picture of the front and back of the discount card; (2) A section where your members can list additional orders for discount cards once they have sold the cards they were initially given to sell; and (3) Instructions regarding when to turn in the money for all sales and to whom.  In essence, an order-taker allows your more motivated members to take orders for more fundraising discount cards than the number of cards you are giving them to start out with. 

(9)   Does the discount card company offer incentives for your members to sell more than the number of discount cards they were given?  If your organization wishes to motivate its players to take orders for more than the number of discount cards they were each initially given and expected to sell, then an appropriate incentive program should be set up so that additional sales will pay for the incentives as well as produce additional profit for the organization.  Also, since incentives benefit the discount card company as well as the sponsoring organization, discount card companies will usually contribute to the cost of providing these incentives.  Some discount card companies will even illustrate the incentive on their order-takers so the players are always reminded of what they can earn.    

(10) Will the discount cards be sequentially numbered?  Sequential numbering makes it easy for you to record, for example, which block of discount cards were given to which players or coaches—or to merchants who may offer to sell your discount cards at their cash register.  This comes in handy in the event some cards are lost, misplaced or stolen.  In addition, all fundraising discount cards carry use restrictions, so a unique card number on each card also makes it easier for merchants to tell when a cardholder is misusing a discount card.

While the foregoing ten points are arguably the most important to consider when shopping for fundraising discount cards, keep in mind that no matter how good your discount card is, and no matter what percentage of profit can be earned by selling them, the most important factors regarding the degree of success of your fundraiser may be determined by other factors such as the timing of your discount card fundraiser, the incentives that are offered, and how the program is presented to those who will be doing the selling.  (See Three Elements of a Successful Fundraiser)  After all, it may not matter how good your discount card is—or how big your profit percentage is—if you don’t get the discount card fundraiser off to a good start.