Maintenance Fundraising

How will this benefit the community?
A fundraiser for the playspace will raise funds for maintaining the playspace and bringing attention to your efforts for its general care.  Maintaining the playspace benefits the community by providing a safe place for children to play and the community to gather. 

Who should you involve?
It’d be great if the ‘fundraising committee’ from the playground project’s planning committee could continue to take leadership around the efforts of fundraising for the playground.  They could switch their efforts from fundraising to get the playground to fundraising to keep the playground!  If the fundraising committee doesn’t continue or it’s been awhile since the playground was built you’ll need to pull together a team of people are involved with the care and concern of the playground.  Having a variety of stakeholders would be great to diversify your fundraising efforts.

Resources: 
Fundraising Strategy – 
http://kaboom.org/build_playspace/toolkit/fundraising/your_fundraising_strategy
Prepare your fundraising plan –
http://kaboom.org/build_playspace/toolkit/fundraising/prepare_your_fundraising_plan
101 Fundraising ideas wiki –
http://kaboomwiki.wiki.zoho.com/Fundraising-Ideas.html   
Special fundraising events – 
http://kaboom.org/build_playspace/toolkit/fundraising/special_fundraising_events

Length of time: 
Fundraising for the playground is an on-going effort.  We recommend that fundraising for the playspace continue right after the playground is built and keep up annually.  It’s a good idea to determine how much funds the community group wants to have available for maintaining the playground and base your fundraisers off what is needed.  For example if the fundraising team determines the community group that maintains the playground needs $5,000 every year then perhaps they’ll want to hold 5 fundraisers with a goal of raising $1,000 at each.  They’ll set the dates of those 5 fundraisers and build in 6 weeks before each fundraiser to plan for the event.

Steps to take:
• The resources listed are basically the steps to take for fundraising for the maintenance of the playground.
• The first resource, fundraising strategy, outlines everything you’ll want to take into consideration when fundraising.
• The second resource helps you prepare the plan your fundraising team will need to put together and implement
• The last two resources are tons of great ideas for you fundraising plan.  These ideas have been used and worked among communities across the country!

A couple things to keep in mind:
o Remember that you’re fundraising for AFTER the playground has been built and so your approach and strategy may be different then when you were fundraising before.
o Don’t forget about all the donors and those you asked before to contribute to the playground being built.  You’ll want to be mindful of how much asked for and how long ago.  If it’s been five years since your playground build then it’s probably a good idea to go back to the donors that gave before and ask again.  If it’s only been five months since the playground build then you might want to wait tell the following year or ask for a lesser amount.