Club Fund-raising

[centaura]

Greetings,

I was curious what other clubs did to generate funds? Do you sell things? Raffles? Membership dues? Newsletter ads? What are some of the ideas out there that are generating revenue for your club, and would you be willing to share them?

-Cat

[BillsBayou]

GNOBS has an annual auction every August. Usually on the second or third Saturday. I consider this the beginning of our fiscal year. We earn enough to cover nearly all of our club's expenses for the year. We have everything from seedlings and cuttings up to fully styled trees. We've also auctioned off tool collections, special pots, and anything that we think can fetch more than $20 on the block. For anything less than $20, we set up tables with fixed priced items. A team of three man the cashier table to log each auctioned item and to cash out any visitor. We hit all the local nurseries for donations. We also get fantastic donations and price-breaks from local bonsai retailers.

We pay attention to any purchased trees as they go up on the block. We try to make sure we at least get our money back on those items. We've gotten fairly good at determining what will sell, and we don't buy the rest.

Two or three times every year, we have a raffle at our meetings. Usually on a night when we have a visiting master. The headliner draws the crowd, and members donate bonsai related (or not) materials for the raffle. On a good night, we can get upwards of $120.

Workshops are a wash for the club. The price of a workshop is usually calculated as follows:
Cost of material
Cost of presenter (if using someone who charges fees)
Cost of venue
Total that up and divide by 10 (usual limit of a workshop)
Round off to the next highest $5 mark.

Every spring we have a styling event at a local nursery. It's a good way to drum up membership and help newer members get experience working on trees selected by more experienced growers. We show up early and while our canopy is being set up, some of our more seasoned members browse the nursery looking for suitable material. Nursery customers who want to take a bonsai home pay the cost of the tree and the pot (to the nursery) plus a $10 styling fee (to the club). Any unsold bonsai are purchased from the nursery (often at a discount!) and auctioned off in August. We usually sell a few styled trees, but we also get new members.

Our fixed expenses are monthly meeting hall rental, web site costs, and a storage locker. That's more than a couple thousand every year. Each spring we have some sort of giveaway to the members. Every year, we pay for a master to come in and do a demonstration. The money we get back on a visiting master is his/her cost to teach a workshop. Other than that, we eat that cost. Wire used at the workshop and open workshop night (usually once per year) is free to paid members.

Oh yeah, dues. We restrict giveaways and workshop participation to paid members.

I think that's it.

[centaura]

Greetings,

Thanks for the input. Right now my first goal has been to try to reduce our expenses, but the next step is going to be a need to look for sources of revenue. We have a catch-22. Our membership as a Plant Society gets us our meeting room at the local Botanic Garden free every month, but our shows at the Garden are very expensive. And we have huge printing expenses that we're trying to reduce. I was just looking for more ideas of what others did. Thanks for your input.

-Cat

[jrosette]

Hi Cat,

We have a show at the State Fair where we promote our Public Workshop in September.

The public workshop includes one year membership to our club. We attract new members and make some money to bring artists to our meeting.

Sometimes we auctioned the tree that wa styled by an artist during the meeting.

Regards

Jorge

[MatsuBonsai]

The Louisville club has had success having lava shipped in from Colorado. Our most recent purchase was 4 full pallets of RQ – red 1/4 clean from Colorado Lava (http://www.coloradolava.com/). I sift to 2 sizes, medium and small using the 2 smaller screens in the 3 screen set. A few dollars per back added onto the cost + shipping has yielded a small profit, and benefited the club members with available soil components for a good price.

The Cincinnati club always does well with their White Elephant sale, thanks in part to some very generous members donating superior trees, tools, pots, and other supplies for sale. Others bring items for sale with small percentages going to the club. Another great benefit to both club and members.

Of course both clubs have dues, but neither have explored ads in the newsletter that I am aware of.