[Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 6/14/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > If you're going to go that route, you should at least pay minimum
> > wage.  I rounded up to $10/hour in my estimate.
> >
> > Of course I think you could probably get 5-10 people from the USF
> > campus just by offering them free pizza and soda and telling them it's
> > for a good cause.  And more than 5 people is probably too much unless
> > we're talking about a volume much greater than 1000.  Those paper
> > folding machines are an enormous time-saver, and just one inexpensive
> > one probably isn't going to support more than 5 workers.
>
> Well, I was thinking more along the lines of a stipend in exchange for
> helping out a good cause (rather than an hourly wage... as I have
> found, that _sometimes_ leads to people dragging out the work). Or do
> pizza and soda with a small cash "prize" of like 25 bucks for the one
> who stuffs the most.

I'm not very familiar with minimum wage law, so I don't know whether
or not calling it a stipend would work.  I do hate minimum wage laws
because of exactly this type of situation, though.  And,
unfortunately, Florida did just pass one recently.

> I just ran by the Office Depot website and priced
> a few decent looking paper folders in the range of USD 150-1500 that
> fold between 1800 and 10,300 pages an hour. Just in case you cared.
> Although, my guess is that these could be found cheaper if you know
> who to go to (or have some connections) ;-)  --LV

That price range sounds about right (a little on the high side, but
not much).  The thing you have to remember though is that these
letters are almost surely going to be personalized.  So if you plan on
processing them first and then stuffing them later, you have to
consider how you're going to maintain order.

As for connections, I live in Tampa and I *might* be able to borrow
one of these for a couple days.  Let me know when and if there are
definite plans as to when this is going to be done.

These machines really are a time saver.  Back when I was a volunteer
firefighter we used to fold our donation request letters manually, and
it took a *lot* longer.

Anthony