Monthly Archives: February 2012

When your youth group needs to raise money quickly, you need a fast free fundraiser that you can rely on to generate the necessary revenue. The amount you make on these free easy fundraisers will depend on how much time you have to prepare and how we

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Here are three time-tested projects to raise some fast cash:

1 – Car Wash 2 – Yard Cleanup 3 – Community Cleanup

Car Wash Fundraiser Car washes have proven to be great fundraisers in virtually every community. All you need are willing volunteers, a high-traffic location with good visibility, and some attention getting signs. You can put your car wash fundraiser together on short notice.

Here’s what you need to do:

1 – Line up a location with good main road frontage 2 – Ensure it has water access 3 – Assemble supplies list – hoses, buckets, wash towels, dry towels, squeegees 4 – Assign each volunteer an item from the supplies list 5 – Make 8-10 poster board signs in high-contrast colors 6 – Arrange your volunteers in 2-hour shifts 7 – Wash cars for six hours (Saturday preferred) 8 – Have dual lines so you can wash two at once

Your car wash fundraiser’s success will of course depend on the weather. If you can wash 12 cars an hour (one every 10 minutes in each line), you can easily raise more than $500 in one day.

Remember to put together a quick flyer that includes the reason why you’re raising funds and clearly states the price. You can even offer some extra services such as Armor-All tire treatment or interior vacuuming for an additional fee.

Alternatively, you can advertise a free car wash and just ask for donations for your cause. Often, this can raise more cash than stating a specific price, because people will see a group of volunteers working hard and having a good time, and may pay more than you would hav asked.

Keeping safety in mind, be sure to get volunteers to hold and wave signs toward passing traffic, not just volunteers to wash cars. If you have time, advertise your car wash event in the local newspaper, and post signs a day or two in advance.

Yard Cleanup A yard cleanup fundraiser is extremely fast and easy to put together. Simply create a set of instructions for your group detailing what to offer, what to say, and how much to charge.

Like most fundraisers, the target market is family, friends, and neighbors. Depending on the age of your participants, your offerings can range from simple lawn care all the way up to mulching flower beds or pruning tree limbs. In many climates, autumn is a great time to do this fundraiser, because leaf clearing is always a needed service during those months.

Create a flyer describing your fundraiser and clearly list your prices for the various cleanup options. Assign a fundraising quota to each participant.

Offer some individual and group performance bonuses. There’s nothing like a team pizza party or movie passes to motivate a youth sports group.

Community Cleanup A community cleanup, also known as a trash bag fundraiser, performs a valuable community service while also providing a significant revenue opportunity. Organizing a community cleanup project is a way to raise funds and send a positive message about your group at the same time.

This type of one day or weekend fundraising event is very similar to the Athlet-A-Thon or Fun-A-Thon concept. Here your group’s participants solicit pledges from the usual suspects – family, friends, and neighbors. Have local businesses donate trash bags and recruit parents and relatives with trucks to haul what you collect.

Pledges are tied to a specific attainment goal such as the number of pounds of trash collected or the number of road miles cleaned of debris. You’ll need to create a one-page overview of your cleanup program and a pledge signup sheet.

It works best if your overview specifies a suggested range for donations, say anywhere from a penny to a dime a pound for a large project. An amazing amount of garbage can be collected from a local stream or illegal dumping area, so it’s not a bad idea to also put a maximum limit on pledge amounts of $20.

Have local businesses donate trash bags. Recruit parents and relatives with trucks to haul what you collect.

Do the math. You’ll be surprised at how much money you can generate. Assuming 50 participants, each of whom has five pledges of a penny a pound, if you collect a ton of garbage, your group will raise $100 per participant or $5,000.

That’s not bad money for a free fundraiser! You’d be surprised at how easy it is to collect a ton of garbage.

Each of these fundraisers is fast, easy to put together, and a reliable revenue generator for your group. As with any youth group event, an adult should be in attendance at all times for safety purposes. Get started on your free easy fundraisers today!

Cheerleading fundraisers are the ultimate in small group fundraising. Cheerleaders possess boundless energy, determination, and loads of contacts (for potential supporters).

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Cheerleading fundraisers are the ultimate in small group fundraising. Cheerleaders possess boundless energy, determination, and loads of contacts (for potential supporters).

Harnessing all this energy and enthusiasm can be a challenge,but having the right cheerleading fundraiser is a great start. You want to leverage their skills by giving them an exciting fundraising product to sell.

So, what cheerleading fundraising ideas will generate excitement?

In this article, we’ll consider three types of cheer fundraisers. Each involves doing something a little different, each of them are easy to do, and each fundraiser packs a profit punch.

Cheer Fundraiser #1 One unique approach for a cheerleading fundraiser is offering custom posters of school sports teams or of the cheerleaders themselves.

For instance, feature the team photo of the football team, or use a series of action photos. Each can be turned into a wall-sized poster or a fundraising calendar.

Add some allure to these cheerleading fundraisers by including your game schedule or team slogan printed on it in a contrasting color.

You could also design one to celebrate your championship teams, commemorate your previous titles, intensify a cross-town rivalry, recognize all of your school’s sports teams on a spirit poster, or feature the cheerleading squad in action.

Any of these items is sure to be popular with a wide range of students. Local businesses will often buy one to put in their front window. Players will want a souvenir copy suitable for end-of-season autographs. Proud parents and grandparents will want their own keepsake copy.

The posters can be sold easily at pep rallies, sporting events, through the school store, and by the cheerleaders themselves via a merchant table at a high-traffic location on a weekend.

Think of creative ways to design and market your own unique set of cheerleading posters. Consider adding merchant sponsor logos to reduce the cost. You could also cross-promote with another school on a rivalry poster and double the overall market.

Cheer Fundraiser #2 Another idea for cheerleading fundraising is selling customized Holiday Greetings CD’s. This is a brochure or order-taker sale of a personalized selection of holiday music favorites.

One of the nice things about this product is that a purchaser selects their ten favorite holiday songs by checking off boxes on a list of thirty classics.

Included in the choices are favorites such as Let It Snow, White Christmas, Jingle Bells, and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

These are licensed copies of the original recordings by the original artists, assembled on a personalized CD that costs your group a mere $4 each.

A retail price of $10 coupled with the ability for the customer to order a personalized message on each copy, make these a great cheerleading fundraiser.

The CD’s are available in six basic designs – Singing Snow Men, Rudolph, Christmas Tree, Peace On Earth, Kwanzaa, and Happy Hanukkah.

There is room for a holiday greeting of up to thirty characters on each design. For example, the Christmas Tree version has the phrase “Merry Christmas” in green and red, with space below it for a “From the XYZ Family” greeting.

Shipments are sorted by salesperson and customer, making your delivery a very simple task indeed.

Cheer Fundraiser #3 A third type of cheerleading fundraiser that creates an air of excitement is selling flowering “airplants.”

Airplants, or more properly, Tillandsias, are unique, soil-free plants that absorb nutrients and water through their leaves. All they need is air, water, and light.

Tillandsias are attractive and fascinating members of the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae). Their native habitat is the southern United States, Mexico, and Central and South America.

Bromeliads – Tillandsias – can be placed in anything: rocks, shells, pottery, driftwood, around water fountains, fish tanks, etc. They like bright, indirect lighting, and a heavy spraying or soaking two or three times a week.

They have a growth cycle starting with one plant growing to maturity, then blooming. One to two months after the blooming has finished, new plants form around the base of the “mother” plant. Each will continue growing and reproducing if given the proper care.

A cheerleading fundraiser Airplant package consists of a beautiful example of the Bromeliad family, comfortably ensconced in a natural seashell holder.

Your group pays $3 per Airplant, including the seashell holder, shipping and handling. Each Tillandsia retails for $6, so your cheerleading fundraiser is ensured a good profit margin.

You can organize your sale as a special event or as an add-on to a regular gathering. Set up a table with your sales display and place a colorful Tillandsia poster on the wall behind to let your prospective customers see how beautiful these Airplants are in full bloom.

You can also conduct your cheerleading fundraiser as an order- taker from a sales brochure. Each brochure contains colorful pictures of these exotic, but easy to care for, plants.

Simple text explanations are included describing the simple steps involved in nourishing these fabulous specimens.

Summary All three of these fundraising products will add some excitement to your next cheerleading fundraiser.

When all the participants are enthusiastic about offering something new and unique, it packs a powerful profit punch.

Heres to making your next cheer fundraiser a resounding success.

Cheers!

School fundraisers are necessary even though many people and parents complain that the local school is always fund raising. The money raised through school fundraisers goes into such things as field trips and equipment that the school cannot afford t

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Schools are always trying to find different fund raising ideas so that they have fundraising events that offer something unique and make people want to attend. Bake sales and car washes are old-fashioned fund raising ideas that people are getting tired of. While school fund raisers are necessary, neither the administration nor the parents want to have the children always going door to door selling different items.

Some of the popular fund raising events that draw a crowd to the school fund raisers are those that offer an opportunity for the whole family to have fun and win prizes. A carnival day or a supper is one fund raising idea that brings in a lot of money if you can get some of the businesses in the area to donate the prizes. No matter how much money you raise when everything is donated, you don’t have any expenses.

School fund raisers often involve selling cookies, candy or calendars. One of the fund raising events that is always popular around Christmas is a flea market. This doesn’t even seem like a fund raiser because those who want to sell any used items or crafts for Christmas pay a fee to set up a table. At the same time the school can operate a canteen or sell hotdogs to add to the money being raised.

Another popular fund raising idea is to sell discount cards or coupon booklets. The discount cards can offer a percentage off common items that parents buy for themselves or school supplies for the children. The cost of the booklet of discount coupons is substantially less than the amount of money that you save. For this event the school simple has to announce that it is having a fund raising event and send home booklets with each student. If the parents do not wish to purchase them, they simply send them back. More often than not though, the students come back looking for more booklets to sell to their relatives. Family members are good supporters of school fund raisers.

School fundraisers are common, but necessary.

It seems like soccer fundraising is either a season-long effort or a quick hitter that doesn’t cover all your needs.

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Well, the good news is that there are some ways to make money quickly, or even all season long, that merit your consideration.

What are your fundraising goals?

Many youth sports teams and leagues want:

1 – Fundraisers that can be done with little effort 2 – Fundraisers that may be done sporadically 3 – Fundraisers that will produce significant results

Soccer fundraising programs In this article, we’ll examine several soccer fundraisers that are quick hitting and sure to score.

The three soccer fundraising programs are:

1 – Bottled water

2 – Shot cage and radar gun

3 – Fast-food discount cards

Soccer Fundraising: Bottled Water The first soccer fundraising program is selling bottled water. Consider for a moment that each team member will bring water to every practice and to every game. That’s at least a couple dozen bottles right there and probably a whole lot more.

Add in sales to spectators and you’ve got at least 500 bottles that could easily be sold. Sure, you can buy in bulk at a warehouse club, but you can add extra value to your soccer fundraising with private branding of your bottled water, either as a team or as a league.

The initial setup for each label is $75 and afterward, the unique label with your logo emblazoned in color costs nothing extra. Prices for the bottled spring water are wholesale, which allows your group a comfortable 50% profit margin.

When you think about it, doesn’t it make sense to capture the wholesale-to-retail markup for your group while building team spirit at the same time?

Soccer Fundraising: Shot Cage The second soccer fundraising program is best suited for a league-wide effort. On Picture Day, during a tournament, or at any other event with high attendance, set up a soccer “shot cage” with a radar gun to measure velocity.

Every player will want multiple chances to show just how fast their shot speeds toward the goal. You can set up contests with prizes for various age ranges, team awards, Top Gun, etc.

Soccer fundraising featuring a radar-equipped shooting cage is actually an inexpensive event to host.

Several companies rent the equipment by the week with radar gun, cage, and freight all included for less than $350.

You can also find suppliers who will put together a soccer fundraiser with a hosted radar cage and do a revenue split with your group, so there would be no upfront cost.

To maximize your soccer fundraising success, price shots in a multi-shot package, such as two for $1 or other combinations.

Count the number of players in your league or potential shooters at a tournament event and determine if this type of soccer fundraising is right for your group.

For additional information, you can contact national supplier Absolute Amusements.

Soccer Fundraising: Fast-food Discount Cards The third soccer fundraiser is one that your group can use once or use to raise funds all season long. And that’s selling fast food discount cards.

This is a simple item to sell. Each fundraising discount card contains a certain number of two-for-one meal packages at a well-known fast food outlet.

Participating companies include McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dominoes Pizza, and other large fast-food chains.

Your group purchases a certain number of these cards in advance and sells them to families or individuals that will appreciate a substantial discount. The number of two-for-one deals on each card varies by company.

Pizza Hut’s card offers a free pizza with the purchase of another pizza up to a maximum of ten. The McDonalds card seems to offer the least number of “double deals” but its also one of the most popular.

Each card retails for $10 and costs between $1 to $2. Each one features the fast-food company’s logo on the front along with a message stating that 80-90% of the price of this card goes to support your soccer fundraising group.

It’s a nice way to tap into the consumer spending revenue stream with an attractive product that benefits both parties.

Find out more about fundraising discount cards from a supplier that handles all the different cards.

These programs allow your group to reap an excellent return by offering quality products that require only moderate effort. They are guaranteed to score a goal every time out with your players and your supporters.

There are many ways to market your travel business or team up with others in the travel industry for fundraisers. And some popular ways involve the use of travel vouchers.

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There are many ways to market your travel business or team up with others in the travel industry for fundraisers. And some popular ways involve the use of travel vouchers.

Travel vouchers are generally issued by companies in the travel industry like airlines for complimentary airfare, hotel stays and other perks. They might be given out for stranded travelers who’ve missed connecting flights or as bonuses or for any number of reasons.

You can also use vouchers in fundraising efforts. Here are some popular promotional ideas:

1 Invite your customers to get really excited about your business so they will tell their friends by giving them a free vacation voucher, certificate, a coupon, etc. Offer these vouchers at fundraisers at local community events and let your customers know to notify you when their own businesses and places of employment host fundraisers, too, so that you can participate by contributing vouchers to them as well.

2. The kind of award or rewards you want to donate as vouchers for fundraisers should depend on your budget and what your business can afford. Less expensive travel vouchers might be in the form of offering food coupons, gift certificates, movie passes or clothing accessories and travel items like suitcases and watches. More expensive rewards ideas might be costume jewelry, short vacations, complimentary bed and breakfast gift certificates, long distance calling cards.

3. You could donate something travel-related to a fundraiser, like a carry-on suitcase on wheels. And then tuck a voucher inside the suitcase as a free bonus gift. Or if flyers are allowed at the fundraising event, mention on promotional flyers an offer to potential customers with a free voucher, coupon or travel gift certificate as a back end product or service, a bonus item for sales that close before a certain deadline. (This can also help to increase your chances for repeat purchases.)

So put on your thinking cap and come up with creative ways to incorporate travel vouchers in with fundraisers. You will not only be giving back, but sharing valuable resources with others, putting plenty of smiles on faces. And that’s fun!

Looking for a good school fundraising idea?

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Looking for a good school fundraising idea?

Finding ‘something different’ can be a challenge. The good news is that there are other school fundraising ideas besides coordinating a special event or conducting a catalog-based fundraiser.

These often end up overwhelming your supporters with multiple fund raising products that aren’t everyday items for most people.

In this series, we’ll take a look at three school fundraising ideas. Part Two looks at Pizza Cards.

These are simple products that your group can offer that provide these benefits:

1) They are easy to sell 2) They offer good value 3) They produce excellent results

School Fundraising Ideas: Pizza Card

What is a pizza card and how is it different?

A pizza card is a discount card with an offer tied to a single merchant, usually a national chain. It often provides a two-for-one offer on every order and is tends to be priced at $10 for a card good for a one-year period.

Offers vary with most being tied to either a single location or a small group of outlets for a national chain. Pizza Hut cards are good for eat-in dining while most others are aimed at the take-out or delivery market.

Given how popular pizza is with younger children as well as teenagers, pizza cards are excellent school fundraising ideas.

The cards for Pizza Hut and those for some of the other chains place a limit on the number of times you can use the card,often 21 times. That is an awful lot of free pizza for $10. Usage is tracked via holes punched in marked spots on the card.

Some of the offers also specify that your initial order must be for a large pizza while your free pizza is a medium size. When you think about it, that works well for most adults because they usually want a different set of toppings than what their children enjoy.

Like the discount card, pizza cards can be obtained from many suppliers. Most offer the same set of national chains and prices can vary widely, so it pays to shop around.

All in all, pizza cards are among the top school fundraisers for profit and ease of sale.

Fundraising is both challenging as it is rewarding. Raising the needed fund for a worthy cause is indeed spiritually and emotionally satisfying. Every school organization may want to extend a helping hand to those folks who are in dire need. The pros

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When your school organization aims to help out through whatever possible means regardless of who or which is the beneficiary, fundraising is just the most precise thing to do. Is it not much fulfilling on your part to put out the best possible effort you can in order to earn money for a specific cause or if you’re earning money to help others? Of course it is!

Confused of which fundraising strategy to go for? There are a lot of fundraising ideas to opt for which may either be simple or a bit complicated. As a matter of fact, it is usually the simplest plan which works best.

What can fundraising do for you?

Due to the fact that fundraising stirs the best out from you, the feeling of being able to help the needy is particularly spiritually and emotionally gratifying. Fundraising campaigns are as well beneficial for your organization as it heightens the return of good and positive feedbacks that your group may get.

Apart from all other glorifying aspects which fundraising generate, one’s creativity, organizational skills, communication dexterities, and firmness as likewise enhanced. During fundraising ventures, you and your group mates get the chance to interact with people from all walks of life and be able experience for yourselves the real score outside of the world which you are traditionally confined in.

Fundraising Ideas

There are a number of fundraising ideas that your school organization can choose from. The most common fundraising ideas are selling sandwiches, candy and chocolate bars, shakes, beverages, meal coupons, concert tickets, basketball game tickets, discount coupons, personalized shirts, mugs, pens, and other collectible items, and so on. Cooking and then selling the output from the recipes you have collected can also be effective. You can try selling them to the school’s population or to the outside community. Your organization can even team up with the school’s sports games and earn profit from the ticket sales. Or, your organization may stage a concert for a cause. Garage sale and car washing is also among the trendiest fundraising activities these days.

Things to Consider in Fundraising

After finally deciding on which fundraising idea to go for, there are two major things which must be borne in mind. The first thing is to carefully think about the percentage of profit that you will make out of the fundraising activity. When your organization had opted to team up with another organization or some company, the agreement must be put into writing.

Next, it is significant to make sure that the products you put up for sale for the fundraising campaign are worth it. Once the people know for a fact the real cause for the fundraising activity, they tend to be exceptionally generous.

Any fundraising activity needs careful planning. For the campaign to be highly successful, it is important that all members of your organization should concert enough effort for the realization of the specified goals.

Everybody wants easy fundraisers. The problem is that you also want good results. So, how do you get the best results

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Everybody wants easy fundraisers. The problem is that you also want good results. So, how do you get the best results

from an easy fundraiser?

Three things to consider in evaluating easy fundraisers:

Effort Involved Resources Needed Duration of Fundraiser

EFFORT INVOLVED An easy fundraiser shouldn’t take a lot of effort, but let’s be honest. It is going to take SOME effort.

The level of effort is often directly proportional to the size of your group’s monetary goal, but not always. That’s why you are considering an easy fundraiser in the first place – you’re looking for less effort, not more.

RESOURCES NEEDED Resources are always a problem in small group fundraising. You can never have too many volunteers and you usually never have enough.

For an easy fundraiser, you want programs that don’t require an excessive time commitment from a large number of people.

You want either a single weekend-only activity or a program that takes only a small amount of time each week. It’s easier to get people to help with something that doesn’t require more than a two-hour commitment from them.

Conserve your resources with an easy fundraiser and you’ll have more folks to draw on later when you really need help.

DURATION OF FUNDRAISER Duration is important. An easy fundraiser that lasts more than a single weekend should not require a lot of attention to keep it productive.

Those that only last a single day or weekend shouldn’t require a tremendous amount of prep time.

So, which easy fundraisers only take a little effort, few resources, and have the right duration?

Three simple easy fundraisers: Printer cartridge recycling program Onsite or Online Yard Sale Seasonal Specialty Item Sale Recycling Program

A recycling program for collecting used printer cartridges costs nothing to put together. All collection boxes and shipping needs are covered by the supplier. We recommend FundingFactory.

Your effort involves finding businesses to participate in the program, leaving pre-labeled boxes with a site representative, and providing directions on calling UPS to pick up a full box.

A used cartridge is worth between $1 and $20, depending on the popularity of the printer and the cost of a new cartridge. Many businesses encourage recycling efforts. For good prospects, check with the leasing manager of large office buildings that house multiple companies.

Another good location is an electronics store or office supply retailer. Customers often bring in their old cartridge when shopping for a replacement. You are doing the retailer a service by providing them with an environmentally safe way to dispose of these leftovers.

A good recycling program will cover a couple of dozen sites and not require much work after the initial placement. Over time, working this many sites can produce a considerable amount of funds for your group.

One good source for a complete turnkey cartridge recycling setup (at no cost to your group) is the Funding Factory. They recycle inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges, and old cell phones.

Mega Yard Sale

A big yard sale is another easy fundraiser to pull off. It’s short in duration, usually just a Saturday sale with some prep time the night before.

Choose a nice high-visibility location like a school or church parking lot. Advertise in the local paper and put up signs for the cagey veterans who troll around on Saturday mornings looking for bargains.

Group your items together by category – kids clothes, tools, toys, books, pictures, music, etc. Place general price signs around items instead of pricing everything individually.

For example, “$5-$10 Tools” or “Books: $1-$3″ are signs that allow people to haggle and help you avoid putting price stickers on hundreds of items.

Resources are needed most for helping to sell. Recruit outgoing types who can be enthusiastic about these odds and ends. Make it a fun time with some helium balloons for small children and have coffee and doughnuts available for adults.

By grouping items together from multiple households, you create a bigger draw as well as a bigger workforce.

If you attract enough shoppers along with enough donations, you can raise as much as $500 per participating household.

Online Yard Sale

A variation on the yard sale fundraiser is to sell the items online. The best place to sell large quantities of lower-priced items is on eBay. You’ll get more for books, music, and consumer electronics that way.

Keep it in mind as a way to get better results on some items or as an easier fundraiser to do for very small groups.

You’ll need to spend some time creating the listings. Having online pictures posted seems to help with higher-priced items. All in all, it’s an easy fundraiser that produces results.

Specialty Item Sale

The third type of easy fundraiser is a weekend specialty sale of a seasonal item. Examples would be a Pumpkin Patch sale, a Christmas Tree sale, a Spring Flower Bulb fiesta, and so on.

This involves an effort similar to having a large yard sale. You’ll need a high-traffic location and some advance publicity. Your goal is to capture seasonal sales from the general public as well as those from within your group.

Avoid stretching these sales over more than one weekend or you’ll run into resource issues. Make it quick and keep it fun. Setup on a Friday, sell hard on Saturday, and wrap it up by Sunday afternoon.

Make arrangements ahead of time with your supplier about how to handle left over items. Source pumpkins from the local Farmer’s Market, Christmas trees from grower’s associations, and flower bulbs from national suppliers.

Be sure to price everything competitively and offer great customer service. For Christmas trees, have able bodies standing by to tie them down on vehicles.

For pumpkins, help place them in the trunk. The easier you make it for customers, the more you’ll net for your group.

Easy Fundraisers – Wrap-up

Putting together an easy fundraiser isn’t hard. It does take some effort and it does require resources, but nothing too difficult.

Give your group a helping hand by taking it easy.

The more indebted we feel, the more motivated we are to eliminate the debt. Pre-giving makes us feel like we have to return the favor. Greenburg said this feeling of discomfort is created because the favor threatens our independence. An interesting r

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The Law of Obligation also presents itself in the following situations:

* Taking a potential client out to dinner or to play golf * Offering free tire rotation or fluid fill-up between services * Someone washing your car windows at a stoplight whether you want them to or not * Generating money at “free” car washes by asking for a donation after the service is rendered * A carpet cleaner offering to clean your couch for free

A film-developing company thrived on the Law of Obligation. They would send a roll of film in the mail along with a letter explaining that the film was a free gift. The letter then outlined how the recipient should return the film to their company to be processed. Even though a number of local stores could process the film at a far lower price, most people ended up sending it to the company that had sent them the film. The technique worked because the company’s “pre-giving” incurred a sense of obligation to repay the favor. We often see this method at work when companies give out complimentary calendars, business pens, T-shirts, or mugs.

In a local clothing store, the sales staff are trained to ask customers whether they want to have their suit jackets pressed at no charge while they are shopping. Of course, hardly anyone ever refuses. While they wait on their jackets, they naturally have to spend more time in the store, whereby they occupy themselves by checking out all the merchandise. Because the store is pressing their jackets, the customers feel more indebted to buy. Moreover, when they do decide to buy something, they are more likely to buy it from the salesperson who pressed their jacket.

The same principle applies when you go to the grocery store and see those alluring sample tables. It is hard to take a free sample and then walk away without at least pretending to be interested in the product. Some individuals, as a means of assuaging their indebtedness, have learned to take the sample and walk off without making eye contact. Some have taken so many samples, they no longer feel an obligation to buy or even pretend they’re interested in the products anymore. Still, the technique works, so much so that it has been expanded to furniture and audio/video stores, which offer free pizza, hot dogs, and soft drinks to get you into the store and create instant obligation.

In the early 1980s, the Hare Krishna movement encountered difficulty in raising funds through their traditional means. The rebellion of the 1960s had given way to the more conservative 1980s, and the Hare Krishna members were now considered almost an affliction to society. To counteract negative public opinion, they developed a new approach that utilized the Law of Obligation. Their new fundraising strategy worked because it prompted a sense of obligation that outweighed the dislike or negativity felt toward the Hare Krishna movement.

The new strategy still involved solicitation in crowded, public places, but now, instead of just directly asking for a donation, the potential donor was first given a free gift–a flower. If someone tried to turn it down, the Krishna follower would, under no circumstances, take it back. The Krishna gift-giver might say, “Sir, this is a free gift for you to keep, and we welcome donations.” Often the gifts just ended up in the trash cans, but overall, the strategy worked. In most cases, even individuals who ended up throwing the gifts away donated something. Although lots of people were extremely annoyed by the high-pressure gift giving, their sense of obligation to reciprocate was too strong to ignore.

Another study found that survey takers could increase physician response to a long questionnaire if they paid the physicians first. When a $20 check was sent along with the questionnaire, 78 percent of the physicians filled it out and sent it back. When the $20 check was promised to arrive after the questionnaire was completed and sent in, only 66 percent followed through. The pre-giving incentive increased the sense of obligation. Another interesting result of the study was this: Of the physicians who received the $20 check in the initial mailing but did not fill out the questionnaire, only 26 percent cashed the check. Of the physicians receiving the $20 check who did fill out the questionnaire, 95 percent cashed the check! This demonstrates that the Law of Obligation works conversely, as well. The fact that many of the physicians who did not fill out the questionnaire also did not cash their checks may be interpreted as a sign of their psychological and emotional discomfort at accepting a favor that they we re not going to return.