Fundraising with fairly traded, organic, and delicious products? Here’s an excellent tip to help you raise more money… let them taste it!

As the fundraising campaign organizer, it’s up to you to come through for your cause. You made sure your community knows precisely what your organization needs the money for and why you partnered with Equal Exchange to help raise it. Great work! Now, it’s time to boost your fundraising efforts by offering samples.

There are two different groups of people who have a stake in your fundraiser. Each plays a different yet important role in your campaign. Identify them, then give each what they need to raise the most possible.

Fundraising Participants

The first group is your team of organizers and fundraising participants — the people who are soliciting orders. They are the ones who sell to their sphere of contacts. Your participants need to be passionate about your cause or project. Their passion gets their friends and families excited. They need to be able to talk about what the funding means to them personally. It’s up to you to get them jazzed up to generate excitement.

Your team also needs to know – and love – what they’re offering. You, of course, share fair trade and organic information with your participating children and adults to let them know your fundraiser also supports small farmers. Giving them a taste of the delicious products they are offering will allow them to describe “delicious” in their own words and help boost their sales.

Fundraising Supporters

The second group are the people purchasing the products to support the fundraiser. They are people your participants know — friends, family, and coworkers. They may buy an item or two during your fundraiser. Still, if you train your team to offer samples, such as a taste of decadent chocolate, or a sip of freshly brewed coffee, it’s likely to increase order sizes. Samples help you raise the most money possible throughout your campaign.

How to Order Samples For Your Equal Exchange Fundraiser

Browse the products that you want in your fundraiser and decide what you’d like to sample. Then, order a few products you’ll offer by the case at lower wholesale pricing online or by calling 774-776-7366.

The purpose of product sampling is to raise more money. It costs approximately $30 for a case of 12 chocolate bars. You could sample just four of the bars, then sell the remaining eight at $4.00 each to pay for the full case. Then, start collecting orders – and cash – to place a final fundraising order.

Ask for help. 

You are fundraising, so you need money for your cause. Ordering products by the case before starting your fundraiser may be difficult, so consider reaching out to a few specific supporters and ask them for help with samples. Your email could look something like this:

Dear Supporter,

As you know, we’re kicking off our fair trade fundraiser soon. When people taste the delicious, organic products we’re offering, they’ll purchase more, and we’ll be able to reach our fundraising goal faster!

Would you be so kind as to order a few full cases of product to donate to us so we can use them for samples? You can keep some for yourself! Here’s what we need…

Then, make your wish list and include links to the Equal Exchange products you’ll offer in your fundraiser to make it easy for them to help. If you ask a few people to help, consider requesting they donate different products so you can sample a wider variety to help raise more money.

Ideas for Successful Sampling

• Chocolate Bars – One Bar Goes Far! One Equal Exchange chocolate bar can be broken into 24 tasting samples. There are 12 chocolate bars in one case, which gives you 288 tastings costing about 10¢ each. Click for tips on how to conduct a chocolate tasting.

• Use Chocolate Minis – Sampling made simple. One box of minis contains 150 individually wrapped pieces of chocolate.
• Make a recipe using any product that is in your fundraiser. Need ideas? Check out our recipes.
• Host a Hot Cocoa Bar.
• Brew coffee or tea and share samples. 
• Bring samples to a community event and start taking fundraising orders.