The document summarizes the author's involvement in helping to advertise and run a t-shirt fundraising event for the Logan East Community Neighbourhood Association (LECNA). The author created a Facebook event, flyers, contacted local newspapers, and distributed posters and flyers around the community to advertise the event. On the day of the event, the author and volunteers worked to set up and sell t-shirts, books, and other items. The fundraiser was a success, raising money to support LECNA's social services. The author learned that fundraising events require significant effort from volunteers and staff.

2. The following presentation will provide:
• Background information of the
organisation I did my placement with
Logan East Community Neighbourhood
Association Inc (LECNA).
•A brief discussion of the importance of
fundraising for social enterprise
organisations.
•And finally, I will discuss LECNA’S latest
fundraising event - The T-Shirt Book &
Charity sale along with my role in the
fundraiser.
Image by Lake, H 2009 via
creative commons via flickr.

3. For my personal project I decided I would like to help
LECNA with anything they needed assistance with
as they are an organisation I really believe in. After a
brief chat with the manager it was decided I would
be responsible for helping with the advertising of the
upcoming T-shirt sale.
LECNA is a community
organisation that is situated in
Springwood. They offer a huge
range of services including
emergency relief, no interest
loans, counselling and much more.
They also offer life skills and
education programs such as
budgeting courses and the Life
Skills programme. Likewise they
offer a range of social groups such
as play groups, craft and cards.
Support groups are also available
for a range of issues such as
cancer support. During my
placement with LECNA I was able
to see first-hand the wonderful work
they are doing for the community.

4. Social enterprises rely heavily on
donors, philanthropic organisations and
grants in order to maintain and run
services that their organisations provide.
That said, fundraising is crucial for not-for-
profit organisations as it provides them
with more opportunities to raise money for
their organisation(National Council of
Nonprofits 2013).

5. There are so many ways not-
for-profit organisations can
raise money through
fundraising. On the right is a
list which is by no means
extensive but gives you an
idea of just how creative and
fun these fundraising ventures
can be.
Fundraising can be done in a
number of ways. The most
popular being through the
running of special events
(National Council of
Nonprofits). Some popular
ideas I have come across
during my discussions with
staff from LECNA and from
doing various Google searches
include: Bling Nights, T-Shirt
Sales, Bake-Sales, Garage
Sales, Father-son
evenings, Mother- daughter
evenings, trivia
nights, chocolate drives and
much more.

6. Each year the Logan East Community Neighbourhood
Association hold a number of charity, book, plant and
t-shirt sales. Their most recent T-shirt sale was
scheduled for Saturday October 21st and they needed
someone to get to work on advertising. I have never
done advertising before but I was eager to give it a
try. Let me just say, before helping with the
advertising for this event, and helping to set up and
help run the event on the day I never realised how
much effort people that work in the not-for-profit
sector put in to the fundraisers that they hold.

7. There were a number of things I needed to do in order to successfully advertise
the T-shirt sale. I began by creating an event on Facebook. This is a very
simple and free way to advertise. Most importantly, however, Social Media can
attract a lot of attention which is exactly what organisations need for
fundraising events. The next step I took in advertising was to create a flyer.
This was fun but also a bit of a challenge as my computer skills are a bit rusty!
Afterwards it was time for me to consult with one of the administration ladies
who takes care of advertising for LECNA. Luckily for me she had an extensive
list of the contacts they had already established with which included local
newspapers and schools. This made it just a matter of emailing them asking
them to put the event in their community notices in their school newsletters and
newspapers. This also made it easy to make contact with one of the editor’s at
one of the local newspapers to get a feature article put in the newspaper just
days before the event. We then needed to print plenty of flyers which would be
distributed to local shopping centres and placed in newsletters for LECNA. I
also decided in order to get the word out there and get as much attention for
the event as possible I would go ‘letter-box dropping’ I delivered 100 flyers in
total to letter boxes around the local area. Finally, whilst out shopping I noticed
that local shopping centres often have Community Notice Boards. I decided to
contact those shopping centres and ask for permission to put up posters to
advertise the T-shirt sale, again, this is a cost-free and effective way of
advertising. On slides 9 to 12 are samples of the Facebook Event, Flyer, and
feature article that appeared in the Albert & Logan newspaper.
.

10. http://quest.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

11. As I mentioned at the beginning of this
presentation before being part of an event like
the T-shirt sale I had no idea how much
time, work and effort goes in to such an event. I
really respect and admire the many dedicated
volunteers and staff that turned up on the day to
help unpack countless books and t-shirts to
prepare for the T-shirt sale. It was a huge job and
without the help of our many volunteers it would
have taken a very long time and the event may
not have happened!

12. Another challenge I faced whilst working on
this event was recruiting volunteers.
However, on day of set- up I was pleasantly
surprised as many of the regular volunteers
from LECNA showed up to lend a hand. Once
again before being part of such an event I had
no idea that so much work goes into the set
up. We had loads of books, t-shirts and bric-a-
brac which all needed to be put out. Lucky its
true what they say..many hands do make light
work!

13. Before setting
up on the
Friday I decided
to do some
preparation
and gather all
the signs for
the stock to sell
on the day.

14. Setting up the
children’s t-shirts.
There were so many
cute ones!
There were heaps and heaps
of books to unpack. But I
think its a very positive thing
to encourage reading and
books can be very expensive
these were only $1!

15. Some of the lovely Volunteers helping set up for the event

16. T-shirts from the event!

17. On the left customers checking out
the t-shirts and on the right some of
LECNA’s lovely volunteers helping run
the event!

18. The day was a huge success we had a huge turn
out. We sold plenty of t-shirts, books, plants and
bric-a-brac. I’m glad to be able to say I was part of
it as LECNA is a wonderful organisation that has a
lot to offer the community. For those of you who
have never volunteered or been part of one of
these events I would definitely recommend that you
participate in one in the future. The staff and
volunteers that work in organisations like LECNA
put a huge amount of time and effort into these
fundraising events and they could always use more
help. I hope you have enjoyed my presentation and
learnt a little something about fundraising for social
enterprise.

19. 1. National Council of Nonprofits 2013, Fundraising, Viewed
September
25, 2013, http://www.councilofnonprofits.org/resources/res
ources-topic/fundraising
2. Logan East Community Neighbourhood Association
2013, viewed September 25, 2013, www.lecna.org
3. Albert & Logan News 2013 ‘Spring Sale To help Families’
, image, viewed September 25, 2013, via Quest Community
Newspapers, http://quest.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/vie
wer.aspx
4. Lake, Howard 2009 The word Fundraising, image, viewed
September 25, 2013 via Creative Commons Org, via
Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/search/?l=comm&q=fundraising