How to choose your fundraising goal

We want to help every community using Beanstack reading fundraisers successfully turn their reading habits into donation dollars. While choosing a fundraising goal can vary widely, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Think about your community

Administrators, staff, parent organizations, board members, and other stakeholders have unique knowledge of your community demographics and past fundraising drives. We encourage you to think about your past community involvement, larger sponsorship possibilities, and individual student fundraising or capital campaigns.

Brainstorm these questions together to develop a preliminary reader target and overall target:

What is your average donation size historically? How has community participation been in past fundraising drives?
How many donors do you think readers can reach? Who is invested in their and your success?
What community sponsors have you teamed up with in the past or can you partner with now?

Pick an attainable goal

To keep your community motivated, pick a reachable goal for your first Beanstack readathon and build on that success in subsequent readathons.

One way to do this is to break down your target by reader. In equation form, it looks like the number of donors per reader x the average donor amount x the number of participating readers at your school or library. Say, for example, that your average active challenge participation is 200 people. If you think each reader can help get at least 3 donors to support their reading goals in your fundraiser, for an average donation amount of $10, then you could do some quick math and determine a goal of 3 x 10 x 200 = $6,000.

Track your progress and scale up as you go

Track and announce your reading fundraiser progress publicly and pick key points to assess your momentum. For example, if it seems like your goal is in sight at the halfway point, consider editing your goal and adding an extra incentive, like a special community event, dress-down day, or a pie in the principal’s face, if you reach that new goal!