The Playbook.

How to run a calendar fundraiser (and sell out)

A wall calendar is the easiest product most nonprofits never sell well. Here is how to sell every copy.

Timing

Calendars sell from October through December, and almost nowhere else. People buy them as gifts and as a small way to say yes to a cause they like at the end of the year. Start promoting six weeks before you want the money in hand. For most organizations that means the first week of October, with the last push in the two weeks before Christmas.

Pricing

Charge $25 to $30. Lower than that and supporters wonder if it is any good. Higher and you lose the gift buyers. Here is the math on a run of 100 copies at $30:

1. 100 copies × $30 = $3,000 in sales.
2. Print-on-demand through your store: about $8–10 to you per copy, so roughly $900 with no money up front and no boxes in anyone's garage.
3. Bulk order for an event: about $10–12 per copy to buy, so roughly $1,800 kept if you sell them all in person.

Bulk earns more per copy but you carry the risk. Do your first year print-on-demand. Once you know your number, buy bulk for the second year's events.

Who sells

Calendars do not sell themselves from a link in a newsletter. They sell when a person asks another person. You need three groups:

• The board. Ask each member to sell ten. That is a hundred copies before anyone else lifts a finger.
• Volunteers. Give them the link and a photo of the cover to post. Keep it to one ask.
• One champion. Someone who owns the number, checks it weekly and nudges the board. Without this person, the campaign drifts.

The one email

Most copies move from a single email, so write that one well. Subject line: the cause and the word calendar. First line: one sentence on what the money does. Then the cover image, the price, the link, and the deadline for holiday delivery. That is the whole email. Send it on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, and send it again ten days later to everyone who did not open it.

Selling at events

If you have a fall festival, gala or open house, put the calendar on a table by the door with a sign that says the price and a QR code to your store. Have one person at the table who knows the photographers' stories. A calendar with a story behind it outsells a calendar on a table every time.

Afterward

The photos do not retire on December 31. Use them on social media through the year, one month at a time. Put the best one on the cover of your annual report. Send the January image to everyone who bought a calendar with a thank-you and a note on what their money did. Next October, they will be your first buyers.

Photos that make people give

Most nonprofits use the photo that was easiest to find. The right one does more work than any paragraph you will write.

One face beats a crowd

A single animal, a single person, a single place. Donors give to one story, not to a statistic, and a crowd shot reads as a statistic. If a photo has twelve volunteers in it, crop to the one whose face shows what the day was about. Eye contact helps. So does a little distance, where the subject is in the world they live in rather than posed in front of a banner.

Show the work, not the logo

Your supporters do not need to see your logo on a tent, a check presentation or a group in matching shirts. They need to see the thing their money does: the turtle going back into the water, the dog on the couch in its new home, the stretch of river that is cleaner than it was. Save the group photos for the volunteers' own feeds, where they belong.

Be consistent

The appeal email, the annual report and the social media feed should look like they came from the same organization. That means the same kind of light, the same kind of subject, the same tone. Pick ten or fifteen images at the start of the year and use them everywhere. Repetition is not a problem. Nobody sees your work as often as you do.

Rights and releases

Know where every photo came from and whether you can use it. A volunteer's phone photo is theirs unless they gave it to you in writing. A photo pulled from a search engine is almost never yours. Anyone recognizable in a fundraising image should have signed a release, and that includes children, who need a parent's signature. Keep the releases in one folder. This takes an hour and saves you from the one email you never want to get.

Where to get good images

• Your own volunteers, if one of them can actually shoot. Ask them for a morning in the field, not a snapshot at the picnic.
• A creator who cares about your cause. Many photographers will shoot for an organization they believe in at a fair rate, and the results show it.
• A licensed collection built for causes like yours, such as ours, when you need good images this week and the budget is small.

Whichever route you take, judge each image by one question: would a stranger understand what we do from this picture alone? If the answer is no, keep looking.