Brothers,
Today my home lodge is holding a chili dinner fundraiser. We are trying to raise money to repair our damaged floor.

Our last chili dinner fell extremely flat.
We had very low attendance even though we advertised heavily.

We are doing it as free will donation.

What are some different fundraising techniques you have uses or have saw being used?

Mainly looking for something different.
Something that will shake it up a little.

Does set price or free will donations work better for you?

Any input is greatly appreciated!

Thanks Brothers.

How much money do you need for the floor 

We are hoping to raise $3000.00.

Realistically, $1500.00 would probably get us patched up.

Last chili dinner only brought in about $500.00. We had about that much in supplies. All of which were donated by various lodge members.
So, we pretty much would have done better to just all chip in money last time and forget the fundraiser. Lol

BTW: This is a pretty rural lodge.

well the fundraisers suck if you don't all want to put in an effort and get the same as if everyone just chipped in and didn't have to do any work.... but then you wouldn't have any fellowship that night.
Our Lodge is in the center of  a small town  and we are just outside the suburbs of Pittsburgh and we only  manage to raise about $1200 at a spaghetti dinner, but have to compete with about 5 churches in town for funds.  Our supplies are donated too.

$500 might be all you can do in a rural town.

We are having a dinner at the end of April.  2 weeks ago we started selling tickets for this and will be giving it away at the dinner. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01H0EZNI2?tag=vglnk-c102-20  Tickets are $5 each and basically your members and family will only  buy them. Our decanter has our Lodge Number on it.  The decanter and 4 highball glasses were around $90 shipped. We have $300 in ticket sales already.
Last month we did a clock from the same guy.




How many members do you have?

Around 200 total, but usually only 15 to 20 that are regulars. Most of our regular members are also plural members of the 3 other lodges in the area, so they are stretched pretty thin.

Thanks for the ideas.

If you are only asking for donations, you will get lot's of sorry people that will give $4 for a meal, and you break even.

If you don't sell at a price that equals a discernible profit per serving you are wasting time and effort.

You would do better with a gun raffle or a bingo night.  Try a horseshoe competition.  Park cars for a local sporting event.  Lease spots to the public for a community yard sale.  Hold your own yard sale.  

Raise your dues.

For the life of me I cannot fathom why our Fraternity insists on selling food to make money.  I cannot stand selling pancakes, BBQ chickens, Boston Butts, spaghetti dinners, etc.

AAR:

Well we did better than the last time, but it definitely wasn't worth our time and donated items IMO.

The turn out was good, bit it was almost completely Brothers and their families.
(Ideas on bringing in the general public?)

We did advertise pretty well this time.

I really like the idea of a yard sale!
We are located right on a main road, and we have a large parking lot. That sounds perfect for this summer. All items would be donated by members to be sold, and what doesn't sell can be donated to some charities.
I will be definitely be bringing this up at the next meeting. Plus we have a lot of Eastern Star ladies. They LOVE yard sales. Lol.

Thanks again!

Another lodge near us does gun raffles.  tickets are $2. they sell 1000 of the and the numbers are based on the lottery.  They get a $500 pistol and   profit $1500 every other month.

We would love to do gun raffles, but we are not allowed to by Grand.
Gun raffles make serious money around here.

We have a huge fish fry in september and several gun raffles a year.

Do you have any area grocery stores that allow groups to have a stand to sell food?  We have several that have "Brat Fry" stands that local groups use to raise money for their organization.  You, of course, have to purchase their products to sell, but we have routinely made $300 - $500 each time.  The key is to get good weekends where there will be higher volumes of traffic:  Memorial Day, the 4th, Labor Day, etc.

Yes, we will be doing one in the next couple of weeks at a local grocery store.
This will be our first one, and we think it will work out well.
The only thing we have to do is supply 3 workers.

It sounds like a really good deal.

Our fish fry typically does pretty good.

Again, I wish we were allowed to do gun raffles. They would really help.

We sign-up for times and usually have 8 or more always there.  It turns out to be more of a social event for the Brethren than a fund raiser. With the number of guys that usually participate, we've joked we should all just throw a $20 in the pot and go to a bar.  But they've really worked out for us.

Pm me the name and address of the lodge. I'd like to buy a bowl of chili.

My lodge does a few dinners , The biggest fund raiser is a turkey shoot . We buy the prizes , hams and sausage and turkeys and use a members property for the event and sell concessions. The event makes the annual budget for the lodge and a little left over

Last summer our Masonic charity did a street drive (standing in an intersection) and we raised almost $1800 . on a chilly overcast day.
We also have a "Harvest Supper" (Ham squash potatoes turnips, rolls butter. apple or pumpkin pie ) the week before election day. A member of our lodge is a produce vendor so he gets us wholesale prices, and we ask for donations of pies. We can on a good night turn in $1800.00