The Supply Day: An Ideal Fundraiser for Animal Rescue Groups

A lot of fundraisers require huge upfront costs and are rather risky. Most animal rescues just can't afford to take large risks in their fundraising activities. However, the supply day does not have to require a large investment, making it an ideal fundraising activity for even smaller organizations.

Basically, a supply day works off the idea that people want to spend less money on supplies for their pets. They'd really love to spend less money and also help out an animal rescue. Sometimes, depending on the species of animal you rescue, it may even be difficult to find certain items in a pet store, so the supply day would provide a huge service to those who own that type of animal. If there is a need for lower cost or difficult to find pet items in your area, a supply day will be able to work for you!

Before you can start this fundraising idea, you'll need to acquire a resellers license. They aren't too difficult to get and won't cost you much, especially if your organization is a nonprofit charity. This will be useful in many other fundraising activities as well. You'll need to renew it yearly. Check with your city for details.

Now you need to find a place to buy items in bulk. This doesn't necessarily have to be a wholesale pet supply store. You may not even need a resellers license to purchase the items, but you'll still need it to resell what you're buying. It's a good idea to have that resellers license just incase. I'll use the guinea pig rescue I volunteer for as an example here. Guinea pigs eat a diet of mostly hay and a lot of it. If you buy those tiny bags of hay at the pet store, it gets quite expensive very quickly. However, if you only own a pair of guinea pigs, it would be absurd to buy an entire bale of hay just to save money. The hay would go bad before your single pair of cavies could finish it all. So if the rescue goes to the feed store and buys a bale of hay, splits it up and sells it in larger more reasonably sized bags than the pet store, and sells it for a fifth of what it costs to buy pet store hay, people are going to buy it. Even though it will cost them more than it would if they had paid the exact cost you paid, they would not be able to make use of an entire bale anyway, so this price is still a good deal for them.

After you decide which items you want to offer, you can start your advertising. I'd recommend sending out a test flyer first to a few past adopters to see what they think of the idea and the items you plan to offer. If a couple people are interested, send out the info to all the past adopters, post flyers in animal hospitals, post online, and ask volunteers to refer friends as well. Soon you will have enough people for your supply day. The supply day can be done two different ways. You can either have people order and pay when they get there or you can have people pre-pay, and then they'll just have to pick up their items when they get to the supply day. There is a third option as well, but I wouldn't recommend it. That option is, you could advertise the supply day and then buy a large quantity of items. Then you have to hope that enough people show up to buy all the items and that you don't run out very quickly and disappoint several people. I'd recommend having customers pre-pay. When customers have already paid for something, they are less likely to flake out on coming to pick it up. However, if the customers have not pre-paid, they might be more inclined to change their mind at the last minute, leaving you with the supplies they ordered.

Last, but definitely not least, you need a place to distribute the items you wish to sell. You could use a volunteer's house that happens to be in a good location, a park, your facility if you are lucky enough to have one, or a large variety of other places. If you plan to use some type of public place such as a park, be very careful to check out the rules of the park first. Many parks do not allow sales. Sometimes distributing pre-paid items there is still considered okay. A lot of parks also require a permit if you are going to set up a large event there. Make sure you know these things in advance. It would not only be embarassing to be kicked out of the park, but you are not likely to have customers come back when they think you have flaked out on the event or planned it poorly. Make sure to print a list of all the people who have ordered items, exactly what they ordered, and if they have already paid or not. That sounds like such a simple thing, but it is so easily forgotten. Plan to have more than enough volunteers there to help out and make the supply day fun.

If you require customers to pre-pay for the supply day, you won't have to worry about upfront costs. Make sure you are reselling items legally and have a resellers license just incase. Remember to check around for the places to buy the items you need at the lowest cost. Once you have a customer base, many people are likely to keep coming back to your successful supply day events. These events don't require much planning and are rather easy to pull off. They can bring in a nice chunk of money too depending on how much you are able to mark up your available products. The supply day can be ideal for both large and small animal rescue groups.