Fundraising

Fundraising!

        How many of you just cringed? How many of you wonder why I just asked that? In my experience as an adviser I have met a variety of staff situations. One magazine can walk out their school’s front door and see five different companies that will donate quite a bit of money. Another has to raise almost every penny on their own. When I joined our magazine 4 years ago, the district gave us $1000 for the year. We raised $400 to $600 in addition to that so we averaged a budget of $1500.
        What’s amazing to me is that the magazine has had success in the past despite the financial handicap. The year I came onto the staff we approached the school district for funds. The district had a grant that had $3000 dollars that could be used for our magazine. Instantly the print quality of the magazine matched the talent that was producing the magazines in the past. While we still had to consider money in the final decisions, the boundaries were closer to limitless.

        Unfortunately the old axiom “Money makes the world go ‘round” is just as true for magazines. While it is possible to produce a good magazine on an inkjet, the archival quality leaves a lot to be desired. Finding the money to produce a publication requires a lot of work and dedication. We have a position on our publication staff that is dedicated to fundraising. That student’s job is to call, write, or e-mail local businesses to solicit funds. Unfortunately the fewer students you have working on fundraising, the less they can canvas businesses.
        To be more efficient with raising money, start with anyone who has donated in the past. Chances are they will give again. Once you have exhausted that list, identify businesses in the area that have donated to other school functions. Ask you yearbook staff or adviser for a list of their patrons, but be sure that you don’t steal away patrons from them. Also try and Identify businesses that deal with publication, printing, books, etc. They may be more inclined to contribute to a school publication.

Sales

"I was wondering if your group sells copies of your magazine once they are printed to raise money? If you do, how much do you charge and how successful is it? In the past we've tried to sell some but never sold more than a few copies at graduation." -Lars

Yes we do sell the magazine. In the two years that I have been involved in selling the magazine we have sold it for $5 and then the following year $7. This year we are talking about selling it for $10. Our problem has been, and always will be, No matter what we sell it at we will never reclaim the cost of publishing. This year's price is an attempt to maximize the amount of money that we can get.
We print 200 to 250 copies of the magazine. We sell 60 copies on average. We feel that we can sell the higher quality magazine to the same 60 people at $10 instead of $5 or $7. In this way we can gain a little more revenue to put towards next year. This is only a theory. Time will tell if it works.

I can't remember where I heard the idea, or who mentioned it; however, there is an idea floating around about the possibility of selling the magazines on Amazon or eBay. We haven't seriously pursued the idea, but it is an avenue that we are going to be looking into. At this point in the game, we (As lit mag people) are going to have to come up with some creative solutions to this problem.

Unfortunately, I cannot ever see a high school literary magazine being published and paid for through sales. Sponsorships, patrons, and donations are always going to have to be a part of the equation. I hope that I will be proved wrong in the future.