Fundraising for Charity on Kids’ Terms

We’re amazed by stories of children who at an early age become inspired to start charities, like Ryan’s Well Foundation, founded by a 1^st grader to provide clean and safe water to developing countries; Alex’s Lemonade Stand, founded by a 4-year old who wanted to help other kids with cancer, since 2004 raising more than $50 million!; and Free the Children, founded by a 12-year-old in 1995, now the world’s largest network of children helping children through education, with more than one million youth involved in 45 countries.

Yet, it doesn’t require starting a charity for young people to have an impact on their communities.  We need to emphasize to our kids that they can make a difference every day in their own backyard.

I was invited recently to give a speech to a group of 50 highly influential individuals: Kindergarten through 5^th graders.  The topic?  How kids can become involved in community giving.   I needed to illustrate and explore how each and every one of them can make a difference. This was no easy task – It’s hard enough to get in the heads of an adult audience, but it’s significantly more challenging to engage the mind of a child.

My first challenge was speaking their language. According to Tanya Truong, founder of Volunteer X, an online community promoting volunteerism locally and globally, “With children, it’s better to focus on the word ‘share’ rather than ‘give’.  Kids are taught by teachers every day about generosity through ‘sharing’.  Using that common language allows kids to relate better to the concept of service to their community.” Keeping that in mind, I began my lesson.

First, we defined “charity” (in kid speak) as an organization that is in charge of doing great things in our community, like helping to get clothes on people’s backs or food for those who have none.  Through a series of graphics on my iPad, I illustrated 3 ways we can share:
Time. Kids excitedly recalled volunteer service projects like the Cub Scouts creek clean-up day.
Money. Prompted by the image of dollar bills on a toilet paper roll (I hoped they wouldn’t pick up on the real meaning), they remembered coin collection jars at the school to support kids with cancer.
Recycled or new products. Images of toys, Spaghetti-O’s, and used clothing urged stories of canned food drives at school and clothing donations curbside at home.
Next, the kids offered up the names of nonprofits they knew – Second Harvest Food Bank, Toys for Tots, and Hope Services. How amazing it is that the school and home become a youth marketing channel for charities!

I added our very own parent association, the Home & School Club and shared information about the 4,000 hours of volunteer time and $100,000 per year donated to support the school. Eyebrows raised when the boys calculated you could buy 1,000 big Lego kits for that!  These kids didn’t realize that a “charity” was so closely tied to their own school.

My final hurrah was a game orchestrated to give the kids the power to donate “money” to charity (Hershey’s Kisses do just fine to represent money).  My approach:

• Write the names of the 4 charities we discussed on paper signs
• Break the kids into 4 teams, each team with 20 “dollars”
• Instruct the teams to decide ahead of time how many “dollars” they wanted to share with each charity
• Let them decide as a group how and where to “share” and put their “money” on each charity sign

It went rather smoothly.  At the end of the game, “volunteers” (a word we had discussed) added up the total donated to each cause and shared the results:

Second Harvest $25

Home & School Club $20

Hope Services $16

Toys 4 Tots $15

Apparently 4 “dollars” were eaten in the process.  However, the experiment was a success.  The kids seemed to take away a better understanding of how they might have a positive impact on their community.  A few tweaks and I thought I could take it prime time!

Then I learned the formula behind the giving, at least for a group of 2^nd-5^th graders.  Turns out, my son and his teammates determined that they would donate their “money” according to the donations each charity had already received.  If a charity was low on dough, the team increased the amount of “money” they had planned to give.  If a charity had significantly more “funding”, they decreased their originally planned giving and moved it to a more needy cause.  They had embraced the power of sharing in a way I had not imagined.

It’s important to bring the message of giving (sharing) close to home for kids.  It can be as simple as encouraging them to volunteer time for a local food bank or to help raise money at their own school. The students I addressed had no idea that computers, music, and the school garden were paid for with donations through the parent organization.

When I was a kid in the old days, I went door-to-door to ask neighbors for donations for school fundraisers, usually selling candy or magazine subscriptions. Today, kids’ natural technology saavy can be harnessed for good.  For example, online fundraising for school walkathons has never been easier.  Students can help parents create an online donation page, produce a personalized fundraising video, and encourage family and friends through email and Facebook to support their school with a credit card donation.

Teaching concepts of philanthropy in kid terms and guiding those concepts into action not only benefits our communities but more importantly gives children the satisfaction and positive self esteem that come from doing for others.