Myself and a few other partners are starting up a local charity in our community. Building local support has been difficult. We do not have a lot of cash assets so we are mostly looking for volunteers. Is there some way that we could motivate people to volunteer other than compensation? We need some creative ideas.
One of them would be sharing a bit more information about what you're doing. This is a large forum, you can get some of the most creative ideas from its members, but we do need to know more.
Try to make video that will go viral. Offcourse it's hard but you have to try. People like good ideas and if your idea is good then they will help you.
We are an organization called "Caring Cans" we collect aluminum cans and recycle them, then redistribute the funds gained from recycling back into local charities and nonprofits. Because of the nature of our organization, we only will be functioning locally for the time being. Eventually we hope to become state, and then nationwide. The reason I did not post our name before was to prevent someone from purchasing our domain names. We have only been functioning for about 3 months and still getting started, but things are rolling!
In the past there have been huge "cages" for cans at schools with a donation going to the school. Just having these is promotion enough surely? How are you collecting the cans? Do you need to go to a big company (or 3), or apply for a government grant to get started given that you need to build some infrastructure in order to make a significant start?
We are kind of flying by the seat of our pants! This is a huge learning experience for those involved. For now, we are just taking every day one step at a time. We are okay if the organization only grows slowly. We figure we will start by giving out checks of $250.00 - $500.00 a month to local organizations, then as we get a greater support base we eventually want to give out $1,000.00 checks at a time. We don't intend on applying for any financial assistance as of now. The majority of the funding is coming from my pocket. We look for simple and inexpensive solutions. That is actually how I got to this forum. We are hoping to find a web design solution soon.
OK, good for you! Don't be afraid to ask people from other local charities for mentoring advice. If you pick one that overlaps there might even be synergy from working together.
Yeah, that is one thing we are REALLY looking forward to. Because we will be donating to other local nonprofits, we will have huge opportunities to network and create partnerships. Oh, and your school idea was great as well. We are hoping to do something like the "arcade bottle bank" at schools. See below: We thought that would be a fun way to get some positive publicity.