Cookbooks make great fundraisers, and are fun to put together. Here are some ideas to help get you going.

Putting Out The Call:

Depending on the number of people you have in your particular organization, it may make things a lot easier on you if you create a cookbook committee and delegate some of the tasks to the members. If you can rustle up enough volunteers (anywhere from 4-10 depending on the scope of your project), you will be doing well. Once you have your committee together, have a meeting and start to set out some goals and deadlines. The first thing you may want to take a good look at is the numbers. Such as, what you hope to make from the sales of the cookbook and how much money you can spend in the process of putting it together. Do some research into your printing and binding options, and be sure to look into the possibility of binding the books yourself. Your organization may have a machine on hand (such as a plastic comb or spiral coil machine), or you can pick one up for a low price. Depending of the volume of books that you intend to publish, this can save you money in the long run, and puts you in good position to project like this at any time.

Deadlines and Delegation:

Among your committee members, decide upon a date at which you want to have your cookbook finished and ready to sell. The holidays, for instance, or by the time an upcoming festival or bazaar begins. You will want to give yourself a proper amount of time to get all of the work done (3-4 months at the very least) if everyone is working on the project in their spare time. Once you have your big deadline set, you can set other deadlines and meetings to make sure that work is progressing along.

Your committees can be set up any way you wish, but there should be four basics: collecting and arranging recipes, design, the selling of ads (if you wish), and cookbook sales.

Gathering Recipes, Design, and Selling:

The key is to make it easy to contribute. Send out a form that includes a space for a short bio, the recipe, and a picture of the finished dish (optional). The more forms you can send this out in (email, snail mail, handed out at meetings) the better your participation will be. If submissions lag, send out friendly reminders and take a few moments at meetings to remind everyone what your deadlines are. Once they have been submitted, be sure to take the time to proofread the entries.

If one of your committee members is skilled with design software, by all means, let him or her take the job. If you have no such luck, search around for online templates you can use. Make sure to come up with a great title, table of contents, and perhaps a little background info on your organization.

When it comes to selling the cookbook, put out a press release, contact other organizations you work with for flier placement, and don’t overlook your contributors. Many of them will want several copies to give to family and friends.

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Category: Arts and Crafts
Keywords: fundraising cookbook, great cookbook,,make great fundraisers, cookbook