Today, out of all of High School, was the day that I learned the most important business information about how to fundraise. Upon receiving this advice, my team fundraised $1000 in about an hour and twenty minutes, no joke. The top three things to keep in mind are talking to business owners, preparing for a presentation while asking for a set amount at the end, and being honest. Let's start with fundraising with business owners.

If you talk to store workers at Wal-Mart, you're probably either going to have to wait several weeks to get some money, or you will likely get turned down because the top dogs at Wal-Mart will have to make the decision of donating or not. The people making the decisions will probably not be the ones you presented the fundraising project to, because they are not in a high enough authority in the company to donate funds to you're project. The key thing to keep in mind is to seek out independently owned companies, like local branches of big companies with an owner's name plastered on it and banks, and talk to the owner of that branch, bank, store, whatever it may be. This is one of the most important steps in fundraising and will ultimately help speed up the fundraising process and the amount of money that gets fundraised for a project.

Before you fundraise, plan out a project to present to these companies and keep it short and to the point. Time is money to these people and you need to get your point out quickly and effectively.

When finishing up a presentation to a company about your project needing donated money, end with a statement that includes the amount of money you either A. Need to raise, or B. Is a pretty good number like $100 or higher, depending on the amount of money the project needs to have funds for. Do not just ask for a donation because then the amount of money donated will, most of the time, be much less then you would receive if you asked for a set amount or higher. Make sure to give the presentee time before making a decision to donate and, if the presentee doesn't want to give out the set amount of money, it is the time to ask for any amount of funds that the company can donate to your project. Patience is the key to this step.

Finally, honesty is so very important to fundraising projects. If you aren't honest about any sort of details or anything that is said in the presentation, it will come back to bite you in the rear. Honesty and sincerity are the other keys to successful fundraising, although they are not the secrets of success but well known facts of it.

The top three things to keep in mind are talking to business owners, preparing for a presentation while asking for a set amount at the end, and being honest. May you have the best of success while fundraising and don't give up in your good quests for the good of society and the world. I hope these tips will come in handy in the present and future.