Raising funds for TotJO

Jestor wrote:
Calligraphy, huh?

That is pretty cool...

To quote a t-shirt I saw the other day, "My skills are as varied as they are impractical."

steamboat28 wrote:

Jestor wrote:
Calligraphy, huh?

That is pretty cool...

To quote a t-shirt I saw the other day, "My skills are as varied as they are impractical."

Oh my goodness! I want that shirt! Haha.

Jestor, to comment on donating the time to make items, a friend actually showed me an article on how to price goods. Essentially it was material cost + time +overhead+profit=wholesale. Multiply that by two and you get retail.

So by even simply charging materials and time (not even including the time I took digitizing and perfecting the designs) I'm giving up a lot of profit. Which I'm willing to do as long as I can make TotJO members things on my schedule. BUT I'm insecure on how much to charge to begin with lol. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do as I do. I do it because I enjoy making things for people and don't feel like my work is worth much lol.

I honestly thought about putting TotJO patches up on Etsy.com to sell and donating money back to the Temple but figured that if the Temple was really needing money, we wouldn't have priced our Cafe shop so little above production costs. But that's something that I can offer. Or even possibly open and run a TotJO specific Etsy.com shop. I've had a few ideas in my head for some TotJO crafts like wooden plaques or boxes with the emblem wood burned into it. ..Actually I really like this idea. If it's something that TotJO would be interested in, Im willing to run it.

I think that would be good...

But, its not just up to me...

You as the artist, and Akkarin as the PR rep, need to discuss...

As a call-back to things I said in another thread whose url escapes me at the moment, there's also a very limited pool of people who would buy TOTJO merchandise--it's almost certainly limited to TOTJO members. Which is fine at first, because goods will get people to part with money quicker than a donate button, but at the same time, eventually you'll mine that out. And then what do we do?

I'm not asking to be negative, but sincerely. I don't know where to go from there.

Patches seem to be something a lot of people like. Plaques would be nice if people want a display for making rank or whatever. But a lot of this will be made to order so not much in the way of overhead I don't think

Or perhaps make a thread with items that can be made, that'll prevent the overhead in Etsy.com. Just post items once they were requested. Sorry I'm not thinking well at the moment. Lol

There are always options...

If you get a list, then we will figure something out...

And Steamboat, yea, I know what you mean...

I was a 'cheer parent' too... When they had fundraisers, I bought more than I sold, whatever it is... And for school stuff too...

And, i always thought, I am already paying a tuition, why not just charge me more, and forgo the fundrasing crap, lol...

When I worked for terminix, the philosophy was, "you already have a captive audience base, see what else they might need" I hated that, they were already spending money on my services, and I have to try to sell, or upcharge stuff? I did a lot for free... lol...

I wish there was a good answer....

Thats why I am waiting for a 'fundraising team', that can handle this, :lol:...

Akkarin wrote: We have the cafepress one linked at the bottom and also a Zazzle one here: http://www.zazzle.com/totjostore

I'll ask Proteus to put them both down there for the time being.

I don't intend to derail the conversation, but [strike]this store is so much cooler than[/strike] I had no idea we had the Zazzle store. Thanks for bringing that up, Akkarin.

Darren wrote:

Akkarin wrote: We have the cafepress one linked at the bottom and also a Zazzle one here: http://www.zazzle.com/totjostore

I'll ask Proteus to put them both down there for the time being.

I don't intend to derail the conversation, but [strike]this store is so much cooler than[/strike] I had no idea we had the Zazzle store. Thanks for bringing that up, Akkarin.

I've just made a new merchandise article to explain some of the merchandise stuff: http://www.templeofthejediorder.org/component/content/article/40-information/2092-temple-of-the-jedi-order-merchandise

steamboat28 wrote: As a call-back to things I said in another thread whose url escapes me at the moment, there's also a very limited pool of people who would buy TOTJO merchandise--it's almost certainly limited to TOTJO members. Which is fine at first, because goods will get people to part with money quicker than a donate button, but at the same time, eventually you'll mine that out. And then what do we do?

TotJO is very passive, we always have been. We don't go on recruitment drives, we don't send PMs to people asking for donations, we don't try and sell people merchandise.

We let ourselves be open to the public and people join us.
We have a donate button and people give us money.
We have a merchandise store and people buy things.

We don't 'push', we just sit here and things take care of themselves.

If the store never sells anything then that doesn't matter, it isn't there to make money, it is there to provide TotJO branded merchandise to people that want it. Having the store costs us nothing, if it did we probably wouldn't have it, it just sits there and people buy now and then. It is not a question of 'mining out' because we aren't mining...

Kamizu wrote: Patches seem to be something a lot of people like. Plaques would be nice if people want a display for making rank or whatever. But a lot of this will be made to order so not much in the way of overhead I don't think

We had certificates, but Mark was in charge of them and he's gone, someone else did one the other week, I forget who but that was good. The certificates were pretty much free except for postage.

Jestor wrote: Thats why I am waiting for a 'fundraising team', that can handle this, :lol:...[/color]

:whistle: