Successful coffee fundraising program to help raise money for non-profit organizations

Custom label for coffee fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Reverie roasted over 850 bags to raise over $6,300 to find a cure for blood cancers!

Did you know you can sell fresh bags of coffee to raise funds for non-profit organizations? It’s a great way to raise funds offering consumable products your audience enjoys every day. We have had dozens of successful fundraisers for high school band programs, student athletic leagues, capital campaigns, fundraising competitions, and more. We’ve tried to make this process simple for you by creating a system that works. All you need is to rally your team and get started.

Here’s a list of some considerations you may have for your next coffee fundraiser.

Potential – With nearly 80% of adults drinking coffee, it’s an easy sell to offer coffee as a fundraiser. If people love your organization, then why would they not wish to purchase coffee if they know a significant amount of the profits go to support the cause? Coffee isn’t enjoyed year-round, and it makes a welcomed gift. There’s a ton of potential for you to sell coffee to raise funds.

Pricing – Reverie Coffee Roasters offers coffee bags in bulk for fundraising at approximately 50% of the retail value. The suggested customer pricing starts at $16.00 per bag with $8.00 cost per bag. The organization can charge any price it wishes to. But our billed cost will be $8.00 per bag, which is less than the wholesale pricing we offer for commercial customers.

Offerings – When designing a coffee fundraiser, we recommend you keep the offerings simple and easy to sell. We suggest you have one or two regular coffees and always offer a decaf option, even if you don’t customize the label. We don’t recommend more options because it becomes too much knowledge to sell. Our most successful fundraisers are simple and easy to explain. You will want to offer Whole Bean or Ground for Drip options. In our experience, about 75% of the customers request Ground for Drip. When choosing which coffee to offer, you should look for options that are going to delight the most customers possible. We recommend choosing with one darker coffee option and one medium colored option. Our most popular options are The Pope’s Choice, Moonless Midnight, 24K Goat and the current Decaf.

Timeline – We recommend two weeks to collect sales from the customers. Once the large order is collected, we request about five days to roast the coffee fresh and deliver to the non-profit for distributing to their supporters. We will finalize timelines and include the information on the custom paperwork we will provide to you before you begin the sales campaign.

Order Process – The fundraising team, which could be students or volunteers of the organization, collect orders and payment from the supporters. Reverie provides sell sheets and order forms, customized with artwork and descriptions to aid, and assist the sellers in collecting as many sales as possible. After the fundraising period is over, the fundraising team lead will supply Reverie with one order containing the total number of bags ordered for each coffee option and the grind choice. Upon completion of the order, we will deliver the order boxed separately for the fundraising organizers to distribute to the fundraisers so they can deliver to the customers. The non-profit will be billed for their portion of the sale and payment will be requested at the time of the delivery.

Customization – One huge advantage of Reverie’s coffee fundraising program is the potential for customizing the bag labels to fit the cause. Our 4x4” labels can be designed to display logos, special names, and colors along with artistically designed images to reflect the organization. You can design the art yourself or through our in-house graphic artist. Depending on the situation, the cost for customization can be anywhere from FREE to as much as $1.00 per bag. We print most of our labels in house on high-quality label printers for a professional look. If you design the artwork yourself, we need a high-quality 4” x 4” label designed saved in PDF format. Ideally, you will have a white background OR include a minimum 1/8” white boarder on the artwork to assure our printers alignment doesn’t leave a noticeable boarder.

Here are links to real examples of a Sell Sheet and Order Form. Our team will custom design these for your organization to print off for your fundraisers. Below are more examples of custom bag designs we have used over the years.

The best way to find out if a coffee fundraiser is good for your non-profit organization, simply reach out to a member of our team and we will be happy to talk you through the process. You can email us at the link below.

Andrew Goughretail