Fundraising with Postcards, Notelets and Greetings Cards

Introduction

This article illustrates how you might order one or a series of postcards or cards for fundraising purposes. Naturally, if you are reading this article from a business perspective, the same principles apply to create a very profitable product.

To make it easier to compare prices quoted in this article, they include VAT and delivery. If you are VAT registered you will be able to reclaim the VAT component.

About our postcards

Our postcards are ideal for use as notelets and greeting cards too. They are printed in full colour on one side with a glossy finish, and have a matt reverse for ease of writing with pen or pencil.

Should I produce a one-off or a series?

If you are planning to sell your postcards, notelets or greetings cards individually, then you may only want a single design. In such a situation, it is worth ordering as many as you think you can sell, since our postcards become much more cost-effective in larger quantities:

500 A6 postcards with black and white print on the reverse would cost £125.14 or 25p each.
5,000 postcards, exactly the same, would cost £254.06 or 5p each.

So by increasing the quantity, the price per individual postcard becomes much more reasonable. However, you might want to sell a packet of postcards or notelets with a theme. This is best achieved by 'ganging' several designs together on a single sheet, then cutting them into individual cards. For example:

2,500 A6 postcards with black and white print on the reverse costs £193.37. Four lots ordered separately (10,000 cards in total) would therefore cost £773.48, or 7.7p each.
2,500 A4 sheets with black and white on the reverse costs £443.49, plus cutting £34.62 for cutting the sheets into A6 postcards. This means 10,000 cards costs £478.11 or just 4.8p each.

Although the saving per unit is only 2.9p, the overall saving is almost £300, for no extra work on your part.

Notelets and greetings cards

Notelets and greetings cards are produced in exactly the same way as postcards, but have three distinct differences:

They are twice the size of postcards and have a crease along the centre for folding.
They are usually blank on the inside, unless the card is for a specific occasion such as Christmas or Easter, when an appropriate greeting may be printed on the inside.
They are nearly always supplied with envelopes.

Naturally, since the flat size of a notelet or greeting card is at least double that of a postcard, and a crease has to be added afterwards, they are more expensive to produce. However, they can be sold for proportionally much more than postcards. A real-life case study is included at the end of this article.

An A6 notelet or greeting card is delivered as an unfolded, A5 size sheet. Again, larger quantities are much more cost effective than smaller ones:

A single design printed on A5 and creased ready for folding costs £235.93 for 500 (47.2p each).
Increase the quantity to 2,500 and the price becomes £405.54 or 16.2p each.
At even greater quantities the unit cost falls even further. 10,000 cards £873.94 or just 8.7p each.

You will also need to supply envelopes — ordinary gummed C6 envelopes will do, or for added impact (but at extra cost) you might think about coloured envelopes.

We recommend the World of Envelopes website as a good starting point, but there are of course other suppliers who you might want to consider.

Packaging your product for sale

How to package your cards is important. Individual postcards being sold through a retail outlet need no additional packaging, but notelets and greetings cards which are supplied with envelopes benefit from attractive packaging which need not be expensive.

Most often, for fundraising situations, we recommend the use of cellobags (pictured right). These are crystal-clear plastic bags with a self-adhesive strip. They are inexpensive, easy to fill and seal and give a very professional appearance. If needed, an A6 or A5 insert can be included giving details of the fundraising work, supplier's address, price and so on.

World of Envelopes supply cellobags for you to fill yourself or, alternatively, we can pack them for you and deliver finished products ready for sale.

Case study: selling Christmas cards at a Manchester primary school

We supply cards to several schools for fundraising activities and this example, from a primary school in Manchester, is typical of the way we can cut costs to a minimum and help you raise the maximum amount for your charity.

This primary school runs an annual Christmas card competition at the start of October. Four winning designs are chosen from a shortlist by the children during a whole-school assembly.

Selling the cards

The finished cards are packaged in 16's, four of each design, with envelopes. The school produces at least 625 such packs and has sold all of them, without difficulty, for the last three years running. They are priced at £4 per pack.

As might be expected, most of the packs are sold to parents. With nearly 400 pupils on roll, each child takes home a packet for his or her parents to view. If the parents want to buy them (and most do), then the child brings the £4 back to school, or more in the case where siblings have taken home two or more packs!

In the handful of cases where the cards are unsold, the child simply returns the cards to their teacher. Nearer Christmas, the cards are sold at the school's Christmas Fair and to visitors via the reception staff.

The project in figures

We print the school's cards four to an A3 sheet with a run of 2,500 sheets (10,000 cards in total). Including all printing, cutting and creasing charges this costs £958.39.

Envelopes cost about £110 from the school's usual supplier and cello bags cost around £30. The total for 500 packs is around £1,098 and eager children provide the labour aspect of counting and filling the packets!

With all 625 packets sold, the total raised £2,500 which represents £1,402 profit for the school fund.

The school intends to seek local business sponsors to have their logos printed on the card backs (which costs nothing more) in exchange for a financial contribution.

Questions

If you would like to discuss any ideas this article might have given you, please feel free to contact us.