In fact, many businesses and organizations such as worship, daycare centers, and YMCA, have raised a large amount of money for their indoor or outdoor playgrounds. Those business owners will need funding from a thousand dollars to $40,000 to $80,000 for maintenance and building a new indoor playground.
Normally, the budget is the main focus for those who want to open a new indoor playground. Also, it will take the prospective owner several months to raise money for an indoor playground. Most of the time, they will have trouble, in turning this into fruition. However, money can always come from multiple sources, in this case, those prospective owners will just have to find out these channels. Before raising money for your indoor playground, you should get some necessary things ready first.
Contents
1.1. Make a plan first
1.2. Establish a team
1.3. Establish the money system
1.4. Keeping motivative
2.1. Grants
2.1.1. How to get grant opportunities
2.1.2. Applying for the grants
2.2. Commercial donations
2.2.1. Convince your donors
2.3. Crowdfunding
2.4. Fundraisers
2.4.1. Sales
2.4.2. Fundraisers
2.4.3. Child’ events
2.6. Financing
3. Conclusion
Get ready for financing
1. Make a plan first
If you are going to apply the funds from the donors, you had better have a thoughtful plan in your mind. After seeing your thoughtful plan, they will take your applying into consideration. Actually, the reason why they perform in this way is that they want to ensure you will put the funds to good use. For example, if you are going to building an indoor playground at a daycare center, you can just show them the location of your indoor playground, as well as the equipment you will need for your playground. What’ else, you can provide a simple drawing of your finished indoor playground to help you spur donations.
2. Establish a team
As a matter of fact, raising money will get many things involved. So, you can’t do all the procedures on your own. In order to get funds, you have to establish a team first. Planners and calendars are necessary for making an effective plan and overseeing some deadlines. Also, a complete system will help track on all grant applications and financing opportunities, as well as playground funding ideas. Maintaining a comprehensive system to make sure you won’t miss out those opportunities and deadlines.
Usually, it is an extensive project to get securing funding for your indoor playground. Considering this factor, you will need a group of volunteers to help you get rid of this trouble. First, the separate volunteer or committees can help research grant opportunities. Then, you will be able to grasp this chance to take further steps. Secondly, your team members will help you contact those prospective donors. You know that the more donors you get connected, the more probable you can get the funds. Finally, your team will also help you write grant applications effectively. Writing an application isn’t an easy task, because you have to make sure that your planned indoor playground will meet the requirement of the donors. And your professional team members will handle this problem and give you a peaceful mind. After you finished the recruiting, the next thing you have to do is to arrange a proper position for each of your employee. When all of your team members work in a suitable position, they will be able to understand the goals and deadlines of your project.
3. Establish the money system
Thinking about you have already got the funds, then, where you can put it? You will need an account to ensure the safety of your funds and keep them in one place. Based on your needs, you can just open a saving account, which can help you earn interest. Also, when you have raised additional funds, such a saving account will also help you keep your money and bring you extra interest. Alternatively, you can ask an escrow, as well as open a checking account to place your money. After placing your money, you will need a professional system to help you keep track of both former donations and the coming donations. With the help of such a system, you can keep yourself informed of the information of the donors. Except for this pro, you can also get to know the distance between the current numbers and your target.
4. Keeping motivative
Think about the following questions: How can you maintain your energy? How can you get people’s continuous attention? In order to solve these problems, you need another plan. Even if you have to spend months or years to raise enough money, you should ensure related partners will continue to support your project. For instance, the workers and volunteers in your indoor playground, and residents in your community. They are all the power source for your continuous development. Alternatively, a monthly e-newsletter is considered to be a good way of propaganda. Through the e-newsletter, people related to playground efforts can have vivid judgment and constantly stay excited. In addition to the e-newsletter, you can also set up a display, which people can see outside your place of daycare, worship, or YMCA. Things chosen to display must enable people to know how much money you have already raised. In this way, you can help those stakeholders or related personnel to make their plan.
Strat the raising
While you have got all these things ready, then, you can start to find out ways for funding. Grants, direct donations, crowdfunding, commercial donations, and fundraising events.
Grants
Systems are ready, what next? What are the actual steps for you to raise money? Grants are a good choice. The foundations for certain types of projects can offer you the grants without a repayment. Also, you can apply for grants from the corporations and nonprofits which are similar to the foundations. The grants offered by these institutions can be a few hundred or even several thousand dollars. The grants will help you bring your target into reality soon.
If your playground is located at a daycare, church, or YMCA, then, you will have the qualification to apply for these kinds of grants. In fact, business aim for community-based projects or child-based activities will have the meet the requirements. Once you have trumped those requirements, you should just find a target institution and start applying.
1. How to get grant opportunities
There are many third parties can give you recommendations. For example, PlayWorld can offer you some guidelines for grants. Those guidelines include bits of advice and recommendations for additional grants. Another well-known national non-profit is KaBoom, which is dedicated to creating a balance between active play and daily lives for children. This organization will help you find corporate sponsors who will offer you grants. In many cases, those corporate sponsors you can find on KaBOOM’s website, mainly support those organizations running for child-supporting. As a result of this, indoor playgrounds in worship or YMCA are more likely to get the grants. However, those for-profit play parks can still apply for the grants, as long as you get the key.
If many competitors apply for grants in one corporate sponsor, it will be difficult. So, we have collected a list of grant opportunities for all commercial playgrounds. These websites will help you explore new opportunities for grants.
National Recreation and Parks Association
US Environmental Protection Agency
National (USA) Grants for Environmental Enhancement Projects
Gants Alert
Fair Play for Children Organization
E School News Online
Donors Choose Organization
Regional Grants and Resources on Funds net
Foundation Directory Online
2. Applying for the grants
After getting those grant opportunities, you should apply for the grants. Before filling out the application, you should know the thoughts of donors. They will offer you grants, only if your playground is more than a playground. They would like that you can gain profits from your business while your business can still bring them benefits. Actually, it is hard to manage this. So, beforehand research to find out what donors want from your cooperation is quite necessary. While writing your application, you should make it clear that your indoor playground business will bring what they want. For example, suppose the target organization wants to ameliorate the fitness in the community, which has few fitness facilities. Meanwhile, you have planned to provide such fitness facilities for the community. Then, you should highlight this point by using specific statistics and numbers. Regardless of other factors, let donors know your playground can not only serve people but also can help the donor to achieve their goals. Then, you can bring the grants closer to your business.
Sometimes, you may get discouraged when you receive the rejections. Just let it go! You have to know that you have many competitors with you when you are applying for your grants. Actually, you can increase your chance of success by writing excellent grant applications. Also, sending your wonderful applications to as many grants as possible can help you win.
Establish a grant-writing party will help you with the competition. In such a grant-writing party, volunteers can apply for plenty of grants at a time. While they are filling out and sending out those applications, volunteers can utilize the brainstorm methods to come up with creative ideas. Also, they can take turns to edit the work of others. Usually, such a grant-writing party will bring the volunteers a lot of fun. Sometimes will be more festive with some delicious refreshments. Through such a party, you can extract stronger applications, more enthusiasm, and better grant applications.
Commercial donations
You can always find some companies, which are willing to help you. Sometimes, you just have to ask local businesses or businesses in your community to donate. For example, you can emphasize your desire to build an indoor playground for an event or a service, if you are representing a playground of worship. While hearing this plan, the businesses in your community will donate right away. Alternatively, try to encourage your members to donate in advance. Usually, business owners having a connection with your community will be open to donating.
Similarly, if your indoor playground is located at a daycare, you can ask those parents for donations. The parents will offer you some help because their children will play in your indoor playground.
Convince your donors
While approaching donors, you can employ some methods to help your win the donation. Followings are some suggestions.
- Offer them something: For business, getting some profits in exchange will help facilitate cooperation. As a representative of the YMCA, you can provide the businesses with advertising service in your free classes or the lobby. As for the daycare, you can just help them advertise on your indoor playground or on the website. Alternatively, a place of worship can advertise at a local event for the donors. Also, you can leave out space in a custom sign for advertising.
- Clear about your own benefits: Make sure you can tell people about what benefits your indoor playground will offer. For example, for children living in a few green, you can provide them with a safe playground to have fun. As for childhood obesity or sedentary lifestyles, your indoor playground will help address their issues. At worship, your indoor play park will bring people closer to each other. Make the biggest advantages of your indoor playground clear both for yourself and for the donors. Then, you can get donations without any big trouble.
- Approach people straightly: Keep a direct connection with your donors. They have offered you help, so you should let them know your current status. Sending a general request or sending out an e-mail, can help you approach your donors directly. Especially when you something important happened, you should inform the donors right away.
- Give them reasons: Avoid using pressure, because both of the donators and the receivers will feel embarrassing. Especially when some people can’t or don’t want to donate. In contrast way, you should find as many reasons as you can for target people. You should make “yes” an easy thing for them. In order to help them nod firmly, you can offer different ways for them to choose from. For example, they can offer prizes for a raffle, donations of cash, or volunteers. As a matter of fact, these all belong to donations while just come in different shapes.
- Offer deadlines: Sometimes, people tend to postpone their donating. The postponing will bring the receives lots of trouble. In order to nudge people to donate, you had better put forward a deadline or a specific date range for the donors. For instance, tell the donors that you can receive the prizes for raffle until March 16. Given a specific date range, people will seize the opportunity to donate.
Except for direct approaching, you can also utilize social media to get the donation. For example, Facebook, Twitter, your website and blogs. You can just settle up a donating-button on these social media. In this way, while looking through the videos, pictures, or articles, people can donate easily with the button.
Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is another powerful gear for funding, and it makes the large project possible for the prospective owners through group donations. For instance, when looking at sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundMe, you can always find the trails of group donation. With the group donations, you can finance your business, such as support the non-profits, charitable campaigns, and independent movie projects. You can start the crowdfunding online across the country or even in a worldwide scape. On the one hand, you can easily set up the campaign. It means you can start the crowdfunding online easily to get enough funds for your business. On the other hand, the crowdfunding will also help you organize your campaign, and even help you with advertising.
Nowadays, crowdfunding becomes more and more popular around the world. In 2014, the number coming from the crowdfunding is more than $16 billion! Seeing this statistic, you may come to realize how important the crowdfunding is. Although the crowdfunding has its conveniences, it does not mean you can raise your money without any costs. As we always know, business often goes in an exchange way. When the crowdfunding process finished, you have to give the crowdfunding website part of your total money. Besides this, you have to pay attention to the relevant laws in your area. Because different regions may have different laws. Actually, you can just hire a temporary attorney to help you. A professional lawyer can make sure your campaigns will comply with local laws.
In order to make sure your crowdfunding will be successful, you should put in enough efforts. The crowdfunding is the same as other funding options, they all need you to put in your effort. Actually, successful crowdfunding will have the strategic and the power of a personage behind them. A celebrity himself usually have a great impact in your area or even across the country. If your campaign gets their support, it will undoubtedly become a big success. Alternatively, you will also need a strategic marketing effort to support your campaign. To achieve a successful marking, you may need a professional or a capable marking team to help you. Nevertheless, the average income of crowdfunding often comes to $7000. For the business in a normal size, this will make a great difference for your finances.
Fundraisers
The fundraiser is an old-fashioned way, also a good way to help you raise money. Or you can just say that it is a popular, time-tested way. Places of worship, organizations and other parties can raise money through this way. In fact, people will always find it full of fun to raise money by the fundraiser. Because donors can get some benefits as the exchange. For example, the PTA can help schools plan and host a fundraiser to raise money. For your indoor playground business, you can host many kinds of fundraising events to get funds. We have collected some methods herein for you.
1. Sales
Usually, you can find lots of superb fundraising ways like Garage sales, raffles, auctions, and bake sales. These ways can truly help you because it caters to people’ desire of buying. Also, you can offer them great bargains with these types of sales. If you have a not so much positive budget, you can choose the bake sale. Because everyone can prepare some stuff on their own, and offer it for the sale. When you want to gather donations through business-to-business, you can also choose these methods. You can collect your donations of items for auctions and raffles. Actually, garage sales will help people living in your community to clean out their attics and garages. For yourself, garage sales can also help you raise lots of money to reduce your budget.
At your daycare or YMCA, you can prepare some special items for sale during local events. For example, personalized T-shirts, shining jewelry, dog leashes, and delicate keychains. All of these small items can be used for sale at events. Sometimes, the crafty homemade items or entourage knits, which is made by your volunteers, can be used for sale too. If you want to make personalized T-shirts and keychains, as well as other unique items, you may have to buy or rent some machines to help you with that. Because the machine can keep on working all the time to produce high-quality items. As for the toys, custom designs or other items, you can buy or rent the 3-D printers to help you.
2. Fundraisers
The talent shows, fairs, and car washes all need “sweat equity”. You can get you raising started from this point. Normally, you have to employ a group of volunteers to perform a show or arrange exhibits. Also, they can help do the difficult job of washing cars for the exchange of money. Fortunately, you can set up all of these events with a little expense, while they can still bring you hundreds of dollars. Sometimes, the numbers can go up to thousands of dollars, which will exceed your expectation.
3. Child’ events
If you manage a place of worship or daycare, then, you shall not miss out the child’ events. At these events, you can organize a family picnic or just a family day. To participate in the picnic or the family day, families have to buy a basket or teddy bear picnics in advance. In fact, the child’s events can pass on a critical message to your donors: You planned playground will benefit their kids somehow. Eventually, the family picnic will not only help you raise your funds but also will help children find a lot of fun. And this is a mutual benefit for you and the kids.
Fundraising enterprisers
Generally, you can turn to many companies that offer out-of-box sales for help. Those companies provide groups in your type with out-of-the-box fundraising solutions. For instance, some of these companies hold activities like T-shirt campaigns, chocolate selling campaigns or other cognate programs. Through these special campaigns, institutions like places of worship, daycares, schools will be able to raise abundant of money for their projects. Except for those daycares, schools, and places of worship, local zoos, museums, or amusement parks will also have their fundraising projects.
In fact, those fundraising enterprises are usually intended to offer these fundraising programs for new fundraisers. These programs include a marketing plan, an idea, and other relevant resources. And you can take advantage of all of these resources to help you raise more money. Usually, those enterprises will deal with most of the details, and you just need to focus on your community or your volunteers. Actually, these campaigns can establish mutual trust because of the similarity they have. Alternatively, if you work with a local museum or other well-known companies, you may easy your effort of raising money.
However, after you have raised your money through the out-of-the-box program, you have to give the company a portion of the money. And this is how the business goes in exchange. Additionally, this kind of program may lack flexibility in raising money. So, you may have to be aware of that.
Once you have decided to raise money through the out-of-the-box solution, do some diligence in advance. With researching and comparing in place, you can find the right company for your project. For example, the main focus of your research can refer to the experience others have and the effective fundraising efforts in this program, as well as the number of the money raised. Finally, you before signing agreements, you have to carefully look over the agreements and the financials. Only in this way, you will get to know the concrete portion of the money for the company.
Financing
Actually, only through the crowdfunding, grant writing, or fundraising, you may not be able to raise enough capital you need for your indoor playground business. Because a complete indoor playground includes indoor playground equipment, assistant devices, and decoration. All of these will take away lots of your capital. In order to get raise enough money, you may still need financing to help you. If your fundraising efforts failed to meet your actual needs, the financing and leasing will continue to bring you to your dream.
As we all know, people always turn to a bank or credit unit for financing. However, some financial institutions may be unwilling to offer a loan for your business. Fortunately, Playworld offers leasing and financing program for the playground. So, you can contact them for some help.
Conclusion
At many aspects, an indoor playground is priceless. For children, the indoor playground can provide them with merry memories, useful socialization, fun activities, and happiness. With so many benefits, children can grow healthily and happily. Especially, the playground at daycares, places of worship, or YMCAs will help kids to melt themselves into the community. Do not let the money become an obstacle in your indoor playground business. You should believe you can always find various fundraising or financing options to raise your money.
On the one hand, you can find solutions like crowdfunding, grants, fundraisers, or financing to raise money for your indoor playground. On the other hand, you can try to reduce your budget for your indoor playground equipment. If you want to find reliable and cheap equipment for your indoor playground, you can turn to Wonka Playground for help. Wonka Playground has offered their equipment for more than 500 groups. Their good reputation among their business partners and the relevant certificates will give you a peaceful mind. Also, you will get a fairly reasonable price for the indoor playground equipment.
