QR stands for “quick response,” and the QR code was designed as a way for printed pieces to generate instant online interactions. How does it work? Using a free QR code reader app, anyone with a smartphone can scan in a QR code. The code will then direct the phone’s web browser to an online resource, or it can activate another smartphone function, such as sending an e-mail or text message.

How can a QR code help you? Your imagination is the only limit here. Send people anywhere online that you want — they will be much more likely to get there when it is just a single click away. Here are some ideas:

• Send people to a page with more details about your products and services.
• Use the QR code to connect with your users through social media. The code can send them directly to your Facebook page or even act as a “Like” button, so they can like your page with one click.
• Nonprofits, solicit instant donations by sending users to a donation page on your website. The appeal for money is going to be more successful when they can respond immediately, instead of having to remember to go online later. You could also encourage repeat donations by putting a “Donate $10 Now” code on every calendar page.
• Promote any other call-to-action. Send an e-mail to a congressman? Participate in an online poll, maybe?
• Do you publish an online newsletter? Print a code on each calendar page that links directly to the latest issue.
• Do you have videos or other multimedia content that you’d like to share? Link directly to it using a QR code.
• Do you have a smartphone app that you’d like people to use? Use the QR code to take users straight to it.

I’m sure there are many more creative uses for QR codes that we’ll be seeing in the near future. In the mean time, you are probably wondering how expensive they are. Happily, QR codes are an open-source format and therefore are completely free.

At Yearbox, we’ve begun using QR codes on our nonprofit calendars to help people find out more about calendar fundraising. We’ve also started helping our customers add QR codes to their calendars. We can create a QR code for you, or one for each calendar page, if you like. You just need to tell us where to point it and we will do the rest. There is no charge for this service. If you would like help figuring out a QR code strategy, give us a call.

This week we are rolling out two fresh new wall calendar designs that I think will be quite popular. As with all of our designs, we will select colors for each calendar page to coordinate with your images. Also, though we think the new designs look great as they are, we are more than happy to tweak and adjust the templates so that you get the look and feel you want for your calendar.

Design #12 features a calendar grid with a little more depth than the other designs. Instead of being part of a solid grid, each date box is separate and appears to float above the page, thanks to a shadow effect.

Design #13 makes the most of your images. The image on each page extends across the binding to yield the largest image are of any of our calendar designs. The image then fades into the background with the top of the calendar superimposed over it. On an 8.5″ x 11″ calendar, this design works well with a high-quality, square image. On the large format calendar, this design gives you a stunning, portrait image as large as 12″ x 17″.

We hope you like the new wall calendar designs. Please let us know what you think!

Why hold a calendar fundraiser? To raise money, of course! Actually, there is a lot more to it than that. After all, there are hundreds of other fundraising opportunities out there. Why make and sell a calendar instead of selling magazine subscriptions or organizing a charity auction? Let’s look at the top five reasons, in our experience as calendar printers, for organizing a calendar fundraiser:

1. A calendar fundraiser means you have a product you can be proud to sell
   If you are selling candy, or magazines, or wrapping paper, you are selling a generic product that has nothing to do with your organization. People may not need or want these products and may feel pressured into buying something they don’t need. They may buy something only to be nice; however, both the purchaser and your organization members (your sales team) can easily be left with an uncomfortable feeling about the transaction. On the other hand, with a custom fundraiser calendar, you are selling your own photos and text — you are selling your own story. Your sales team will be proud to show it off, and people will be happy to support your organization by buying it.
2. Involve the whole organization — and the wider community — in the calendar project
   With most fundraisers, the participation is a one-way street: a committee chooses the fundraiser, then hands it off to the whole group to go out and sell. With a calendar fundraiser, you have the opportunity to involve the whole organization, and the wider community, in making and marketing the calendar. You can solicit photos and/or stories from the whole group, or invite the local community to participate in a photo contest. Get your whole organization involved in selling advertising within the calendar. Organize a calendar release/signing party and invite the whole community. The more that people are involved with the fundraiser — especially in a creative way — the harder they will work to sell the finished calendar and make the fundraiser a success.
3. A calendar puts your message in front of potential members and donors all year long
   Long after you have sold that calendar and cashed the check, it can provide a huge benefit to your organization. Whether the calendar is hanging on the wall of a close relative or a complete stranger, it is doing the same job. For twelve months you can display your message and encourage people to become members or active supporters of your group. Did you sell it to someone who is already a member of your organization? The calendar will remind them all year long to participate, and it will also give them an opportunity to introduce your organization to their friends and family. Try getting that kind of benefit out of a candy sale.
4. Attract business sponsors by selling calendar advertisements
   Your calendar is also an advertising vehicle. Calendar printers will usually allow some kind of advertising within your calendar. If the calendar is completely customizable, then the advertising can go virtually anywhere you or your sponsors would like. Advertising on each month is common. There are also usually extra pages within the calendar as well as the back cover available for advertising. You can remind your sponsors that since your worthy cause is part of the sales pitch, calendar buyers will also be a little more motivated to patronize the calendar sponsors. And don’t forget that once your sponsor has bought an advertisement, they are invested in the success of your fundraiser. Why not suggest that they increase the reach of their ad buy by displaying and selling some of your calendars!
5. Promote your important events by marking them in the calendar
   Don’t forget that people buy calendars to help keep track of the important events in their lives. Those little date boxes are valuable real estate! If you can put all of your important events — meetings, athletic events, performances, conferences, etc. —  onto the calendars of all of your supporters, then taken a big step in making those events more successful. You are enhancing the calendar’s appeal by making it more useful. Again, if the calendar ins completely customizable, then you should be able to add as many events as you like — just make sure you choose a calendar printer that does not charge extra for this. Don’t have many events to add? Why not sprinkle fun historical facts related to your organization on relevant dates throughout the calendar?

At Yearbox, we do loads of fundraiser calendars every year, and these are the top five benefits to calendar fundraising in our opinion. Have you organized a calendar fundraiser, or would you like to? Share your experience or your questions!

It should also be no surprise that calendar fundraising is an extremely popular and effective tool for humane society chapters, local SPCA groups, and other pet rescue and animal welfare organizations. At Yearbox, we have found dog and cat rescue calendars are one of the largest segments of our nonprofit calendar business. Many of our best customers are animal rescue organizations. And they come back to us year after year, so we know they must be effective fundraisers.

Calendar Fundraising and Pets — a Great Fit!

Of course, the cute puppy and kitty photos are one reason for the instant appeal of pet rescue calendars. Another reason, however, is the fact that these calendars tell great stories. Pet rescue groups usually use photos of animals that are up for adoption or that have already been successfully placed. In both cases, there is usually a heart-tugging story to go with the photo (although often enough, the photo on its own tells all the story it needs to). It may be just a short sentence or two, but the story adds interest to the calendar, making it that much more appealing. At the same time, it reinforces the the rescue organization’s message, so that anyone looking at the calendar can’t help but appreciate the group’s mission.

So many ways to raise money with a calendar!

Let’s say your costs for making the calendar are $7 per calendar (our standard wall calendars cost $6.39 each, plus shipping for 500 calendars), if you sell them for $14 each, then clearly you are making $7 per calendar in profit for your organization. Can you charge more than $14 each? Or maybe you are thinking that $10 should be the maximum price? You have to figure that one out based on how much your customers can afford and on how much they might be willing to pay a little extra for a calendar that supports a worthy cause. Remember also that the more calendars you buy, the cheaper the per-calendar price, and therefore the more profit you will have.

However, before you make all your calculations based on calendar sales, you should bear in mind that a calendar gives you other fundraising opportunities as well. Our most successful animal welfare fundraising clients have broadened their fundraising base with some or all the following:

• Advertising — Adding ads (usually business card-sized ads) either on every month of the calendar or on the extra page at the end of the calendar is a great way to increase fundraising profits. Solicit advertising from your members and supporters first. Pet stores, pet groomers, and veterinarians are also often happy to advertise. Since ads are paid for up front, they can help to offset printing costs. Make sure that your printer does not charge extra to incorporate advertising. (We don’t!)
• Photo Contest Entry Fee — A photo contest lets you collect great images for your calendar and also helps generate interest in your organization. With a grand prize winner for the cover and winners for each month, people will feel good about their chances of winning. An entry fee (maybe $10 per photo) encourages people to submit quality photos and enhances your fundraising potential.
• Photo Contest Voting — You can have your contest juried by local artists or photographers and make an event of it. Alternatively, you can keep it all online and let people vote for their favorite image. The online route may tilt the results towards those who are most active online and away from the most artistic images, but this approach can yield widespread interest in your contest, especially when combined with a social marketing campaign. (Vote appeals can spread rapidly through Facebook.) Important: make sure that every vote cast is also accompanied by an appeal to purchase a calendar and/or donate directly to your organization.
• Photo Contest Voting Fee — You can monetize the voting phase by charging a dollar per vote for online voting. Make your contestants show their love for their pets by opening their wallets. We have seen contests where individuals have bought thousands of votes to make sure that their pets were winners. Important: make sure that the voting page includes social media tools so that it is easy for contest participants to encourage their friends and family on Facebook to vote for their pet. (There are tools available online (both hosted services and DIY software) that make holding a photo contest easy. We’ll be posting again soon with information on those tools.)

Remember that advertising and photo contests are great ways to increase the fundraising potential for your calendar. But they are also important because they give more people a vested interest in your calendar project. And the more people are interested, the more successful it will be for you.

Have you held a pet rescue calendar fundraiser? If so, how does your experience compare? Do you have any other ideas? Please share!

I’m repeating myself because I strongly believe that our success at Yearbox Calendars is due in large part to the fact that unlike other printing companies, we don’t get sidetracked with stationery or brochures, and we can really focus on making your calendars look great.

We don’t have loads of little print jobs that crowd out your calendar and compete for our attention. We are therefore able to take the time and flexibility to customize your calendar as much as you need.

More importantly, however, is the fact that our focus on custom calendars makes us custom calendar experts. We can usually answer all of your questions (by phone or e-mail) because we’ve had those questions before. We know all the ins and outs of producing custom calendars. Moreover, we usually are able to answer questions that you haven’t even thought up yet. Nine times out of ten, we can make suggestions based on our experience that can improve your custom calendar project.

Feel free to test the limits of our calendar expertise by phoning or e-mailing us today!

We’ve also added lots more information about the ways that we can customize your calendar. We can include custom dates, extra photos, advertising, and logos. The bottom line is that if you have a special request for your calendar, let us know — chances are we can do it for you and we won’t charge extra.

Finally, the new website includes a section devoted to presenting a range of calendar printing ideas. Here we will be discussing subjects such as pricing your calendar, types of fundraising calendars (churches, schools, pet rescue, raffles, etc), calendar photo contests, and fine art calendars. We’ll also present tutorials to help you preparing your artwork.

So, enjoy the new look and the new content at Yearbox. This page and all the Calendar Printing Ideas pages are open for comments, so please let us know what you think.

Are we crazy? We don’t think so. Our business objective is to produce the best-looking custom calendars on the market. We believe that the best way to do that is to make it easy for our customers to get the calendar that they want. That means customizing the calendar as much as necessary without a confusing array of add-on pricing.

We also have a secret weapon. We use a set of proprietary scripts to automate many of our calendar layout tasks. When a customer asks for something special, we usually put the time in up front to code new script that includes the customization. Its a little more work that way, but when next year’s calendar comes along, we are ready to go.

So, don’t be shy. Let us know what you need for your calendar. Most likely, we’ll say, “Sure, no extra charge.”

The Pacific NW Federal Credit Union in Portland, Oregon holds a photo contest each year among its members. The resulting calendar showcases the stunning scenery of the region and makes a great promotional piece that members enjoy having on their wall all year long.