Create a Calendar — when to start planning?

In planning to create a calendar, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard calendar, if your calendar is not in the end user’s hands before January 1, 2013, they may already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline may be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s hands close to the start of school if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a good timeline for the entire project.

Creating a calendar can be broken down into four activities: planning, production, marketing, and distribution. Since we are working backwards, we’ll start with distribution. How are you getting your calendars into the end user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be relatively straight-forward to figure out the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will need to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you are mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just need to make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or consider having the printer or a local mailhouse handle mailing the calendars — it will probably be cheaper and easier for you. (At Yearbox, we often handle mailing for our customers.) Just make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how much extra time they will need and factor it in.

If. on the other hand, you plan to create a calendar and sell it, either as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more complicated. How much time you need for sales depends on your sales strategy. Are you selling a a local festival or other event? If so, then that gives you a deadline, but keep in mind that you’ll be better off if you can sell at multiple events, in case attendance or sales at one event are not what you expect. Or maybe you are having volunteers sell calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If so, you should allow at least two weeks, and preferably up to four weeks, since volunteers all have their own different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.

Calendars make great Christmas gifts. If that is part of your sales plan, then remember that if you make your calendar available the week before Christmas, many people will already have finished much of their Christmas shopping. If you can start selling right after Thanksgiving, however, then you can catch the early shoppers as well as the last-minute gift-buyers. Of course giving yourself even more sales time is always a good idea. Many of our most successful fundraisers begin selling the calendars as early as September.

Are you selling calendars online? (We can help with that!) If so, then you will need to allow for shipping time. That means that for Christmas gifts, you will want to have most of your calendars sold by about December 15th, otherwise your buyers will have to pay for expedited shipping. You need to allow enough time for people to find your calendar online, so you would probably want to have your calendar available for sale online by about mid-November.

Or maybe your are selling calendars in retail locations. If so, talk to your retailers early. You will probably find out that they prefer to have their Christmas merchandise in hand by the 1st of September or even sooner. That way they can keep shelves full as they remove Summer items. Chain retailers such as the major booksellers may want calendars in hand as soon as July, so that they can warehouse them and distribute them to their own locations. Also, check with retailers about packaging and labeling requirements — they may need your calendars to be shrink-wrapped and to include ISBN barcodes. (We can help with those.)

If you create a calendar that you plan to sell, you should be sure to develop and implement a solid marketing plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar project — you can and should begin marketing during the planning and production stages of the project. However, if you wait to start marketing until you have the calendars in hand, then you will need to allow at least a few extra weeks, maybe more, for your marketing message to reach the intended audience and motivate them to buy.

The production phase of creating a calendar starts when you hand off all of the images, text, logos, advertising, etc. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar artwork for you to approve and then puts it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Make sure you talk to your printer early on to fins out how long this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is usually about three weeks (sometimes sooner if you have a particular deadline). If you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you will be proofing by committee, then you should probably allow a little extra time — maybe a month in total — for production.

The planning stage when you create a calendar includes everything that comes before the handoff to the printer. Some planning items will take time. First and foremost assemble a team. The more people who invest their time in your calendar the more successful it will be. You will need to gather artwork. If you have photos already and you just need to sort through them, that’s great. If you need to solicit photos or hold a photo or art contest, then you will need to allow extra time for that. A context may need time to run as well as time to market so that you have adequate participation. You also need to gather everything else that goes in the calendar, possibly including date information, captions, logos, mission statement, letter from the director/president/minister, etc.

Will your calendar include advertising? If so, then you will need to make sure that someone (or better yet a team) contacts businesses to sell them advertising space and collects advertising artwork from them. Sometimes advertising artwork is as simple as a business card, but other times it can take longer than expected to collect all the advertising artwork. Make sure you allow plenty of time for this.

So, how soon should you start working on it if you need to create a calendar that is customized to your specifications? That all depends. If you have everything ready for your printer and distribution will be a simple hand-out, then three to four weeks lead time may be sufficient. If, however, you have to assemble a team, collect photos and text, sell advertising, plan a marketing campaign, organize sales teams, and/or place calendars in retail stores, then you’ll need to work backwards and figure out how much time you really need. It may turn out that May or June is the right time to start planning your calendar project.

Up to 23% discount

Our new trade pricing is designed with mutli-tier discounting to reward you with greater savings for selling more calendars. Here’s how it works: your first wholesale calendar printing order with Yearbox Calendars receives a 10% discount off the standard retail price. At this level of discounting, you receive our complete design package: you supply the photos, text, logos, etc, and we do the rest, sending you online proofs and revising until you and your customer are happy. If you prefer to prepare the artwork yourself, you can supply us with print-ready pdf files and, we will give you and additional 5% discount.

Additional discounts apply to the second through fifth wholesale calendar order placed within the same calendar year as the first order. The second-tier discount is 14% for Yearbox-designed calendars and 19% when you supply print-ready pdf files.

For the sixth and any subsequent order placed within the same calendar year, the third tier of discounting applies. This level is 18% for Yearbox-designed calendars and 23% for print-ready pdfs.

Our Printing, Your Brand

We want your business, not your customers! That’s why the only brand attached to your calendar will be yours. We will work with you to ensure that the finished product and the entire design process convey the brand message that you want. Options include adding your logo and details to the back cover, Preparing an online proof template customized with your brand, and hosting proofs and routing e-mails through your servers. We will implement whatever strategies work best with your workflow.

Wholesale Calendar Printing Trade Prices

To view your trade-discounted prices, use the price calculator on the right or visit our calendar printing prices page and look at the retail prices. If this will be your first order within a calendar year, deduct 10% from the retail price for the quantity you are ordering. Deduct 14% from the retail price for your second through fifth orders and deduct 18% for any orders after that. If you are supplying print-ready pdf files, you may deduct and additional 5%. There are no artwork or prepress charges (unless you choose to supply pdf files and they need work to make them print-ready). Contact us for shipping costs.

We printed several of these last year by special request and they proved very popular. They are more impressive than the standard wall calendar, but cheaper and easier to mail than the large format calendar. Like the standard wall calendar, they are also available in quantities as small as 25 calendars.

Retail and nonprofit prices for the 9 x 12 custom calendar are shown below, or you can visit our calendar pricing page. Send us an e-mail using the “E-mail Us” box below if you’d like to receive a sample of one of these calendars.

9 x 12 Wall Calendar — Retail Prices

9″ x 12″ Wall Calendars

Quantity	Per-Calendar Price
25-49	$23.05
50-74	$19.75
75-99	$17.55
100-149	$14.58
150-199	$13.15
200-249	$11.55
250-299	$10.18
300-399	$9.85
400-499	$8.75
500-749	$7.81
750-999	$5.72
1000-1499	$4.48
1500-1999	$3.37
2000-2499	$2.76
2500-2999	$2.37
3000-3999	$2.09
4000-4999	$1.74
5000-5999	$1.54
6000-6999	$1.40
7000-7999	$1.33
8000-8999	$1.28
9000-9999	$1.22
10000-12499	$1.18
12500-14999	$1.11
15000-19999	$1.06

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9 x 12 Wall Calendar — Nonprofit Prices

9″ x 12″ Wall Calendars

Quantity	Per-Calendar Price
100-149	$13.12
150-199	$11.83
200-249	$10.40
250-299	$9.16
300-399	$8.86
400-499	$7.87
500-749	$6.97
750-999	$5.15
1000-1499	$4.12
1500-1999	$3.10
2000-2499	$2.54
2500-2999	$2.20
3000-3999	$1.95
4000-4999	$1.64
5000-5999	$1.44
6000-6999	$1.33
7000-7999	$1.26
8000-8999	$1.21
9000-9999	$1.16
10000-12499	$1.12
12500-14999	$1.06
15000-19999	$1.00

Order Now!

9″ x 12″ Wall Calendars

9″ x 12″ Wall Calendars

I always try to let my customers know up front that their job is to develop and implement a marketing and sales plan. They cannot succeed without taking that job seriously. We do our part by turning photos, text & logos into a stylish, high-quality calendar. After that the success of the fundraiser is out of our hands. It has been especially disheartening (on the few occasions when it has happened) to turn a set of outstanding photos into a stunningly attractive calendar, only to see the sales effort fizzle, leaving the customer with unsold calendars.

Of course, we at Yearbox do not always know exactly why a calendar is not selling — we often have no idea whether it is selling or not. Nonetheless, over the last ten years making calendars, I’ve seen a number of common themes shared by several calendar fundraisers that did not take off. I’d like to share them here so that other nonprofits can avoid these mistakes.

Don’t go it alone

Your great idea — no matter how great — will not succeed without a team behind it. We’ve seen a few calendar fundraisers fail because one person ended up trying to do everything — other people in the organization went along with the project, but did not actively work to make it succeed. Although one person, putting in a lot of work, can get a calendar produced (after all, we do most of the heavy lifting in terms of designing and printing the calendar),  marketing and selling the calendar is another story. Put together a team early in the planning process, and divide up responsibilities: gathering photos (maybe organizing a photo contest?); collecting additional content (custom dates, captions, mission statement, etc); selling advertising to local businesses; marketing the calendar (online via web, e-mail & Facebook, and offline as well); and selling the calendar (online, local events, person-to-person). If you cannot put together an enthusiastic team to support the calendar fundraiser 100%, then you might want to consider a different fundraiser.

The calendar does not sell itself

We’ve heard this : “We put a link on the website to sell the calendar, but it just didn’t take off.” It is easy to focus exclusively on making a great-looking calendar. But even the most amazing calendars do not sell themselves. A link on the website and a few e-mails is not going to be enough. To be really successful, you should start implementing  your marketing and sales plans before the calendars are printed. Promote the calendar early, often, and through multiple forums. E-mail and Facebook are great for this, but don’t overlook traditional media and special events (such as a calendar-signing party, maybe). And how are the calendars going to be sold? Online, in retail locations, door-to-door, at special events, or maybe all of the above? Makes sure you develop as many sales avenues as you can. Also, put together a sales team and consider giving them sales incentives.

Get an early start to maximize selling time

Can you receive your calendars in mid-December and still have a successful sale? Yes, it’s possible, but it takes careful planning and hard work. Ideally, you want to sell about 90% of your calendars before Christmas. So, if you receive calendars in mid-December, you’ll have very little margin for error. If you have been steadily promoting the calendar for weeks — maybe even pre-selling the calendar — and you have an active sales team ready to get the calendar into buyers’ hands, then you’ll probably be fine. The safer course, however, is to get an early start. Get pictures and text to us at Yearbox by October 1st, and you’ll have calendars in hand before the 1st of November. That gives you plenty of time to build sales momentum and to adjust your sales strategy if necessary.

Use realistic numbers

“This calendar is going to be so great, we’ll easily sell 2,000 calendars!” Before you make any sales estimates, make sure you are using real, verifiable numbers. Do you have 200 members who all will commit to selling 10 calendars? Than you should be fine. But if it is 20 members and they each are responsible for selling 100 calendars, then you might be in trouble if you order 2,000 calendars. Or maybe you are selling at an event? Use the attendance estimates to calculate your potential sales — but don’t assume half the attendees will be buying. If you are selling or marketing online, don’t assume that 5,000 hits per month will translate into 500 calendars sold. Use surveys and response forms to find out how many of your website users can be counted on to actively support you. Likewise, don’t assume that your e-mail list will have a high response rate unless you know how many your e-mails are being read. Again, conduct surveys and ask for feedback so that you know for sure. If you are really unsure, how many calendars you will sell, consider holding a pre-sale, where you sell calendars before they are printed.

Get the active support of your beneficiary

Are you selling calendars to raise money for another organization? Make sure they are as excited about the project as you are. Will they commit their marketing resources to help promote the calendar? Will they mount aggressive e-mail and Facebook campaigns, maybe participate in some special events? Of course, selling the calendar is your job, too, but if they are not going to actively help you sell the calendar, then maybe you should search for another beneficiary to support.

Fit the calendar to the audience

“A calendar full of half-naked men is bound to sell!” Actually, it depends… Some calendars have a widespread appeal: cute puppies or scenic photos, for example. Other calendars (half-naked men, ferrets, peanuts decorated to look like people, etc) are more niche products. If you are planning a theme for your calendar that is not instantly appealing to a wide audience, then to be successful, you’ll need to marketing it the right niche audience. The handful of half-naked men calendars that we’ve done (which generally featured attractive, muscular guys and good photography) have sold poorly as they were being marketed to a general audience. The exception was a calendar from a motorcycle club that featured a enough humor to broaden the appeal.

Was your calendar fundraiser successful? Why or why not? What have you learned from your experiences?

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!