For nearly nine years I volunteered with a youth sports organization in New Jersey. Five of those years I spent as president and it wasn't until I took that role over that I truly understood the value of fundraising.

Although our particular organization charged a registration fee, that fee (along with a subsidy by the township government) only went so far. So in order to make up for the shortfalls you had to do fundraising.

We did them all from selling candy, to hosting sports tournaments to selling raffle tickets, you name it. But the most successful fundraiser we had was the pancake breakfast buffet. It was so successful that it became a yearly event for our organization.

The way it worked was you would sell business card sized ads for twenty-five dollars each that would be printed on the placemat that would go under everyone's plate at the breakfast. On a side note the ads that worked the best were the ones that were coupons.

We brought a local printer on board to cover the printing charges and in return he received advertising on every placemat as a border ad and five free tickets to the event. Well worth the trade if you ask me. There was no limit on the number of ads you could sell, we would just create more placemats and have our printer produce what we needed.

The tickets to the event were five dollars for adults, three dollars for students and seniors and kids under twelve were free. With the help of a local church we were able to use their recreation hall to do our cooking and serving of the customers.

The food was simple. We served pancakes, sausage, coffee, tea, orange juice and water. That is it. Anymore and we mind as well be called an IHOP. We set it up buffet style so the customers would serve themselves and they could eat as much as they wanted.

The food was all donated by members of our league so we had no costs there. Of course we did all of the labor, the cooking, cleaning, and so on, so we didn't have to pay anyone for that either.

By the time we had tallied our final receipts we had made a little more than five thousand dollars, which may not sound like a lot to larger organizations, but for our small non-profit group it was money that paid for everything we needed.

Before you get into selling candy or magazines or whatever, consider a pancake breakfast buffet. If organized correctly to reduce your costs and get everyone in your organization involved, you can far exceed the dollar amount we earned, regardless of what economic conditions your area is in. Would you like to make some extra money writing about your fundraising experience? You can join Bukisa today and start earning residual income on every article that you write about fundraising.