Are you considering launching a native plant fundraiser with Garden for Wildlife? If so, you might have some questions. We have the answers!
In this 13-minute introductory video with our Director of Fundraising, Rebecca Ali, we cover all of the basic details and commonly asked questions around fundraising with native plants.
Short on time? Check out the 4-minute fundraising overview, or watch our 6-minute Q&A with Rebecca.
Video Transcript
Hi - Welcome and thank you so much for joining me I’m excited to have the opportunity to share
The Garden for Wildlife Fundraising Program and hopefully answer some questions you might have about who we are and how the program works. That way you can decide if this is a fundraising opportunity that would work for your organization.
My name is Rebecca Ali and I’m part of the Garden for Wildlife team located in the greater Washington DC area.
Well, let’s jump right in.
Our goal with Garden for Wildlife fundraising was to give nonprofits and not-for-profit organizations the opportunity to raise funds while doing something wonderful for their supporters, their community, and the environment.
I personally have done a good bit of ad hoc fundraising through PTAs and youth organizations so I know how challenging it can be to try to meet your fundraising goals while juggling the 1000 other things that life throws at us every day.
With that in mind, we wanted to make this fundraiser something that was easy to start, easy to manage, and could run alongside other fundraisers that you might already have running.
What is Garden for Wildlife?
We are majority owned by the National Wildlife Federation having spun out as a native plants store. Why is that important? We have 50 years of NWF science behind our plant selections and the geographies they’re sold in - which means that as a consumer, you get the right plant for your area which then maximizes the benefits to wildlife like pollinators.
We want to shift people toward more thoughtful and sustainable gardening practices as a way to create more biodiversity through healthy habitat restoration. We do that by offering high quality native plant species that ship directly to our customers’ doors.
If you’ve ever tried to find native plants in a big box store or tried to track down a native plant seller in your area, you probably know how challenging that is. People want to make a difference but the harder that is to accomplish, the less likely it is to happen. So we try to make it as easy as possible to do the right thing. If you’re not familiar with our retail site, you can search by zipcode, soil type, sun exposure, and what kind of wildlife you are most interested in supporting (for example - bees, butterflies or birds).
One thing I like to mention here is that Garden for Wildlife has a 1:1 plant donation program that supplies native species to areas and organizations that would not normally have access to them. So for every plant purchased, even through fundraising, we donate a plant. That means when you register for a fundraiser and have your supporters purchase plants, at a minimum you double your impact, on our environment
Our goals for this program are:
- Offer a sustainable product that you can feel good about asking your supporters to purchase
- We wanted to make it as easy to run as possible - by offering an easy sign up process, customizable tools you can use and we are in the process of creating an 8 week integrated program that you can use as a framework for promoting your fundraiser
- We want to help you educate people on the benefits of planting with native species - how over the long run it saves time and money, and helps our local communities through soil and water conservation, enhanced biodiversity, and improving our watersheds
- And we wanted to make sure that if you need plants for a community service project, a science or pollinator garden, or for beautification - that you had that option to work toward as well
Let’s talk about how the program works!
To streamline our program and meet the needs of as many types of nonprofits as possible, we split the program into two options.
Let’s quickly walk through those now - originally we knew we wanted to offer a “garden” component as well as money
But we also knew not every organization would be able to use plants, so we split the program into: Blossoms & Bucks and Seeds of Success
As you can see - Blossoms & Bucks gives the potential to earn both money and a garden (for beautification, science, community service); organizations can earn 10% commission on sales up to $3000; at that goal they earn a free native plant garden; beyond the $3000 threshold you can earn 15% and there’s no cap
And the other program Seeds of Success offers just a financial component which is 15% of sales - again, no cap.
As a note here - our average sale is about $100.
When you are ready to register your organization - you will visit the fundraising page and select the type of rewards you want to earn (plants & money or just money).
I’ll show you the form on the next page but I want to mention a few things about registration:
- Please enter the information for your organization - that’s where we will send the payments
- And make sure you enter an email address that you have regular access to - we will be sending you supporting emails with different ideas to help you and additional marketing materials
The other page listed here is the Resource page - you can find customizable content, social media posts, infographics, learning links - and if you need to present the concept of the fundraiser to a group, like the PTA membership, there is a presentation available for download that you can edit for your needs.
After you decide which campaign you’d like to use, you click on the "Register Now" button from the fundraising page for the program of your choice. See the red arrow pointing to the buttons along the bottom of the slide.
Then you’ll be taken to the page you see here with the monarch on the goldenrod. You’ll fill in your organization’s information and click "Get Growing."
We do a simple user verification process to ensure you have access to the email you’ve registered and then you are given your unique sales link via a webpage and an email - that looks like This notification.
You can see the red arrow pointing to a unique sales link - that is what you share with your supporters so their purchases benefit your organization.
You can share that link through your social media channels, text, email or you can generate a QR code (using that funny looking box next to the link) to add to newsletters, flyers, digital communications. I just recommend you test the QR code before you send it out to verify there was no issue translating the data. I’ve never run across that before BUT i’m a “trust but verify” kind of person.
When you share your unique sales link, your supporters click on the link and they see this…
From this page Supporters “opt-in” to your fundraiser by sharing their information with us - when they click on the “Let’s Grow” button it connects your supporter with your organization which allows us to track sales to you.
We do this for two reasons:
- We don’t want you to miss a sale because someone closed out a window, wasn’t ready to order yet, or can’t remember to enter a code at checkout.
- Having basic contact information gives us the opportunity to continue to remind them occasionally to support your fundraiser (we’re acting as your back up).
Garden for Wildlife offers native plant delivery in the states shaded in the blue color. So you can ask supporters in most states to purchase using your unique sales link.
One note - even people in the other states could help by purchasing gift cards for friends and family in our service areas. Also, if you’d like to add native plants to your school or property, you can ask supporters to purchase plants and have them shipped to you. Kind of like a “sponsor a plant” program.
As a note, eventually we will expand further west but those states have specific requirements for native plants and we have very specific requirements from our growers.
So what are the next steps?
If you decide to move forward, visit the Garden for Wildlife Fundraising site and select your campaign. Complete the registration form and user verification so you can get your unique sales link.
Then, you can share it broadly with your supporters, friends and family - don’t forget to ask them to share your link, too. Have them post it on their own social media, at their work places, or with their own friends and family helps expand your reach.
Keep it going for up to a year - take advantage of natural garden cycles, holidays like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day and special plant oriented days (like National Bee Day, or Backyard Bird Count) and of course Earth Day in April. The more you share your code, the more supporters you get and the more likely you are to meet your goal!
And of course, we offer some tools to help you share if you aren’t a creative person or just don’t have time - you can find pre-made customizable flyers and postcards on our website. You can also use the social media shareables - there are 6 that we send you but there are others available to download using this zip file - you can use our messaging or something of your own that you think would work better for your community.
If you need something we don’t have, let us know. We are always working on new ways to share the benefits of planting native species. For example, one of our PTAs needed just a simple black & white flyer to print in large quantities - so we quickly created that for her and of course that will be available for everyone. We’re also having that translated into Spanish.
Based on feedback from other groups - here are some marketing suggestions:
- Set a specific goal and make it clear what you plan to do with the funds - e.g., help us raise money for our new playground equipment, or every $15 earned feeds 5 orphaned baby birds for a month; or every $15 earned pays for one child to attend an afterschool program
- Try different messages to see what will work - if you have supporters who love wildlife, gardening, or are interested in environmental stewardship, promote those aspects. If you have supporters who are busy parents with no extra time for gardening, sell the time and cost savings of planting perennials.
- Create a routine with how you want to communicate - are you sending out regular emails or newsletters? Add your link to each one. People often need to see a message many times before it clicks.
- For PTAs - use every community event to spread the word, you can create art/poster contests for the students, if you want plants you can plan a community “picnic & plant day” and of course, talk to the neighbors living around the school to encourage them to add native plants to create a pollinator pathway - one idea shared was that you can engage kids by having them watch for native wildlife on the way to school
- For other groups - definitely use your own events, contact lists, any regular communications to ask for support and encourage them to share your link as well
Here are two examples of Facebook posts from a group in Virginia - the coordinator used some assets from the garden for wildlife website - the postcards and one of the did you know posts. So far she’s generated a lot of supporters and sold over $600 in native plants in one week in February so we think that’s pretty amazing!
Here is my contact information and the website info in case you need that again. You are welcome to contact me with any follow up questions or if you need help with getting more people to support you. We are here to help you meet your goals.
Thank you so much for your time and for joining me tonight - I hope this was informative and answered some of your questions.