Creative Ways to Help

These are just a few ideas that supportive folks have used to help us raise funds for the CDCA in Nicaragua. You are only limited by your imagination!

·        Show our DVD in your home, workplace or community organization.

·        Contact your employer to see if the company where you work has any kind of an Employee/Employer Matching Gift program.  Many companies do, and if you give through it, you gift is at least doubled.  We will be happy to fill in the application if you send it to us.

·        Set up a recurring gift to the CDCA online so you don’t have to remember to write a check each month or quarter.

·        Give an Alternative Gift – a donation to the CDCA in honor of someone you love for a wedding, graduation, or some other event you’d like to celebrate.  We will send out an appropriate and beautiful Nicaraguan card to the recipient.

·        Ask your friends and family to give to the CDCA instead of giving you a gift you really don’t need when you are celebrating your own wedding or anniversary or graduation.  We will let you know when someone chooses to honor you in this way.

·        Give a Gift In Memory of someone you’d like to honor and remember.  We will send an appropriate and beautiful Nicaraguan card to whomever you designate.

·        Give a gift of your talents!

o       Reverend Bob E. Murdock has published a book of easy-to-use children's sermons, Come On Down, and half the proceeds from its sale come to the CDCA. Check it out and tell your friends. 

o       Photographers who have taken professional photos have either donated their photos or the proceeds from their sale. You can check out more information on one of the photographers who has visited us here www.peacephotography.org.

o       Physicians and other professionals come to Nicaragua as CDCA volunteers working in their own areas of expertise.

o       Proceeds from Slightly Twisted Spoons, a small woodworking workshop, are given to the CDCA.

·        Former volunteers at Oberlin and Earlham colleges have had students donate unused cafeteria meals to the CDCA, and the meal service gave a certain amount per meal. 

·        Bená Burda of Maggie's Organics has not only purchased all the organic cotton grown in Nicaragua since 2007 and turned it into beautiful organic Fair Labor garments, but she is also producing a documentary about our Nicaraguan organic fair trade cotton production chain. The video will be a useful educational and promotional tool for the organic farmer co-ops, the cotton gin the genesis spinn coop, and the CDCA. In 2002 Burda made a video about her own products and the work of the Fair Trade Zone, called Ants That Move Mountains.

·        College students studying ceramics made bowls, and then held a soup lunch fundraiser which included a donated bowl with soup.  At the lunch there was information about how the funds raised were being used, and diners got to keep their own bowl.

·        Clean out your garage and hold a yard sale – all proceeds to the CDCA.  Have an information table for people who stop by to find out about the organization and leave a donation as well. 

·        Pledge the monthly equivalent of a luxury…

o       Dining For Women gives a “meal/evening out” once a month, including helping women and children through the CDCA as one month’s focus

o       Treat yourself to a spa, a cruise, a skiing weekend, and give a matching amount away

o       Give the equivalent of a tank of gasoline used “for fun”

o       Give the equivalent of a luxury service… TiVo, extra movie channels, etc.

o       Give the equivalent of a movie outing, a pizza delivery, etc.

·        Pledge the equivalent of your monthly “regular” pharmaceuticals to help chronic patients at the CDCA clinic.

·        Donate what you don’t need when you upgrade… computers, vehicles, etc… or give the cash equivalent of the trade-in you receive.

·        Give your unused Frequent Flyer Miles to lower the costs of our annual international travel (most airlines need you to give at least 1,000 miles).

·        Work to get the CDCA listed as a recipient of fundraising actions already taking place in your community:

o       CROP Walk proceeds

o       Yard Sales

o       Auctions

o       Church budgets

o       Local charities and civic groups

·        Host a speaking engagement either when a CDCA speaker is in your area, or do it yourself.  We can provide you with a Power Point Presentation and a script.

·        Find out what “samples” are delivered by salespeople to your workplace and pass them along… medicines, tools, educational materials, etc.

·        Talk your workplace or church into buying organic coffee for daily use.

·        Recycle, and donate the proceeds if you know a company that buys paper, cans, or glass.

·        Encourage preschool, elementary, and older children to participate in giving

o       Coins into a big 5 gallon water jug for children’s health supplies

o       Lemonade stands – car washes – babysitting – cutting the grass

o       Collecting scissors, markers, crayons, rulers (or their cash equivalents) for Nicaraguan school children

And if you have other creative ideas, please let us know so we can pass them along! 


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