DIY Fundraising Ideas & Materials

Creating your own fundraiser through Do It Yourself Fundraising to End Duchenne is your chance to make an impact. We have all the tools and resources to help you succeed!

Website & Promotional Materials

PPMD can help you create your very own personal fundraising webpage designed to track donations, registrants and more.

We can send all the materials you need for your DIY event including informational postcards, wristbands, balloons and more! Contact Us and let us know about your event and how many you expect to attend.

Sky's the Limit!

DIY makes it easy for YOU to create your own event vision. Need a little inspiration? Check out some of the popular ideas below.

Community Events

• Family Fun Day - Carnival games, a bounce house, food and snacks for sale. You can design the perfect family fun day and charge admission to raise funds! See if you can get services and food donated and rely on volunteers to help, so you can maximize your funds raised.
• Silent or Live Auction - Set up an auction in your community at a local restaurant, school or other venue. Solicit donations from local businesses. We make it easy with OneCause, an online auction software. Combine it with a dinner to make it an even bigger event. 
• Jeans for Genes - Ask your employer to sponsor a day where employees can make  donation in  order to wear jeans or dress down at work. This may also be a matching gift opportunity to double or even triple your donations.
• Wine tasting/Wine pull  - A fun and popular event that is easy to organize. Ask a local liquor store or winery to donate wine and/or space to hold the tasting. Provide appetizers and charge an admission fee to raise funds. These events often pair well with an auction or tricky tray.
• Flamingo Flocking - A pink flamingo fundraiser is fun way to raise money for your favorite cause. It's an easy fundraiser for any size group to put together because it requires very little effort to keep it going. The basic fundraising idea involves deploying a flock of pink plastic flamingoes in someone's yard or outside a business entrance. A note is left explaining that the person or business has been selected by someone to be "flocked" for a good cause. And, it then goes on to explain that they will have to pay $10 per flamingo to have them relocated.
• Carwash - Car wash fundraisers are a proven money-maker in virtually every community. All you need are willing volunteers, a high-traffic location with good visibility, and some attention-getting signs. You can put a car wash fundraiser together on short notice, but they work best with a little planning.
• Dog washing day - Like a carwash, but washing pets.
• Art Fundraising - Essentially, you host an event where local artists donate a sample of their work and your group sells a select number of high-dollar raffle tickets, usually the same number as donated art fundraising items. The tickets are then drawn randomly at a gallery-style event and each ticket holder selects their artwork right off the walls.
• Gift wrapping center at Christmas Time - This event will take 5-10 people and a great location at a popular mall. You will need about 1 dozen different styles of wrapping paper (adult, children, general, festive, etc) and lots of it, along with plenty of ribbons and bows (hopefully you could get some of this donated).
• Get The Picture - The idea here is to offer family portraits, glamour shots, vintage photos, and other "dressy" pictures, with proceeds going to PPMD.
• Rubber Duck Derby - The Rubber Duck Derby is an easy and fun fundraising event that can be scaled in size to fit your group's supporter base. The actual event, crazy as it may sound,  involves racing rubber ducks down a local waterway. Simple, fun, and family friendly.
• Neighborhood garage sale - Have your whole neighborhood join in a community garage sale to raise money to end Duchenne.
• Concert with a local or big named band - Sell tickets in advance and consider offering food and/or beverages for sale during the event.

Athletic/Sporting Events

• Bowling For Bucks - The group event is simple to put together. Simply arrange with a bowling alley to rent a group of lanes, or the entire building, and start soliciting teams. One way to raise a lot of funds is to charge a large entry fee for each foursome, for example, $60 each. Obviously, if you're going to charge that much to play, you'd better make it a lot of fun! Local business may donate items for goody bags and concessions.
• Cast For The Cure - Fishing tournaments can be done on lakes, off piers, or deep sea fishing. Charge competition fees, sell t-shirts, get corporate sponsors, offer prizes, have a vendor fair, and most of all have a good time.
• Cycling event - Organize a bike ride and ask participants to pay an entry fee and/or fundraise for their entry. Talk to your town about any necessary permits to block off roads for a start/finish line area if needed. 
• Golf Tournament - A Golf Tournament can be a fun Spring or Summer activity that will generate a good deal of awareness and activity. The more events that go along with the golf tournament, the more money will be raised. Another key is to have local businesses sponsor your tournament. See join.parentprojectmd.org/jumpingjack for example.
• Hustle for Muscle - An event where middle school and/or high school football teams compete during off season for athletic awards.
• Mini Golf Tournament
• Dancing with the Stars - Get local dancing professionals to dance with local celebrities for a competition.

Food Fundraisers

You can do just about anything in this category. Do a bake sale, covered dish supper, catered dinner, pig picking, barbeque, picnic, chef competition, have a bake off, put out a cookbook, sponsor an exotic foods fair, organize a chili cook-off, or even have a Pampered Chef party.

• Local Iron Chef competition
• Chain restaurant proceeds - approach your local chain restaurants to see if they will donate a percentage of profits from a day's sales to PPMD. Chains that do this include Chipotle, Panera Bread and more.
• Spaghetti/hamburger lunch
• 'Best of' competition - At a festival, see if you can have an area to have a 'best of' competition. Get the restaurants in your town to provide a supply of their best ___________ (such as salsa, chili, burgers, etc). Each entry should have their own space in a row with all other entries with a wine carafe or jug of some sort in front of their food item. Guests walk down the row sampling the food item and put a $1 in the carafe of the ones they like the most. At the end of the day, all the money is donated to PPMD, but the restaurant that collected the most money wins the "best of" competition. An award can be presented and/or a news article about them could be submitted to your local paper.

Other:

Contact your local department stores to see if they will participate in a fundraiser. For Example:

• KOHL's department store -They will allow 5 of their employees to come to an event to assist AND donate $500.00
• Walmart - Will donate funds to approved organizations, but you must approach them early as their monthly allotments are used quickly.

Online Shopping:

• Amazon Smile (smile.amazon.com): When you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice.
• Igive.com (igive.com): Online shipping that benefits PPMD.
• Cheerful App - Round up your spare change and donate it to PPMD with the Cheerful app. Download the app to your phone, and every purchase will be rounded up. Once you reach $5, a donation will be made to PPMD and tracked via monthly statements.