Untangling the Fundraiser Web

The Bend Bulletin 

Anyone who has helped their children with a fundraiser has been there. You schlep the kids down to the grocery store, or around the neighborhood, to hit up strangers to buy stuff they generally don't want or need - candy, cookie dough, magazine subscriptions and the like - so the little ones can buy some new playground equipment for their school, or something.

They collect the money in cans full of change and crumpled bills. Then, when distribution day rolls around, there's a confused madhouse as parents and kids scramble to pick up the stuff to deliver to their customers and volunteers scramble to keep track of it all.

When it's all over, the school, or the sports team, or the nonprofit Center for the Promotion of Olympic Egg Tossing, or whatever The Cause is, gets to keep about 25 cents on the dollar.

Maybe.  It's not a small problem. A typical school fundraiser can take in $5,000, with the larger ones raking in $25,000 or so - with logistics that can quickly spiral out of control.

A Sisters couple is trying to change all that.

Rob Corrigan and Merry Ann Moore, the husband-and-wife team who founded Buckboard Provisioning Co. this year, say they hope to use a unique mixture of high-tech business solutions and low-tech foods to bring relief to volunteers everywhere who are stuck in the trauma and drama of the $2 billion-a-year fundraising industry.

In the process, the Silicon Valley refugees say they hope to build a growing business for themselves that can, in turn, help feed Oregon's broad array of organic farms and food producers and, possibly, raise more money more effectively for Oregon's cash-strapped schools.

It all hinges around a central tool - the World Wide Web.

Each of Buckboard's fundraising clients gets their own Web site, customized to their own school or organization. With that central tool, Buckboard's system tries to iron out some of the thornier problems inherent in traditional fundraising campaigns, including:

* Order tracking. Instead of trying to track orders with a stack of paper forms and cans full of cash, Buckboard fundraisers can enter their orders directly through the Web site as they come in, giving project managers the ability to track their progress in real time.

* Individual feedback and motivation. Using a simple identifier like "Billy M. from Mrs. Monicker's class," little Billy can instantly see how much he has raised with each order, along with the amount his class has raised and the entire drive has raised.

* Geographic reach. Because ordering is Web-based, far-flung grandparents, uncles, aunts and family friends can place orders from remote locations, while the local fundraisers get credit.

* Account management. Administrators can view each customer account to see which pledges have been paid at any given time. E-mail reminders can be sent to those who haven't, thanks to those who have.

* Inventory tracking. Buckboard can adjust its inventories as orders come in, without waiting for the end of a drive to discover shortages or other problems.

* Ease of delivery. Using the Web, orders can be shipped directly from Buckboard's Sisters office for donors in remote locations, and orders for personal delivery can be accurately prepacked in bundles for each fundraiser.

* Ease of payment. Buckboard customers can still pay in cash, the old-fashioned way. Or - unique to most fundraisers - they can use the company's credit card system, prompted by an e-mail system that guides them to a secure site to enter their numbers.

While all of that is designed to make the fundraising process itself as easy to run as possible, the other half of the business - Buckboard's product line - is designed to make the process as healthy and educational as possible, Moore said.

All of the company's products are assembled from organic or locally produced food, or both. And all are named for characters from Oregon and Western history, whose stories are told in the company's catalog.

There's Anne Lien's Apple Bran Muffins, a mix filled with flour stone-milled in an old-fashioned grist in Oregon, packaged with Oregon honey and ground apples, and named after a Norwegian immigrant from the 19th century.

Or there's Henderson Lewelling's Dried Fruit Mix, a combination of dried organic Northwest fruits named after an Oregon Trail traveler who brought 700 fruit tree seedlings with him from his Iowa home.

Or there are any of the other 25 products, ranging from dried salmon to a pumpkin bread mix to a Brazilian-grown coffee, that Corrigan and Moore have created, sourced and packaged, using products from hundreds of generally small and organic suppliers.

The fundraisers get to keep 40 percent of the proceeds if they use the Web site only for order placement, Corrigan said. If they use the credit card function, their share is 35 percent - still generally better than the industry standards.

The Web sites stay up after the formal fundraising period - usually a month or so - expires. So credit card orders that come in later can still qualify the organization for a share, at a reduced 25 percent rate.

The company plays well into the couple's respective skills. Moore is a former corporate and freelance public relations specialist, and author of an unpublished novel. She's responsible for the historical stories that accompany the company's products.

Corrigan, a Sisters school board member, is a former high-tech executive who worked with large corporations, including Apple Computer, and then with a series of smaller startups to create and manage product lines.

After they found their lives had grown "100 percent out of balance" in the fast-paced world of Los Altos, Calif., they moved to Sisters in 2002, Corrigan said. He commuted back and forth to the San Francisco Bay area for a year before they started to conceive of a new business that would take him off the road and combine their passions for education and nutritious food with the best of their business backgrounds.

The result: a company that eases one of the more odious tasks of parenthood, while giving the schools a few extra bucks and parents a chance to sneak healthy foods into their children's diets.

After 1 1/2 years of product development, along with a series of focus group meetings with local schools and nonprofits to hone the model, the company is off to a cautious start this fall.

Buckboard started with a small Web-based trial with a Central Oregon nonprofit. A middle school in the Willamette Valley is its first full-fledged fundraising client.

In the foreseeable future, Corrigan and Moore say they hope to expand it through Central Oregon, then throughout the Northwest. Other areas could be added later: Moore already has plans to relabel the company's product lines with historical collections from the Colonial period and from the Civil War era to appeal to other regions of the country.

Whatever the case, they want to keep their own involvement to "a rational pace," Corrigan said.

"I think it's something we can go forth on that hopefully doesn't take over our lives 120 percent," Corrigan said. "It's already taken pretty much over a hundred."

What prompted your move to Sisters?

Moore: It's a cliche, but the high-tech lifestyle of working way too much and sitting in traffic is what we were living. It's been a wonderful shift to a better quality of life that's more centered on families here.

What prompted you to take on school fundraisers as a specialty?

Moore: By helping with our own kids' school fundraisers, we saw first-hand how much the typical fundraiser misses the mark. They should be about a community of kids and families pitching in towards a group goal. Instead, they are too often focused on unhealthy foods or other items people don't really want; they are draining for volunteers; and they offer plastic toys that break after one use as incentives instead of a lesson in responsibility.  Schools don't really want to engage in such fundraisers, but they need the money for essentials. We wanted to give them and any organization that needs to have fundraisers a better choice.

How large do you expect your business to grow over the next three to five years?

Moore: We plan to grow organically, beginning here in Central Oregon and expanding through the Pacific Northwest and beyond. We see adding several employees in Sisters, then establishing branches in other parts of the country.

How do you plan to market your company?

Moore: We think word-of-mouth will be our greatest marketing asset.