10 Steps to Create and Sell Fundraising Cookbooks

Creating and selling fundraising cookbooks is a fun and personal way to raise awareness and generate valuable funds for your nonprofit. Whether you are planning to make an office, church, or school fundraising cookbook or doing it to complement another fundraiser, such as a walk-a-thon, it’s a great way to make an impact on a worthy cause. Financially, it makes sense, as the profit generated from fundraising cookbook sales can significantly outweigh the cost of making the product. This is fantastic news when your nonprofit wants to exceed its fundraising goals.

To ensure your organization smashes a successful and memorable fundraiser, look at our top tips and simple guide on creating and selling fundraising cookbooks.

Why Are Fundraising Cookbooks So Popular?

Think about immortalizing your friends, families, and colleagues’ favorite recipes while raising valuable funds for your nonprofit. Well, that’s where fundraising cookbooks hold much of their appeal. Gathering a group of like-minded people to produce an item that offers a variety of delicious dishes is just one of the perks. Another is offering a keepsake that’ll be around long after the fundraising event. This creates a personal touch in your community, which can greatly benefit your charity campaign.

Fundraising cookbooks also make impressive and unique presents. A school fundraising cookbook is an ideal gift for parents and grandparents, especially when they open them up to find one of their own recipes inside. 

Choosing Virtual or Physical Fundraising Cookbooks

Creating beautiful fundraising cookbooks used to be time and labor-intensive. Much less so now with the advancements in digital technology. Whether you opt for physical or virtual fundraising cookbooks to sell on our eCommerce stores, it’s a much more straightforward and stress-free production process now than ever before.

To help you come to a decision, check out the pros and cons of virtual and physical fundraising cookbooks.

Virtual Fundraising Cookbooks

Pros	Cons
Outreach (and donations) are limitless through online sharing.	Some of your target audience may not be up to speed with the use of ebooks.
The option to re-edit at a later stage, add more recipes, and update content.	It can be harder to edit as content can be limitless with so many recipe contributions piling up.
Cost-effective, with no need to print or charge postage fees.	The keepsake book is not as personal when it’s online.
More sustainable with no need for paper, ink, or damaging environmental costs caused by book production.

Physical Fundraising Cookbooks

Pros	Cons
People like to own something tangible that they can fit on their bookshelf.	Environmental costs of materials and production.
No screen time, which reduces eye strain.	More expensive to produce and ship.
	Limited amount of pages due to cost restraints.

Whichever type of fundraising cookbook your organization chooses, both are great options to sell online. So, let’s dive into our 10-step guide on creating a sell-out fundraising cookbook. 

Gather Your Team

Choose the Cookbook Creator Platform

There are so many cookbook creator platforms out there. Make sure you choose the best to suit your nonprofit’s and donor’s needs.  Remember to look for a platform with the following:

• Extensive database capabilities to make uploading, editing, tagging, and sorting your contributed recipes quick and easy.
• High-quality full-color printing options with a variety of binding and page count possibilities for those who want to create physical fundraising cookbooks.

Define Your Audience and Theme

Here are a few unique theme ideas for your fundraising cookbooks:

• Gluten-free or special dietary requirement recipes
• Healthy food recipes (for a 5K charity race)
• Children’s party food recipes (school or PTA fundraiser)
• World foods, with each chapter covering a recipe from a different country
• Foods that can be prepared in under 30 minutes recipes
• Recipes under $10 or $20

Set a Budget for the Cookbook Production

Choose a Customized Cover

The cover of your fundraising cookbook creates the first impression on its potential buyers, so it’s essential to get it right. Here are a few tips to attract your target donors from the get-go and have your fundraising cookbooks flying off the shelves:

• Make it eye-catching and appealing.
• Display memorable, heartfelt image(s) aligned to your cause that stirs emotions in your supporters.
• Provide photos of the people or community you will impact with the sales of the fundraising cookbooks.

Don’t forget to add a small dedication to the people or community you’re trying to impact, explaining briefly who and what your nonprofit is raising money for and why. 

Gather Recipes

Proofread all recipes for spelling errors and ensure each recipe makes sense. It’s worth trying each recipe out first by sharing it with your planning committee to ensure that it is suitable for your fundraising cookbook. Remember, your nonprofit’s reputation is on the line, so make sure the recipes in the book are of a high standard. 

Pricing the Fundraising Cookbook

Finding the right price for your fundraising cookbook is essential. Choose a price that is low enough to attract your supporters but high enough to ensure that you smash your fundraising goals.

If you are unsure how to price your fundraising cookbook, visit a local bookstore or look online to compare the prices of cookbooks in the current market. If you include some extras in your cookbook, such as recipes by celebrities, you can price your fundraising cookbook higher.

Promote Your Cookbook

If you can get a few influencers, celebrities, or musicians to contribute recipes to your fundraising cookbook, even better. Depending on your theme, for example, a golf fundraising cookbook, you could get a couple of famous golfers to contribute recipes.

Sell your Fundraising Cookbooks Online

You have your perfect fundraising cookbook, and demand is growing to purchase it, so where can you direct your supporters to get hold of a copy? Our eCommerce stores are the answer to getting your organization set up and selling quickly, with little effort.

Set up the store for free and add items within minutes. This is a great option for schools, churches, clubs, and all organizations where items can be picked up on-site. Shipping can be done if you build the shipping cost into the product or apply a flat fee to each transaction for shipping.

Thank Your Donors

Don’t forget to collect contact details from all donors to strengthen relationships and for future events. Maybe even start thinking about unique cook-off fundraiser events, where your donors take a recipe from the fundraising cookbook they purchased and compete on who can cook it best. 

Conclusions on Selling Fundraising Cookbooks

Fundraising cookbooks have been around forever simply because they work. Everyone enjoys eating, cooking food, or both. As a fundraising cookbook encapsulates these great pastimes, you are set for success if you create one for your charity campaign. 

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