Short Version:
In placing priority on our charitable objectives, we fully sponsor our services to schools. The “retail” value of this sponsorship to each school is significant ($4500+). In return for this sponsorship, we request that a school seriously consider making a donation to afford us to continue our great charitable youth and humanitarian work.
Full Explanation:
With the amount of advertising that we all get bombarded with, it is very easy to either not notice, or be very skeptical of the “deal” that we are offering to schools. If you start to add what it would cost you to run this large of a program for a day ($2000 for audio/visual equipment rental, $1000 for a motivational speaker, $1000 for a professional band, $1000 for workshop sessions, $500 for travel and food costs, not to mention the cost of purchasing lesson plans and videos, etc etc.), it sounds too good to be true. We honestly struggled with the idea of switching to offering our product on a donation basis versus a set fee, because it is easy to not appreciate the quality and value of something that you get for free. However, in placing priority on our charitable vision of empowering as many students as possible, we want to make sure that all schools are able to afford the best in motivational services by sponsoring Think Day to schools, and accepting any donation in return. This donation model is basically an honour system, and this is what we are asking for from schools:
- We are trusting that schools won’t deprive their students of this opportunity because they aren’t able to make a certain size of donation. We are happy to be able to serve schools that don’t normally get this kind of presentation, although we hope that schools will make an effort to fund-raise or approach community groups to raise funds for this event. Since Absolute is a great charitable cause, it makes it easy to raise support.
- We are trusting that the schools that normally have the budget or access to means to afford such presentations will not “cheap out” and blindly take advantage of our good-will, since all donations we receive go directly to covering some of the travel costs and helping us continue our charitable youth and humanitarian work.
- That schools might consider providing lunch for our team or (possibly) help with billeting the team, as these are simple ways that help us to reduce our travel costs.
- That schools will understand that we may need to reach a minimum number of bookings in an area to be able to cover our expenses, or that we may have to turn down a potential booking due to scheduling/travel conflicts.
- That schools will not take for granted the significant sponsorship that their school is receiving.
- That schools will consider supporting our humanitarian projects when doing future school fund-raising projects.
To cover the costs of our programs, we rely on our general fund-raising efforts, volunteers, some business sponsorships, but mainly donations from schools that receive our services. If you are looking for a suggestion on what to donate, following is a sample of the pricing structure if we would have charged a fixed fee:
- Think Fast (motivational presentation): $600 (100 to 250 students), $900 (250 to 500 students), $1200 (500 to 1000 students)
- Think Through It (leave behind lesson plans + DVD): this is always included with Think Fast
- Think Through It (workshops): $150 per workshop
- Think Global (global awareness session): freely available with Think Fast ($150 if done separately from Think Fast)
- Think Big (concert event): any donation ($500 if done separately from a Think Day)
- Think Again (keynote speaker): $500 to $1000
