Won’t He Need A Fundraising Thermometer?

When you’re raising funds for a worthy cause, a fundraising thermometer can help you meet your goal. In the vein of a picture’s worth a thousand words, the thermometer provides that important graphic reminder of where you are, where you’re going, and how long until you arrive.

So what is it? Well, you may have driven into a small town and seen a big thermometer on the side of the road, showing their progress toward raising money for an important civil project. Sometimes they’re at schools helping keep track of a sports team’s progress toward new equipment. There are even folks who use them as measures of progress towards an individual goal like saving up for a class trip, buying a gift for a loved one, or an annual charitable donation.

So why do they work? Think back to when you were a child. You’d see something at the store you really wanted. Maybe it was a fancy new outfit, or as an older child, maybe you decided you wanted a car. If you asked your parents to buy it, they may have said to save your money. They knew that by pushing you to save your money, you’d work hard and put away all the money you could.

Well, that motivation our parents taught us also works well with our adult individual or group goals. By looking up and seeing our steps toward achieving a goal, we see that our efforts get us closer and closer to our goal. And making advancement toward that goal pushes us - we want to finish, to achieve, and to raise the money.

This urge to meet our goals increases as we make that progress. The closer we get to the goal, the more we want to reach it.

From a design point of view, they’re really simple to produce. Some people make their own, using a large piece of poster board or butcher’s paper. The actual image is basically a long rectangular shape with one end rounded-off and the other replaced by a large circle. Through its main body, there are marks delimiting numerous steps toward achievement of the funding goal. Once it’s drawn, a red marker is employed to color the main body as funds are raised. When the goal is met, the entire thermometer will be red (and perhaps creatively overflowing from the top should you exceeded your goal).

There are even companies offering pre-made fundraising thermometers to make it even easier to get started. Whether on your own hand-drawn poster, or coloring in one that’s professionally made, you’ll quickly be on your way to raising money for your important cause.