10 Tips for Hosting a Successful Bake Sale

• Involve enthusiastic and committed people. An event is only as good as the people involved. Find people who have different types of skills and contacts to help you at different stages of the bake sale. You will need volunteers to help you with the baking, advertising and managing the event.
• Find community partners. Ask local bakeries to partner with you by donating ingredients or baked goodies. This is a great way to promote their business while helping in your efforts.
• Sell colorful and unique treats. Be creative and think of heart or red themed bakery items, such as red velvet cupcakes, heart shaped cookies, donuts and brownies with red sprinkles, chocolate covered pretzels, heart shaped cake pops, red candied apples, party mix snack bags, and chocolate or fruit pops. Visit CCF's Pinterest page for more great ideas.
• Offer a variety of items. Provide an assortment of items but don’t limit yourself to just baked goods. Increase your sales by selling red or pink beverages with your baked goods, and go with the season in your offerings. If it’s still cold in your state, offer hot chocolate.
• Maximize your fundraising revenue. Sell additional non-food items to encourage multiple sales. This could include selling CCF curebands, CCF valentines attached to red balloons, or other homemade craft items. Add a “calorie free” jar to your table so customers who may not want a treat can still make a donation. Also, create an online bake sale page on Crowdrise so that friends and family can support your event even if they can’t attend your bake sale.
• Stand out at your location. Make your bake sale table stand out with red decorations and CCF materials, including balloons, stickers, posters and handouts. Contact CCF for your FREE bake sale kit.
• Increase awareness of CCF. Have volunteers wear CCF t-shirts, attach CCF stickers to your baked goods and pass out CCF handouts with every purchase.
• Promote your event. Let everyone in your community know about your upcoming bake sale and why it is so important to support CCF’s work. Consider different ways to promote your event to various groups of people. Sign up your bake sale on CrowdRise to publicize your event outside of your community and raise additional funds.
• Reach out to the media. Contact your local TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and web outlets to advertise your bake sale. Tell them your story and why raising awareness and funds for pediatric cardiomyopathy is important to you. Download CCF’s Reaching Out to the Media Guide for tips on getting media coverage.
• Build traffic at the event. Designate one volunteer to help draw in the crowd. Have them in front of the table calling customers over and explaining the reason for your bake sale.