Fundraising has always been a primary source of income for many organisations such as community groups, sporting clubs, and the Parents and Friends (or Parents and Citizens) Associations of schools. With only limited financial help from governments, most of these establishments would not be financially viable without the special and tireless fundraising exploits of their members. As an example sporting clubs charge membership fees but with expenses ever growing, it would not be potential for them to exist financially without fundraising.

The kinds of fundraising opportunities today are many and varied. There’s a plethora of fundraising entities around trying to entice organisations to employ their services. From selling bottled water, wrist bands, homewares, clothing, jewelry and show bags to equine riding, shopping tours and engraving bricks and pavers. The alternatives are truly amazing and seemingly endless.

Schools and sporting clubs have traditionally stuck by the time honoured ways of fundraising by selling donuts, lollies, chocolates and biscuits. Over the past few years, yet, because of child obesity issues from poor eating traits and under physical workouts, many of these formal fundraising products have started to fall out of favour with fundraising entities.

This has allowed the less traditional fundraising ideas to acquire a foot in the entranceways so to speak of this multi-million dollar industry.

So where do you turn to when you would like to get rolling with fundraising? Say as an example your child is in their second year of school, and you have chosen to become more actively engaged in the comings and goings of their school. You attend the first P and C Association meeting of the year, and you end up on the Fundraising Committee for the year. You like to impress your peers; you want to do something positive for the environment and do the job successfully.

There are many reasons why the school may need to fundraise. It may need funds for a few extra computers in the library, or new playground equipment or maybe they would love to see a roof over a new walkway. What to do, where to get rolling to raise the required funds? Today most people are turning to the internet.

The internet is now the hottest and powerful tool for locating information, much more widely used now than the local newspapers or the yellow pages. When looking for ideas or facts, the majority of people now don’t consider any options apart from the internet. There are many search engines available to the internet user, such as Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. But by far the most popular search engine on the internet is Google.

ComScore is a marketing investigation company that provides marketing data and services to many of the internet’s largest businesses. According to estimates released by comScore at the end of 2008, Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S that year! That’s a big slice of the pie.

Google provide a Keyword Tool, which allows access to info regarding the most popular search phrases used by internet users when searching on Google. The most popular search terms used on Google for fundraising are in point of fact fundraising, fundraiser, school fundraising ideas, fundraiser ideas, ideas for fundraising, fundraisers and fundraising ideas.

The results from all of these searches show a wide variety of sites that the user can access, the majority of them being fundraising directories that list many fundraising entities offering their services.

One of the best websites in these search results appears to be goldstar.net.au which is the web address for the Brisbane based company Gold Star Gifts and Stationery. This company supplies novelty stationery and gift items to schools, clubs and organisations Australia wide for fundraising purposes. They provide free delivery, no upfront costs, and the fundraising entity keeps 50% profit from the sales of their products. So if you’re looking for fundraising, fundraiser ideas or ideas for fundraising, check out Goldstar today.