Looking for fun and easy fundraising ideas for a non-profit organization? These ideas move beyond the tedious sales of wrapping paper, cookies, and pies, but stop short of extensive grant writing. They have been tested and approved by my local schools and nonprofit breastfeeding support groups and just might work for your organization too!
n these tough economic times, nonprofits must get creative in raising funds. This list of ideas offers a variety of options for non-profits to employ based on their particular resources: people, time, community support, computer access, and storage space.

One of the best baby gifts Nicole and I received was a donation in our honor to La Leche League by Tanya, Sinead, Andi, and Jennifer. I was touched by the thoughtful gift, and pleased that one of my favorite charities would benefit.
Gift Matching for Donations to La Leche League
If you are thinking of making a year-end donation to charity this year, give to La Leche League now and your tax-deductible gift will be doubled by generous donors! Long-time supporters and La Leche League International (LLLI) Board and staff will match your donation dollar-for-dollar, up to $50,000, between now …read more

Voting is now closed! Thank you to all who voted!
Squidoo is giving away $80,000 to charity. In order to decide the mix of beneficiaries, Squidoo invites people to visit its website and vote for an organization to receive $2. That will continue until the entire $80,000 has been allocated or until October 15, 2008, whichever comes first. On the list of beneficiaries is La Leche League. It’s so easy and fast to vote — no registration is required, just the click of a button! So head on over to the $80,000 Squidoo Charity Giveaway ASAP, scroll down the list (which …read more

The upcoming October Carnival of Breastfeeding is timed to coincide with Blog Action Day on October 15, 2008. On Blog Action Day, thousands of bloggers write posts on the same general topic yet tailor them to the specific subject of each blog. The Blog Action Day 2008 website says:
Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.
As of today nearly 5,000 blogs with 10,000,000 readers have signed up to participate! …read more

If you have new or used (but current) breastfeeding, parenting, childbirth, or pregnancy books that you no longer need, why not pass them on for a good cause, and maybe even get a tax deduction in the process? Here are five ways to share your breastfeeding books to benefit other mothers (and the environment).
1. Donate pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and parenting books to your local La Leche League library. LLL groups have free lending libraries, usually allowing mothers to check out books for a month at a time. If you’re not sure whether a book is on the approved LLL list, …read more

Yet another study recently showed that breastfeeding helps fight breast cancer by reducing a breastfeeding woman’s risk of developing certain types of breast cancer. Still, it remains critical to fight breast cancer through the funding of breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment. I am proud to say my sister Jill McNabb has committed to the cause by agreeing to participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day — a 60-mile walk over the course of three days — and raising at least $2,200 in donations in the process (her goal is actually $3,000 and she’s raised $1,800 so far!) Jill will …read more

So far thirteen breastfeeding advocacy projects have been funded through the new breastfeeding resource marketplace LatchOn.org.
LatchOn.org is an online marketplace and community for people supporting and promoting breastfeeding as a foundation for the development of babies and families.
LatchOn.org connects people with resources to share (funds, time or materials) with people undertaking projects to promote, support and protect breastfeeding, optimal nutrition and parenting.
Projects featured in LatchOn.org are sponsored by organizations with nonprofit charity status in their respective countries. A donation to a project in the marketplace is a donation to the organization providing fiscal sponsorship for that project. By …read more

When I asked readers to consider including La Leche League in their holiday giving, I did so as part of the Generous December Group Writing Project hosted by Kate at Babylune. Kate kept her word and gave $60 to the charity of choice of the author of the winning post (posts, actually — she chose two!) Not only is Kate generous and giving, she is also a sneaky little Santa and a good friend, even to her friends in the computer like me. Turns out she made donations in honor of all of the 35 entries in the group writing …read more

Did you know that La Leche League International operates in 70 countries and territories and helps over 10 million people per year? Do you realize that encouraging and supporting breastfeeding actually saves babies’ lives?
“Research shows that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months – with continued breastfeeding for the first year – could save 1.3 million lives every year,” says Miriam Labbok, UNICEF Senior Advisor on Infant and Young Child Feeding.
“This is well over 3,000 lives each and every day. And if breastfeeding is continued alongside appropriate complementary feeding until at least age two – we could be saving …read more

No reply from eBay yet on this post. Breast milk has not been added to the group of prohibited and restricted items but the one open listing for human breast milk has been removed. Even though I did not directly alert eBay to that listing, I feel a slight twinge of guilt about my question leading to its removal. The seller is probably a very nice breastfeeding mother who simply had some extra milk. I hope she knows about one of the non-profit milk banks and considers donating her breast milk there.
The former tax lawyer in me wondered …read more