Does your nonprofit group have an anniversary coming up? Celebrate in style, and make a banner year out of it, bringing in donations and friends for the years to come. Here’s how…

Whether your rescue is celebrating your 10th, 25th or your 50th anniversary, it’s a fabulous milestone that should not go by unnoticed! You need to figure out your ‘backbone’ for the anniversary first, though. Ask yourself a few questions such as “What do we hope to get out of this?” and “How much do we want to spend on this?” and “Is this a fundraiser, or a public relations campaign, or a combination of the two?” These questions will help you figure out what type of events your group would like to host and the outcome expected. If you want to raise public awareness of your rescue and its great works, then a publicity style campaign and an event such as an Open House may be the perfect fit for you. If you’d like to create a mid-size event or a LARGE gala event, which would double as a fundraiser for your group, then a buffet style or catered dinner with a small number of auction items and an evening of dancing might fit the bill. Be sure to include a special appeal time during the live auction to encourage more giving for this wonderful occasion.

First, start a media campaign for your big anniversary! Some groups create a special anniversary logo, which could just be your regular logo with a silver 10 at the top of it. Talk with an animal- friendly local reporter to get a 2 part or 3 part story on your rescue group in the papers. This will help raise awareness, and allow you ample opportunity to discuss your experience and your future plans. It’s always nice for people to know you have a proven track record, but they’re really focused on where you’re going in the future! Call your local radio shows and offer to be a guest on their show during the morning drive time, or just between 9am and 11am when they still need interviews, but it’s not the TOP time when more listeners will be listening. It’s usually easier to get those slots than the drive time slots, and there are still plenty of listeners who are at work now. This may actually be better for you since listeners could write down your website info or start writing out that donation check!

During your celebration month you can offer to highlight special pet tips each day of the month for your local papers or TV news anchors to read at the end of their regular news segments. Or, just do 10 days of tips (over 2 work weeks) to celebrate the 10 years. If it’s your 20th or 25th anniversary, use the same set-up, just with more tips for more days. This allows your group to give good information that will help your local citizens, and the pets in your community.

You can celebrate the actual day when your nonprofit was created, or just pick Oct 10th for its 10 year symbolism. And, since that puts it in October’s Adopt a Dog Month, you can really focus on adoptions. The 10th wedding anniversary gift is a diamond. You could focus on “Diamonds in the Ruff” for rescued pets who may have started out a little dirty but who are now polished and ready for a lifetime of unconditional love! Sounds like your typical romance stuff, right? A diamond champagne raffle bar would be an ideal piggyback fundraiser at a formal event. For the 20th anniversary, the traditional gift is china, which could bring to mind a Chinese buffet dinner (particularly around Chinese Lunar New Year), or work with an artist to create a special china ornament with your group’s logo on it. Instead of the traditional china gift, you can use the modern gift, which would be platinum jewelry. For the 25th, it would be silver, and could include a silver jewelry raffle, or the diamond champagne raffle.

Perhaps you could host an anniversary party for yourselves. You could do it as a fundraiser event, such as a tasting dinner where 10 local restaurants help provide food for people to sample. Perhaps you could have 10 anniversary cakes (single layers, sheet cakes, OR a 10 layer wedding style cake donated to you!), and have a memorable moment or animal on each layer. You can do wonders now with printable edible images on cake tops, allowing you to include photos of a new shelter building, or of memorable animals from your group’s past. It could be a romantic evening, like an anniversary dinner would be, with a romantic getaway trip to an area Bed & Breakfast as a door prize or as the main auction item.

You could also host a diamond champagne bar at this event, or at a basic reception. People have to pay $50 to ~$100 to purchase one of the 100 special glasses of champagne that all have a stone inside them. 99 stones will be lovely cubic zirconia stones, and 1 will be a diamond! Your local jeweler (who graciously donated the stones in exchange for the publicity!) will be on hand to look over everyone’s stones and announce later in the evening whose stone was the real diamond! This works out great for the jeweler because everyone who didn’t win a true diamond will want to come back to his place to have their gorgeous CZ stone mounted as a pendant, or to purchase a matching CZ stone for a set of earrings. The jeweler makes money off all the settings and extra work and clients this fundraiser willl bring him.

Create a montage slideshow of some of your past animals from the beginning of your rescue’s history. Include some successes from the early years, such as a few adoptable animals who have spent the last 7 to 10 years in their happy adoptive home! Showcase some statistics, such as the smaller number of adoptions done your first year, the spay/ neuter surgeries done, your successes as your grew, your big events you’ve hosted, and then the number of the hundreds of animals you’ve helped…. and your vision for the future! Make it upbeat and inspiring! Show that you have had great successes and that you are looking to the future for more success in your community!

Create a David Letterman style Top 10 list of funny highlights from your past 10 years. Top 10 Great Things about MySuperPetRescue… 10- Having to scoop litter boxes for the 5,423 cats that have come through our doors…. 9- Being pooped on over 150 times by baby animals….. all the way down to # 1- Puppy Kisses and Kitten Breath!

Or, create your own ‘Priceless’ Master Card style commercial… “$25,000 for spay/ neuter surgeries” “55,000 lbs of kibble” “Saving the lives of 5,450 animals since 1997, PRICELESS”

If you’d like to do a grocery store cutout campaign, you could use a diamond shape (like a kite), or one that looks like the side view of a diamond ready for a ring. This could be a public campaign where your group’s name will be displayed at the store for a full month, and people pay $1 to write a special message on their diamond to show support for your group. You can also include a wish list and drop off donation point at the grocery store to generate donations of items your group needs, including business supplies (paper, ink), cleaning supplies (paper towels, cleaners, bleach), to the usual pet items (food, litter, collars, toys).

Celebrate your 10th, 20th or 25th anniversary with style! Raise publicity for your amazing rescue, and bring in some more funds that will help secure your future for the next 10, 20 or 25 years!