How to Enhance the Impact of Your Cake

Cake and cookie sponsorships are just as much about friendraising as it is about fundraising.

Sherry Day has baked 17 cakes for Icing Smiles families. After each cake, she creates a cake sponsorship fundraising page to not only help offset her cake supply costs but also to raise funds for Icing Smiles. 

Cake and cookie sponsorships are important for Icing Smiles. In 2022, Sugar Angels helped bring in over $6,000 for the organization through their sponsorship pages. However, the true magic of these fundraisers is that they’re also “friendraisers.”

“By sharing about Icing Smiles and the cakes they’re making, more people are learning of our cause and mission, helping us to grow toward our organization’s goal of becoming a household name,” says Development Coordinator Chelsea Boog. 

How You Can Become a Friendraiser

A cake or cookie sponsorship is a type of peer-to-peer fundraiser. This is a strategy where a Sugar Angel hosts a personal campaign to collect donations from their friends, family, and colleagues on Icing Smiles’ behalf. 

Icing Smiles provides all the tools you’ll need to get sponsors for your cake or cookies. In just a few short steps, you’re able to set up your personal fundraising page. We’ve made it easy by providing a template to help you get started, but you know your connections best. It can help to tweak the suggested messages or write your own to promote your fundraiser in your own style.

After your page is up and running, we also provide templates you can use to reach out to your friends and family about your fundraising efforts and to thank those who donate.

This type of fundraising not only raises money for Icing Smiles. It also increases exposure for our organization and helps us expand our reach to new, previously unexplored networks of supporters.

“People don’t realize it’s not just about money,” says Icing Smiles Founder Tracy Quisenberry. “It’s about telling our story.”

That’s one of the big reasons why Sherry says she creates sponsorships for the cakes she makes for Icing Smiles: “The more I get the name out there, the more people are aware and can share with other people.” 

Fundraising Tips for Sponsorships

Fundraising doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Many people feel ​​apprehensive or nervous at the thought of asking people for money. Maybe you don’t like talking about money. That’s normal: Money is a taboo subject in our culture, and we often have an aversion to talking about money. Or perhaps you fear you’ll be rejected, even if you have a close, personal relationship with the person you’re asking.

“I can understand why people feel like it’s awkward to ask someone,” Sherry says. “But most people are willing to help with something that maybe they’re not capable of doing, like the cake themselves, but they’re willing to sponsor something.”

If you still have some lingering fundraising anxiety, here are some tips that can help.

1. Share Your Why

It can help to think about fundraisers as opportunities to build and deepen relationships with people in your network. When you ask for donations, focus on more than just the need. Friends, family, and colleagues will be more likely to contribute when they know why Icing Smiles matters to you. 

“I don’t think of it as asking for a donation,” Sherry says. “It’s more, ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing. If you’d like to join with me in it, if you want to help, that would be great.’”

Share your personal connection to Icing Smiles on your fundraising page and in messages to drive awareness and donations to your page. The story of why you got involved and why this work matters to you will help resonate with friends, family, and connections you have and often inspire them to act. In the end, people give to people.

2. Use Social to Spread Awareness

Remember that cake and cookie sponsorships are just as much about raising awareness as they are about raising money. Social media is a great platform to spread the word in creative ways. 

“Social media is really great to use as a tool,” Sherry says. “Everybody’s on there all the time looking at stuff. When you put it on social, people can share it and it gets shared again. You’re reaching so many people that way.”

3. Start Now

Starting is half the battle. Don’t wait to be in the mood to ask people for money. That mood likely isn’t going to hit you anytime soon. So begin now! 

Draft your letter (we’ve provided a few templates), identify the people you want to hit up, send a test email to yourself, and go. Send three personal emails before you go home. The next day, post your fundraising page to Facebook. Then fire off a nice letter to your mom or dad. You got this!

4. Be OK with Hearing No

You won’t get a donation from every person you ask, and that’s OK. It doesn’t mean that you did a bad job. There are plenty of reasons a prospective donor will say no. Sometimes people get distracted or don’t have the money to donate. It’s not a reflection on you in the slightest.

Understanding this, politely follow up with anyone who didn’t donate the first time you reached out. You can also suggest other ways they can show support for free, such as sharing your fundraiser on their social networks.

5. Say Thank You

Make sure you say thank you, whether by email, text, or phone. A thank you always goes a long way, and it lets your donors know that their efforts are appreciated. 

Say thank you and follow up with a short and fun report on how your call to action went and how your sponsorship campaign ended up. This closes the loop appropriately in your donor’s eyes and sets you up nicely to connect with them after your next cake or cookie delivery. 

Start Your Cake or Cake Sponsorship

Sugar Angels, are you ready to rally your friends, family, and networks to support your cake and Icing Smiles? Starting a fundraiser is easy. We’ll give you all the tools you’ll need to get sponsors for your cake.