The Money

How 20% + 10% Recurring Fundraising Income Actually Works

Two percentages, and they behave nothing like each other. One pays your group once and is finished. The other keeps arriving for as long as a customer keeps buying, which is entirely that customer's decision and not yours.

Misty Gaunt Fundraising partner, GoodFundraising.org 615-414-3837

The two percentages, stated plainly

Your organization earns 20% of every first order placed through one of your participants' links. That happens once per customer, on the order that introduces them to the catalog.

Your organization then earns 10% of every reorder that same customer places afterwards, for as long as they keep ordering. Nobody has to ask them again. Nobody has to collect anything. If they buy in March and again in June, both of those pay your group at 10%.

That is the entire structure. No tiers to climb, no volume thresholds, no different rate for the tenth customer than the first. When people hear "recurring fundraising income" they usually assume something more complicated is hiding behind it, and in this case there is not.

What a "reorder" actually is

A reorder is any order a customer places after their first one. It is not a subscription your group sets up, and it is not something a participant triggers. The customer goes back, buys more magnesium or more coffee or more kids' gummies, and that order is a reorder.

This matters because the word gets used loosely in fundraising pitches. Here it means one specific thing: the same customer, buying again, through the same tracking link that recorded them the first time. The link is called a Health Hero link, and each participant has their own, so the credit follows the person who brought the customer in.

What does not count

A larger first order is still a first order, paid at 20%. A customer who buys once and never returns produces exactly one payment to your group, and that is a perfectly normal outcome. Plenty of customers do that. The model does not fall apart when they do; it simply looks like a conventional fundraiser for that particular customer.

Why the 10% compounds and the 20% does not

The 20% is bounded by effort. To earn more of it, your group has to find another new customer, which means another conversation, another share, another sign-up. Double the first-order income and you have roughly doubled the work. That is a straight line, and it is the same straight line every traditional fundraiser runs on.

The 10% behaves differently, for one structural reason: new customers get added to the reorder pool, but existing customers do not leave it just because the campaign moved on. Every new customer who turns into a repeat buyer raises the monthly base, and the monthly base carries forward on its own.

So in a second campaign, your group is not starting from zero. It is starting from whatever the first campaign's repeat buyers still contribute, and building on top of that. That stacking is the only thing "compounds" means here. It is not interest, and it is not growth that happens by itself.

The part nobody controls

The 10% depends completely on customers choosing to keep ordering. Your group cannot make that happen, and neither can I. There is no contract binding a customer to a second purchase, and there should not be.

What influences it is whether the products were worth buying on their own merits. Someone who bought a multivitamin because a neighbor's kid asked nicely, and did not particularly want it, will not reorder. Someone who was already spending money on supplements and found member prices genuinely lower will. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the pricing matters more than the pitch. There is more on that in why selling near cost makes a better fundraiser.

What happens when the campaign officially ends

Nothing happens to the 10%. The campaign ending is a calendar event for your committee, not an event in the customer's life. They still have the same link, the same account, and the same reason to reorder that they had in week two.

This is genuinely different from how fundraisers usually end. A candy sale ends and income stops that day. A car wash ends when the last car dries. Here, the participants stop sharing links and the first-order income stops, but the reorder line keeps running as long as those customers keep buying.

Practically, that means your treasurer has a small revenue line that does not need a new campaign to exist. It also means the honest way to talk about it is as a base to build on, never as a number to count on before it arrives.

Two questions worth asking before you present this

First: would our families buy these products at these prices with no fundraiser attached? If yes, reorders are plausible. If no, plan around first orders only and treat anything else as a bonus.

Second: who on our committee will still be watching the dashboard six months from now? A recurring line rewards someone paying attention to it.

The one-minute version for a treasurer or a principal

You will get about sixty seconds before someone decides whether this is worth a longer meeting. Use them in this order.

1. Say what the group sells and what it costs us

   "We share links to a supplement catalog. There is no inventory, no order forms, no cash, no upfront purchase, and nothing to return. It is free to start and there is no contract."

2. Say the two numbers once, and label them

   "We keep 20% of every first order, and 10% of everything that customer orders after that. The first number is one time. The second one keeps coming while they keep buying."

3. Say why anyone buys

   "The prices are below retail, so people are buying vitamins cheaper rather than donating. Organic D3-K2 is $19.95 retail and $9.50 at member price, for example."

4. Name the limitation before they do

   "The recurring part depends on customers choosing to reorder, and nobody can guarantee that. We should budget the first orders and treat the reorders as an unbudgeted line until we see a few months of it."

5. Ask for the smallest possible yes

   "I would like permission to run it with one grade, or one team, for a month, and bring the actual numbers back."

That fourth step is the one people skip, and it is the one that gets approvals. Committees have been pitched optimistic fundraising math before. Naming the weak point yourself is what separates you from the last brochure that crossed their desk.

How to hold both numbers in your head

Treat the 20% as this season's money and the 10% as next season's floor. The first pays for the thing you are fundraising for right now. The second decides whether next year's committee starts at zero or starts somewhere above it.

If you want to see how the two lines diverge with your own roster size, the fundraising calculator lets you move the assumptions yourself. If you are weighing this against a chocolate sale or a car wash, the fundraiser comparison lays out the shape of each. And if you are trying to build a budget that does not reset every August, booster club fundraising gets into that specifically.

Misty Gaunt

Misty helps schools, teams, churches and nonprofits set up recurring fundraisers through LiveGood. She will look at your roster and tell you whether the model fits before you commit to anything. Call or text 615-414-3837.