We recently had a client trim a budget on a fundraiser.  For the last several years, they consistently sold 47-50 tables for a “trivia night” at $500 per table.  The client produced 2 mailings and a newsletter to promote the trivia night, which routinely brought in over $40,000.

This year, because of budget constraints, the client sold 26 tables.  The client produced one mailing and made an email announcement.  6 of the tables had to be discounted to sell, and one was ‘comped’.  Total take this year? Less than $20,000.  Money saved on printing? $3,100.

You do the math.  Would the client have sold out this year? Probably not.  But if they’d sold 3 more tables, they’d broken even.  If they’d sold 10 more (still a reduction of over 20%) they would have earned at least $10,000 more.

There’s a lesson here:  You can spend your printing money wisely - and you can also not spend it, unwisely.