Fundraiser Buttons for Lindenhurst

North Lindenhurst, Copiague and West Babylon are close neighbours of one another, all of them inside a mile and three quarters, and Copiague Harbor at 1.8 miles and Amity Harbor at 2.1 miles are barely further out. They ring Lindenhurst tightly enough that a charity walk starting in one of them usually draws people from the other four, and the giveaway buttons handed out at the registration table end up crossing all five in a single morning. This page is written for the person organising that kind of thing: a walk, a run, a collection drive, a memorial fund, anything where a small round badge is the thing people pin on and keep on.

Two towns, one name

The name root is shared with North Lindenhurst next door, and that single word of overlap causes more trouble on button orders than anything else about the geography. Two committees working the same cause will write the town line on their forms differently, and the artwork that comes back from a volunteer sometimes carries the other version of the name in the outer ring of text. A button is a small canvas. On a 1.5 inch face there is room for a name, a year and a short line of purpose, and not much else, so a wrong word is not something you can crowd out with other design. Before you send artwork, read the ring text out loud once and confirm the version of the name your committee actually uses. If your group draws volunteers from both sides of that name, the safer design leaves the town line off entirely and puts the cause front and centre, which also means the same button works if you run the event again under a different banner.

The five sizes, and what each one is really for

There are five round pin-back sizes and nothing besides them: 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch. The 1.5 inch is the handout. It costs $1.89 per button and it is the one you box up by the hundred for a registration table, because it takes a logo and a few words and nothing more. The 2.25 inch at $1.99 per button is the middle of the range and the size most fundraiser giveaways land on, since it holds a logo, a cause line and a year without the text getting tight. The 3 inch at $2.49 per button is the one you give to team captains, sponsors and the family a memorial walk is named for, because it carries a photograph or a full crest and reads from across a parking lot. A 1 inch button is $1.49 and a 1.25 inch is $1.69, both suited to a single word or a mark rather than a sentence.

The order total does not set the rate. A single size's count does. Ten of the 2.25 inch cost $1.99 each and 999 of them cost $1.39 each, with a thousand of one size going to a quote. Order what the list needs, then look at the band boundaries once. They are the only place where ordering more costs less.

A worked order, start to finish

Say you want 400 of the 2.25 inch button for a walk day giveaway. At $1.49 each, the 250 to 499 rate, 25 percent off, that is $596.00 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order of that size is $19.99, so the order comes to $615.99 before tax. That is the whole calculation. Nothing else is added in on the way through, and nothing changes if you split the 400 across two designs instead of one.

Where the shipping tiers sit

Shipping is flat and it is set by the total number of buttons on the order, not by size or design count. Up to 100 buttons is $9.99. Up to 250 is $14.99. Up to 500 is $19.99. Up to 1000 is $24.99.

The rate band answers to one size's count and the shipping tier answers to the total. An order of 260 buttons sits just over the 250 line and pays $19.99 in shipping. Trim the same order to 250 and it pays $14.99. You are not buying the buttons any differently either way, and the ten buttons you dropped were worth more than the $5.00 you saved if you actually needed them, so treat this as a thing to check rather than a thing to optimise. It matters most when your headcount estimate is soft and the number you picked happens to sit a handful of units above a boundary.

Thirteen and a half miles, in a straight line

The town is 13.5 miles south of the shop as the crow flies. That is a straight line measurement, not a route and not a distance anyone actually travels, but it is useful for setting expectations if someone on your committee is planning to come and collect the order rather than have it sent. It also explains why the neighbouring places named at the top of this page sit so close together on a map compared with the gap north to Huntington.

Four people who place this order

The walk organiser. You have a registration table, a rough headcount and a treasurer who wants one number. Pick the 2.25 inch, multiply by the count you are confident about, add the shipping tier and you have the whole figure to bring to the committee.

The volunteer coordinator. You are not handing these to the public at all. You want a marker that tells a participant who to ask for help, which usually means one design at 3 inch for staff and nothing else, in a quantity closer to twenty than four hundred.

The school parent on a fundraising committee. Your artwork came from a student and it is going to be a drawing rather than a clean logo. That is fine, and full colour printing handles it, but check that the important part of the drawing sits away from the outer edge, because the edge of the artwork wraps around the curve of the button.

The family running a memorial fund. You are ordering something people will keep in a drawer rather than wear once. Go to 3 inch, use one photograph, and leave the text short enough that it does not compete with the face in the image.

Questions organisers ask

Do we need a separate order for the Lindenhurst leg of the walk and the leg that starts elsewhere in the county? No. Shipping is priced on the total button count across the whole order, so one order of 400 costs less to ship than two orders of 200 would. Put every design on the same order.

We are running a walk in Lindenhurst and our headcount is a guess. Should we order for the maximum? Order for the number you are confident about. Those counts sit in different bands: 100 at 20 percent under the listed rate, 400 at 25 percent under the listed rate. The only difference is that a second order carries its own shipping tier.

Can a Lindenhurst fundraiser put two different designs on one order? Yes. Design count does not affect the price per button or the shipping tier. A hundred of one design and three hundred of another is still 400 buttons and still the $19.99 tier.

Our Lindenhurst committee wants sponsor logos on the button. Which size should we use? Use the 3 inch at $2.49 each. A sponsor logo needs to be legible at arm's length and a small face forces it down to a size where it stops being recognisable. If the sponsor is the only thing on the button, 2.25 inch can work.

Is the price per button lower if our Lindenhurst group orders a thousand instead of four hundred? No. The price per button is the same up to ninety-nine of that size. 400 pays 25 percent under the listed rate. A thousand of one size is past the ceiling, so that one is quoted rather than priced automatically. Keeping it on one order matters twice now, once for the single shipping charge and once for the combined count that sets each size's rate.