Fundraising IDEAS.....

[jennyf2]

You guys always have such great ideas--so here goes

My son is going to be a senior this year & we are meeting this Sunday to come up with fundraising ideas for next years Legion baseball team. The boys are juniors & seniors & we are open to any ideas. We host a golf tournament in the spring & thats it. The rest of the $$ is out of pocket. Any ideas would be great.

Thanks!!!!

 

[karliebug]

car wash, sell candy, bake sales, fundraising nights at local restaurants, spaghetti dinner or pancake breakfast, save store receipts for local grocery stores, recycle ink cartridges and juice pouches.

 

[malibuconlee]

A dinner night at a restaurant where the restaurant gives the organization a % of their sales for the evening.

 

[momof1princess]

the hershey's candy boxes usually sell really well for us. when DD13 was in elementary school, the PTO usually did a candy sale every fall. the candy box has several different types of hershey candy bars (and reese's cups) in it, and the candy bars sell for $1 each. DH could take a box to work and sell the entire thing before his shift even starts.

since fall is coming, they might also hire themselves out for yard work - last mowing of the season, raking leaves, cleaning rain gutters, weeding flowerbeds, etc.

 

[drinkme]

We have the most profit and least work with selling movie tickets. Find out if there are any local places that do this fund raiser. We worked with marcus theaters.

 

[SYDCOLEMOM]

In the past I have seen our local baseball teams at our Kroger on rainy days. The team hangs out by the door with umbrellas. They walk people to their cars with the umbrellas and help them unload their groceries. They work for tips. I thought it was a great idea because it required no investment other than time.

 

[RadioMom]

Not sure where you are but in our city, the hockey teams hit up the student populated areas (university and college) for their empty liquor and beer bottles and return them. They take a pick up truck and go door to door. The students love it because they never take them back to the store anyway and the teams make big bucks for spending an afternoon.
At our school, we do a garage sale. We rent tables to people for $20.00 to sell whatever they like, and then we have tables of our own with donated items. It's 100% profit. Whatever we don't sell goes to local churches or second hand shops in our city who are happy to receive it. On average we make $1000 in four hours. We set up the night before.
We've also just started doing a BBQ at a local nursery that's very popular. We made nearly $1000 in a day just selling burgers and hot dogs to hungry folks picking up their plants and flowers in the spring.

 

[Singinglizzie]

How about a used book sale. We did this at our school and raised almost 4k. Get everyone at school to clean out their closets and donate all their old books. Then organize the books according to kids, adults, fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, etc. sell the books for .50 paperbacks and $1, $2, $3 dollars for hardback. Any left over books take to the half-price book store and see what they will give you for them.

 

[QuickRewardsBecky]

I organized a couple of fundraisers this spring for Be the Match, the national bone marrow registry. We did a huge garage sale, which a local school hosted in their covered carpool area so rain wasn't an issue. We got the word out on Facebook and Twitter and in the school newsletter that donations were needed and all money would go to the charity. Lots of friends of the family who needed the marrow transplant came out to help us run it. We made a LOT of money but it was a lot of work. Getting someone to haul off the leftovers was an issue - our local Good Will wouldn't take all of it! I don't remember the exact numbers but I think we made over $1,500.

We also did a jambalaya fundraiser (it's a Louisiana thing, hehe... I guess spaghetti or whatever else would be the same) - the local Knights of Columbus cooked for us and only charged us for food. The Coca-Cola Bottling Company donated a ton of drinks, which they said we couldn't "sell," but we iced them down and put a "$.50 donation appreciated" sign and made some money on those also. We pre-sold tickets for a few weeks and put up flyers around town to advertise. This was another big money-maker for us (over $1,000 in profit after covering food costs).

Another thing you could do is sell magazines. I thought about this but we just never got around to it. If you have a website, you can sign up to be an affiliate (meaning you earn sales commission through a banner ad you put on your site, or through a text link), for some magazine sites like Magazines.com. They pay 40% commission on magazines AND their prices for a year's subscription are way, way cheaper than buying one issue at a time. You could get people to go to your website and order magazines to support the team. For example, a year of Baseball Youth magazine is $19.95. You'd earn almost $8 for your team for each subscription you sold. They have tons of other magazines, too -- like a year of Entertainment Weekly (52 issues) for $15! Awesome deal and you'd earn $6!

 

[buzz5985]

You guys always have such great ideas--so here goes

My son is going to be a senior this year & we are meeting this Sunday to come up with fundraising ideas for next years Legion baseball team. The boys are juniors & seniors & we are open to any ideas. We host a golf tournament in the spring & thats it. The rest of the $$ is out of pocket. Any ideas would be great.

Thanks!!!!

My DS's Scout troop sells wreaths for Christmas. It's their only fundraiser. They sell door to door - but the big seller is setting up at the local churches for the weekends following Thanksgiving. The Troop gets the wreaths, some are decorated (pine cones, berries, bows) and others are sold plain.

I should be getting my ribbon in a couple of weeks to start making the bows.


Good luck

 

[dakcp2001]

We did a "Holiday Craft Fair" at the local KOC just before Christmas. We sold tables to people who wanted to sell their crafts so we ended up with quite an assortment. The money they paid for the tables went towards our fundraiser and they kept their profit. We sold hot dogs,chips, meatball subs, walking tacos (chili scooped into a little bag of corn chips topped with cheese) , and a few other concession type foods and drinks. Some were donated by parents, other stuff was donated by a local supermarket. Our biggest money makers were BY FAR the 50/50 raffle we did continuously through the event, the raffle table (gift baskets donated by local businesses,some of the craft merchants, and donated gift cards), and the bake sale. Our bake sale sold individual snacks but also whole cakes, whole pies, and breads such as banana bread. We had the sale just before the holidays so there was a lot of last minute gift shopping and people bought a lot of the whole cakes and pies. We ran out!

 

[brymolmom]

For Sports Teams (ie: not real charities just for fun things) especially for Juniors and Seniors, IMO the best fundraisers are the things where the kids actually do the work - NOT the parents bringing in boxes of candy at work or other. For example, have the kids go door to door in neighborhoods with rakes and bags and rake leaves for $20 or $30 a yard. With enough kids you should be able to do 10 - 20 in a day, maybe even more.

I personally and many I know do not contribute toward this type of fundraiser unless I see the kids doing actual work and/or learning about things. Like working themselves for the money or collecting bottles/cans (teaching about recycling, doing good for the community AND doing actual work) or even the spaghetti dinners (as long as the kids are doing all the setup, cooking, etc. with only parents helping for supervising and coordination). I am not a fan of the garage sales (unless the kids themselves are actually selling their own stuff and making actual sacrifices themselves).

If I'm getting an actual service and the kids are truly earning the money I will usually participate. If it's just 'here buy this lottery ticket and you might win $100' and doing no work whatsoever, it just makes me think of the $150 check for baseball, $50 check for girlscouts, $50 for fall soccer and $100 for summer soccer that I just wrote recently that none of the people on this other team helped me pay for MY kids activities.

Just a viewpoint to consider - you might get a lot more participation the more work is involved.

 

[Psychodisney]

My son's baseball team sold Christmas wreaths and garland. They made great profit. Might even be local growers for you.

 

[FlyingDumbo]

Have the kids sell candy, it is something that other kids can buy more than once. We always sold them in HS for a few months. I know it is not the legal way to do it, but my coach used to go to BJS and buy tons of boxes of candy. We would all trade some so we had a good assortment and we sold the candy in class. Some people bought it every day. I am sure there is a legal way to do it. I think we made profit of like 10 bucks a box or so.

Something that worked well for us, parents were offered this option- you can either pay the 150 for the uniform or your kid can sell candy to help with the cost. My mom made it clear I needed to sell a lot of candy. lol. That way each kid has some personal responsibilty and the whole team does not suffer if some kids do not pull their weight.

Also local resteraunts do fundraiser nights were part of the proceeds will be donated. We did Texas Roadhouse and Chick Fil A, we got 125 one night and 150 the other.

 

[LEXAVE]

This is an long raffle fundraiser, but very profitable and well received.

You set up a calendar which would be printed right on your raffle ticket. Then on that calendar you have the payments which get paid out everyday for the next 90 days. You determine what the prize amounts are.

Your kids sell the tickets and all tickets go into a container. You pull each day for 90 days. However you can state right on the ticket that you will pull each week of tickets every Monday morning.

For example:
200 students sell 10 tickets each at $10 each. (these are plug numbers, you can change the amount of tickets sold and the price)*
You bring in $20,000 gross.
You pay out $8,000 in prizes, license fees, printing fees etc.
The rest is yours.

*keeping the price of the ticket reasonable is beneficial. Those who do not know the organization are more likely to purchase if the price is low.

Each ticket can win more than once. So once a ticket wins, it goes right back in. This is a selling point, people like the idea that they can win more than once by only making one ticket purchase.

Be sure to talk to your state. You do need a license and there are state rules. If you need an example of a ticket, I will email an example to you.

Good luck.

 

[cheerky]

Host a gold party where friends and family can come and sell old gold, split the profit with the seller. Also, you could make fleece spirit scarves (school colors) and sell them. Here in NC we make spirit flip flops too! Sometimes local venues (concerts/sporting events) will allow groups to sell concessions for a profit too!

 

[riley2008]

This is an long raffle fundraiser, but very profitable and well received.

You set up a calendar which would be printed right on your raffle ticket. Then on that calendar you have the payments which get paid out everyday for the next 90 days. You determine what the prize amounts are.

Your kids sell the tickets and all tickets go into a container. You pull each day for 90 days. However you can state right on the ticket that you will pull each week of tickets every Monday morning.

For example:
200 students sell 10 tickets each at $10 each. (these are plug numbers, you can change the amount of tickets sold and the price)*
You bring in $20,000 gross.
You pay out $8,000 in prizes, license fees, printing fees etc.
The rest is yours.

*keeping the price of the ticket reasonable is beneficial. Those who do not know the organization are more likely to purchase if the price is low.

Each ticket can win more than once. So once a ticket wins, it goes right back in. This is a selling point, people like the idea that they can win more than once by only making one ticket purchase.

Be sure to talk to your state. You do need a license and there are state rules. If you need an example of a ticket, I will email an example to you.

Good luck.

We can't do these types of these in Texas per state rules for non-profits. Your "raised funds" can't go towards the winnings. I can't remember all the rules, but these types of things were very popular and now history due to a local crack-down. (I think there are still plenty of these these going on though.) We had $10,000 nights (200 tickets were sold at $100 each, party held and names drawn and last one is winner [usually last 2 or 3 people would make a deal to stop and share prize], Ping-pong/Golf-Ball drops (1000 $10 numbered balls dropped off a building, once by helicopter, and ball landing in cup or closest wins $3000), Rubberduck run (10,000 $5 rubberducks [think Oriental trader small type] poured into the river and first one to cross a funnelled finishline[so there is no question about the winner] wins and second place got something too.) Ping-pong ball and rubberducks were always fun as those groups really made it fun for everyone. (The rubberduck group even started selling shirts too)

 

[jennyf2]

Thanks everyone for the great ideas. We had the boys bag groceries today at Cub Foods & they made $542! Its a start but we have a LONG way to go

Have a great wkd!!!

 

[caligirl stuck in va]

This past May we held a Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser that included a Cake Walk and Silent Auction. The event was very successful - we made well over $2,200. Our goal was well met! We had NO idea it would do so well. We made a ton of money on the Cake Walk and could have made more if we had more cakes to offer. The kids LOVED it and the adults all seemed to have a fun time with it, too! We really had no idea as newbies and the event, even though it was alot of work, was "easy" and a great fundraiser.

I love the Used Book Sale idea, I'm thinking we'll add that to our Spaghetti Dinner Evening this coming year!