Need School Fundraiser Ideas

[Duchie]

Got a letter today from our PTA asking for our feedback on the elementary school's recent fundraiser. Every year they do the same thing - catalog sales of overpriced useless items and wrapping paper. At the end of the survey they asked if we had any other ideas for a fundraiser. I'm not really the creative type so I'm drawing a blank. But I thought there might be some folks out there who have done different things. If you've got ideas pass them along! Who knows, maybe our school won't be the only ones who try something new!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

How much $$$ do you need to pull in?

 

[Blueeyes101817]

for my brothers baseball team, they did an Unos fundraiser. They give you a bunch of coupons and you hand them out to families and friends....then a portion of the dinnner check goes to the kids

 

[clh2]

Our elementary PTA is doing something different this year, with hopes to raise $7,000. To put things in perspective, there are about 380 kids in our school.

In early December, they are going to do a read-a-thon. While we have not seen specific details, the kids who wish to participate will get "per-minute" pledges, and then collect the pledge amount times the minutes read. The read-a-thon time is 2 hours.

If this event is successful, it will be our main fundraiser for the year.

 

[DisneyMomx7]

We do the Unos fundraiser also. Chuckee Cheese does one also that we want to try this year. We're a parochial school so we do tons of fundraisers! Candy and brochure items but also our big one is a Super 50/50.

 

[Patch'sD]

Raffle Sales. We run a raffle for some of our booster clubs. We sell raffle tickets based upon the NY State Evening raffle. Each ticket is sold for $ 5.00. The ticket is good for the month the raffle is effect so it has 30 or 31 chances to win the prize, we went for $50.00. So a person buys a $ 5.00 ticket and gets 30 chances to win $50.00. We sell 1000 tickets so we get $5,000 and have to pay out $ 1,500. Net proceeds is $ 3,500. Ticket cost is $46.00.

 

[luvflorida]

My daughter's dance team just started a fundraiser. They are selling books of coupons, and it really is 'book-size', about as big as a large softcover paperback. They sell for $20.00 each, but it is easy to get back the cost of the book if you use the coupons inside. All the coupons and discounts are good for one year, and there are a lot of popular establishments that are represented. I've flipped through one and saw coupons for Arby's, KFC, Burger King, other eating places, stores, hotel/motels, car rentals, movie theatres, and much more.

My husband and I bought two of the books and she has to sell at least seven. The downside is that I think a lot of people won't want to shell out twenty bucks for a fundraiser, but I guess we'll find out.

My other daughter is also in a fundraiser at her college. The theatre department is selling candy bars and lollipops. She is selling quite a few, probably because of the inexpensive cost, especially for college students. But, of course, they'll have to sell a lot of candy to make much money. My husband helped her out this weekend by buying twenty Kit-Kats and twenty peanut-butter cups.

 

[Divamomto3]

I'm the Fundraising chairperson for my kids' school.

We do 4 fundraisers per year. The first one this year was the useless wrapping paper/crap fundraiser. I wasn't happy with the quality of the products. Our second fundraiser was pies/cookie dough/cinnabons/gourmet pretzels. Our school has 210 kids and we sold over $23,000 in products. The school received 40% profit from that (approx. $9000). Our 3rd fundraiser is cases of candy bars and our 4th is Yankee Candles.

We are a private school and each family has a certain amount of funds they have to raise with these 4 fundraisers or the balance gets added to your tuition bill at the end of the year. Some folks just add it to their tuition and not bother with the fundraisers, others wish to offset the extra few hundred dollars that gets tacked on and do the fundraisers.

 

[Divamomto3]

Originally posted by luvflorida
My daughter's dance team just started a fundraiser. They are selling books of coupons, and it really is 'book-size', about as big as a large softcover paperback. They sell for $20.00 each, but it is easy to get back the cost of the book if you use the coupons inside. All the coupons and discounts are good for one year, and there are a lot of popular establishments that are represented. I've flipped through one and saw coupons for Arby's, KFC, Burger King, other eating places, stores, hotel/motels, car rentals, movie theatres, and much more.

My husband and I bought two of the books and she has to sell at least seven. The downside is that I think a lot of people won't want to shell out twenty bucks for a fundraiser, but I guess we'll find out.

My other daughter is also in a fundraiser at her college. The theatre department is selling candy bars and lollipops. She is selling quite a few, probably because of the inexpensive cost, especially for college students. But, of course, they'll have to sell a lot of candy to make much money. My husband helped her out this weekend by buying twenty Kit-Kats and twenty peanut-butter cups.

Those books are called Entertainment Books and are sold nationwide with coupons specific to your area. Our school did that for a few years too, but has since stopped.

 

[disneysnowflake]

My niece's elementary school had parents give recipes, then a company printed them. They sold the cookbooks for $10 each.

 

[Papa Deuce]

please stop! Stop asking people to buy overpriced, poor quality items!

And enough of the $20 pies and pizza kits.

Just sell the $1 candy bars! Last guy who brought them in I bought $20 of them and gave them away. I didn't feel ike I was getting ripped off like I do with those other products.

Please, please, stop.

When my kids are old enough to help in fundraising I will ONLY sell things that I personally would consider buying.

 

[Shelby5514]

If you are in a state that has a May Company Dept Store they have Commercial Gift Cards that you can buy for a 10% profit. The minimum to buy is $1000 to start, less 10% you would pay $900 and then sell them at full face value. Our Church/School has done this for many years and has raised loads of money. The school keeps 3% of the profit and we get 7% towards tuition for our kids. Kohls has a similar program too!

 

[Chrissi Pooh]

Our school has a deal with Domino's pizza that for every order they have from our school we get $2.00 (per order) of it on designated days, not a whole lot of money but people have to eat!

 

[km2all]

My sister just started setting up fundraisers in her area selling coffee. She is in the Dallas area, and is connected with someone in Seattle. Supposedly the coffee sells great...everyone needs coffee right? Her daughter's school has really jumped on it and the least the school hopes to net is in the area of $15,000.

 

[JessetheCowgirl]

Successful ones here:

Night out at a local restaurant (ChickFilA, El Chico, Pizza Hut to name a few that have sponsored this) where the school gets 10% of sales. We have made $200-$500 dollars per night doing this (usually 4 times a year or so).

Bike-a-thon or Jump-a-thon where the kids just ask for $$$ sponsors and spend part of the day riding or jumping. We have had great success with these---I for one would much rather donate money where 100% goes to the school versus buying $20 worth of some silly product and the school getting half.

Good luck!!!

 

[piglet too]

You could also consider doing a demonstrator's showcase. Invite consultants from all the home parties companies to come to teh school one weeknight/Saturday and ask them to donate say 15% of their sales.

 

[padams]

In our area, 2 of the major grocery store chains, Kroger and Publix, will issue "partner cards" to schools. The stores give the school a percentage of sales from shoppers who have the card.

 

[CamColt]

MY DH is our fundraising committee's chair person and of course, Im on the committee.
We do the brochure fundraiser as the big one in the fall. We also do cookie dough in the spring.
We have 1 or 2 Unos nights a year and a "Pizza/Bingo Night" in March. This consists of pizza, salad, cookies and soda for each ticket bought. Then there is continuous bingo in the gym. Prizes are usually just the little stuff...candy, little toys, etc...that the kids love(and cost pennies). There is one grand prize at the end, a $10.00 gift card to Barnes & Nobles. We also have tables set up on the stage filled with themed gift baskets each class put together (with the help of the room mothers) and a few big prize(ie a ride to school on a fire truck) . Theres a silent auction held for those. Theres also a 50/50 done here. Last year this was a huge success for us.
We are also trying something new this year. Our local mall offers "An Evening of Giving". They offer this to various schools around. The school sells tickets for $10.00 each. $7.00 goes to the school and $3.00 to the malls foundation to help at risk kids. They then open the mall on a Sunday night from 7:00-10:00 and you are able to go Christmas shopping there with it being fairly uncrowded.
I guess the school used to do the candy bar sales, but they could have parents & teachers count and recount them and somehow the kids would still get home with some missing. Plus parents refused to return the unsold stuff and I guess it was a real nightmare for the people who ran it.

 

[Duchie]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! To answer some questions, this is a public elementary school with about 680 kids. The letter said that they sell between $30,000 and $40,000 from the catalogs with the school getting half of the sales. So far, the kids have only done one fund raiser like this per year, but that may change for next year.

 

[MELSMICE]

My DD's elementary schools did a fundraiser that I thought was one of the best.

The K-4 school did a theme basket Chinese Auction on the day of parent/teacher conference day. Each class was assigned a theme - such as picnic, breakfast foods, ice cream sundaes, Mexican fiesta, snack basket, etc. Each child was responsible for brining in one item related to their theme.

The PTO supplied the "baskets" which were laundry baskets. On the day of the conferences a PTO member sold the tickets & as in any other Chinese Auction you selected which basket you wanted to try to win. (remember to have them print their names & phone #'s on the back of each ticket).

At the end of the last conference day the names were drawn & the winners contacted. It raised ALOT of money.

In the 5-6 elementary school they held a Chinese Auction also - same type of idea - theme baskets, but they also got outside donations & the auction was advertised to the public. It is always held on a Friday night. They made anywhere from $7,000 - $15,000 depending on the items available. Another huge success.

I prefer things like this much more than the wrapping paper & other overpriced, useless items (although I do always buy them from kids that ask )