OT-Easy Fundraising Needed for PTA

[ban26ana]

I am a rep for Noah's Ark Animal Workshop, and I do fundraisers for a lot of schools. My company is like Build-A-Bear, but I go to kids' parties, daycares, etc instead of the kids having to go to a store in the mall. I've done fundraisers where kids sell ready-made kits (bear, stuffing, wishing star, birth certificate, etc), and I've also done ones where I go to the school and kids that purchased a bear get to stuff them there in a workshop. Or they could do a combination of both. The school gets a portion of the profit, and the kids love that they get to make a stuffed animal. I've had parents order all the kits through the school fundraiser and just run the workshop themselves at the birthday party, just so that the school would get the profit.

 

[VivekB]

I organize a Dads-only Poker night for our kids school. Friday night, it's designed as a guy would host a party, meaning only beer, pizza, and a few bags of chips. No fancy appetizers, no dressing up. It's at the school auditorium, and I get a ton of 80s music videos on the projector and turn up the stereo.

The buy-in is up to each person, but suggested at $60. At the end of the night, we suggest donating 50% of take-home to the school but it's voluntary. The first time, the top 5 winners donated 100%. (I won $300 on an $80 buy-in, donated all of it, so did a few other guys). The second time, only 2 top winners donated 100% but the other donated 50%.

It's pretty popular b/c the dads, who are rarely involved with school stuff, get a chance to hang out, drink beer/eat pizza, play cards on a Friday night with no kids in sight, and the wives are happy about it. The first time we had 27 dads show and raised $1100. The second time only 19 guys showed as it was a tough weekend, but we still made $700.

I've told the PTA that as long as we can keep the 'guys-only' atmosphere we'll get plenty of guys who'd never come to fancy events, and spend $$ as they're having fun. And, they can safely estimate $2500/year, which isn't too shabby considering it's a private montessori school which only has 200 kids.

 

[kinntj]

Some things our PTA does is: Skate nights at local skating place. PTA fun run (get businesses to sponsor), membership fees, spring carnival, we sell spirit wear, and a fall tailgate.

oops, I did forget that there is a scrapbooking day at one of the schools on a Saturday.

 

[disny_luvr]

I know my nieces' schools do something called Race for Education. It is easy and requires little effort (as compared to some other fundraisers) by the PTA/PTO. Very little money is also needed for this and the profit is 100%. Letters are sent to family/friends of all students asking for a donation. I usually only give $5/niece but even a little amount of money adds up quickly. Homerooms run/walk around a designated area for an alotted amount of time. I think prizes are awarded to the student(s) that raise the most money. I know my one niece's school raised over $18,000 last year. I think that is a lot of money! You many want to look into this.

The school where I teach always does a spring carnival. It is usually on a Saturday in May. Carnival type games (bowling, throwing football through tire, ring toss, etc.) are set up outside. Tickets are required (25 cents/ticket) and most games are about two tickets. The kids can earn tokens which can be redeemed for small prizes and/or books. There is also a concession stand, which is a huge money maker. This requries a little more work than the one previously mentioned, but it is always a huge success. My boys have been going for the last two years and they absolutely love it. They talk about it non-stop until the following year.

Just some food for thought. I hope you find a fundraiser that is successful for your DD's school.

 

[kldmom2000]

SMENCILS!!!

We ordered 1000 of these recycled pencils to sell for $1.00 each. The cost per pencil is approx. $.50, so your PTA gets the other $.50.... we sold out of them in 1 day (elementary school K-4 with 519 students). We ordered another 2000 smencils.... so far in 1 month we've made $1500 for the school!

https://www.smencils.com/fundraising.html

 

[nmmom95]

I like this idea.

Many schools around here do Walk-a-thons lately.

I gladly donate to my kids' school to a walk-athon that I know will go directly to the school's needs versus a company getting half the proceeds of stuff the kids are expected to sell that nobody really wants to buy.

We just had one at our school to raise money for new desks. We have one every year, and, so far, it's been very successful.

 

[badblackpug]

I like cookbooks - you can do group cookbooks for about $7/book and sell them for $12 or so.

Our school did cookbooks one time. It was a really cute idea. They had the younger elementary school kids submit "recipes" and had them interspersed with real recipes submitted by their parents. The artwork was done by the older elementary students.

 

[CruisinEars]

My kids school used to do scrip (I was in charge of that) and it just didn't bring in enough money to justify the time involved. Lots of bookkeeping and man hours to fill the orders.

So, we switched over to doing a spring walk-a-thon. We usually have a project to fund so that helps with companies and matching donations. This year we had a goal of $50,000 to purchase a new science curriculum that goes with the technology package we bought last year. Our kids raised $74,000 in 5 weeks (including company matches~ lots of dads and moms work at Boeing and Microsoft).

A walk-a-thon is easy to manage and by far has been more successful than any other fund-raising activity for our school other than our fall auction which usually brings in about $125,000.