School Fundraiser ideas

[clarabelle]

Our Elementary School (about 500 students) tried to skip a fundraise this year and just up the PTO dues.
It didn't work
So now we are looking for next year.
We are meeting with these companies:

Jaxco (wraping paper and junk)

Readers Digest (candy and magazines)

Joe Corbi (pizza kits and cookie dough)

Kathryn Beich (nestle) (candy and magazines)


anyone have any comments on these companies -or suggestions for other fundraisers?

 

[floridafam]

IMO, none of the above.

What about those new bracelets that are so popular? (like the Livestrong bracelet) You could get them in your school color. They can be worn by both boys and girls, adults and children, etc.

Good luck. I know fundraising can be tough.

Our school is doing a greeting card fundraiser right now and I would much rather just send $ to school. DH can't take any fundraising things to work and I don't want my kids knocking on doors of strangers.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

I have sold many a Joe Corbi pizza. The company is easy to deal with and the profit is good. The only problem in this area is that so many groups sell them that there is often an overlap and the market gets saturated. Do many groups in your area sell them?

Another easy fundraiser is having a school night at a local restaurant. Many chains will give you a portion of profits of a certain time period's sales. Then you advertise and get lots of people to eat there during that time. For example, the band boosters just had one this past Wednesday from 4 - 9 at Waffle House. We went and ate and had fun seeing lots of friends there. We have also done them at Pizza Hut, Burger King, Friendly's, and McDonald's.

Do you have Food Lion? You can register your school and then when anyone shops with their Food Lion bonus savings card (or whatever it is called), a portion goes to the school. That is totally painless and the check just shows up. Some other stores do this too. Ask at the stores.

Geesh, I know more about fundraising than I thought. Too many years in public schools.

 

[tar heel]

Have you done Spellabration? The kids collect pledges for learning to spell a list of 200 words, which vary according to grade level. Obviously, this is pretty much a straight donation project, but it raised almost the same amount as the wrapping paper sale at our school. There's no overhead except for some prize drawings and maybe a participation prize.

Our elementary school was also big on participation prizes. Something like every kid who sells five items gets a water bottle or a Tshirt with the school logo. You can get these kinds of items very inexpensively and it definitely increased the number of families doing the programs. The bracelets would be a good prize.

Always include a donation instead of selling option, and don't forget to remind parents that some companies (Bank of America, for example) will match their gift.

 

[floridafam]

Our school also does the food night at a local restaurant (McDonalds) and some of the staff work there for that night (the kids seem to enjoy this.)

It seems to raise a great deal of money.

 

[tar heel]

I think the restaurant nights are good as get togethers for the school, but they don't raise much $, at least ours don't. We don't have staff helping out, though -- it's strictly a percentage of purchase price.

I notice you're in Georgia. Make sure your families are registered for Harris Teeter's school program -- produces a lot more $ than Food Lion's, although I'm not knocking the latter since I shop at both.

 

[poohluvrs]

Kathryn Beich raised the most $ at ours, though personally I feel the stuff I bought is not so great
We are running a gala auction for spring, its a ton of work but hoping $$$$!

 

[Blondy876]

My little school (105 kids) just finished up the Joe Corbi pizza fundraiser and we made $1700. People seem to love these. We were really surprised top have done so well. We usually do Cherrydale (wrapping paper, candy and junk) and we never do so good.

 

[JELBoggio]

The restaurant ideas have not brought in much money for our school (literally $300 at best). Some ideas that worked:

We use Innisbrook wrapping paper sales which brings in about $3,500 for our school of 600 students. We've used them for the last couple of years and they have great quality paper.

We have done KidsArt Greeting cards - the kids make a picture in art class on a card and the card gets printed up and packaged on greeting cards.

Around here, the bracelet trend is phasing out - but one company to work with is WristSpirit.com.

We just held our biggest fundraiser ever which was held in our school gym which was a Casino Night (using "funny money"). People cashed in their chips for raffle tickets and there was about 80 prizes to put your tickets into. Prizes were from businesses and parents who donated. This raised $25,000 for our school.

We do a ladies night out with donated raffle prizes each Spring which nets about $15-$18,000.

We do a Barnes and Noble Day in June and get 10-15% back from purchases made on our specified day when people use a voucher. Parents buy their summer reading lists then for the kids as well. This makes a couple thousand each year.

We do chocolate sales at Easter time with a local chocolate company.

Look into collecting box tops (www.boxtops4education) and campbells soup labels - these bring in needed items for our school.

Our local supermarket gives us a %age back for collecting their receipts from those who shop there (this gave us about $4,000 last year).

Good luck - I know it's not easy to raise money. I hope you find at least one of these ideas helpful! If you need more info on any, please feel free to PM me.

 

[clarabelle]

Thanks everyone -these are so helpful!! I will print these out and bring them to the next meeting!!
If you think of something else please let me know!!!

 

[clarabelle]

We do have food lion -I will see about contacting them
No Harris Teeter -I wish we did
Publix is big here

 

[Narvon]

My son's school has a "Race for Education" that is very successful. Students walk or jog around a 1/4 mile area as many times as they are able in one hour's time. Students and classes have an opportunity to compete for a number of prizes and awards. The prizes are things like a sundae party, a pizza party, plus trophies for the boy and girl in each class who runs the most laps (NOT who brings in the most $).

The kids are sponsored either per lap or with a flat donation, but what I really liked is they way they solicit the donations. We had to fill out a sheet of labels with addresses of family & friends that we thought would donate. They teachers have the children personalize form letters that are mailed directly from the school using these labels - we don't have to call anyone or go door to door! It takes a huge team of parent volunteers to get these mailings out, but it is very organized process.

There were prizes based on the number of mailing labels turned in. For example, it's a private school that doesn't allow sweatpants or shorts, but for every five names you turned in, the child received a coupon for the "shorts or sweatpants day."

ANYWAY, they raised OVER $43,000 last year!!!! The goal is $50,000 this year so we can buy two 12-passenger vans (the school has no busses). This is a fairly small private school and we found that people would usually rather sponsor a kid than buy junky stuff, candy they don't want or wrapping paper that they can get cheaper somewhere else.

Hope this helps!

 

[Breezy_Carol]

The restaurant fundraisers may not make lots of money but the only work involved is printing off a few flyers and distributing them.

 

[MUFFYCAT]

Our grammer school did a car wash with a bake saleat the same time.
Another was movie night. School played a movie fior kids and served pizza for $5.00. Both are alot of work, many of the kids older siblings helped also.

 

[CJMickeyMouse]

Homemade pies - peach, apple and cherry.

Take preorders - so you know how much of everything you need. We charged $8 a pie. Made the crust from scratch, used canned peach and cherry filling, and fresh apples.

Get together on one day and you can mass produce - we would do 400 pies in 8 hours or so. We used the school cafeteria - tables, large mixer and walk in freezer. Assign stations... crust - filling - bagging - etc.

Put the assembled UNBAKED pie in a 2 gallon ziploc bag - add cooking instructions and freeze. Deliver or ask people to pick them up the next day. Much easier than delivering baked pies!!!

We did this right before Thanksgiving and right before Easter for several years in a row. We started getting more and more pre-orders as word spread.

This is very effective for time spent - all the kids have to do is sell, gather ingredients and spend a day making pies. (Actually it was a lot of fun for all of the parents and kids.) I have never seen so many Dads rolling out pie crust but that is what they wanted to do!!!

 

[floridafam]

Wow. There are some great ideas here. I would love the homemade pies.

 

[golfgal]

We do a huge magazine drive each year with QSP, which is the fund raising arm of Readers Digest. They have several ways to run a sale, the easiest being what they call a magnet booklet. With those you just have kids fill out the names and addresses of people they know, QSP send them an order form and the school gets $40% of what is sold. QSP does not keep those names for anything and they do not sell their lists. We do a full out magazine sale where the kids sell door to door. Our town has been doing the sale for 20 years so people wait for our sale to renew magazines. We sell over $90,000 each year (we are one of the largest in the nation). Our sales rep is easy to work with and we haven't had any problems, except the year that they upgraded their computer system and put the wrong addresses on a bunch of magazines (they fixed it all for everyone though).

 

[mommytotwo]

Ones that I have seen and done before are cinnamon bread sales, chili sales, pancake breakfast, and sausage sale.

 

[tar heel]

Be very careful about the letter writing campaign that Narvon mentioned b/c there are people who really dislike those. A lot of teens doing mission trips use that method and some of us have received way too many. My son's soccer team used that method last year, and some of the team (including our family) declined to participate b/c we already know how our family members feel about receiving those letters. Might work in some families where everyone hasn't already received five, though.

It's interesting the relative amounts listed. Some people consider $1,000 a good fundraiser, and our elementary and middle schools always have $20,000-$30,000 goals for each major fundraiser. Our middle school fell short of the $25,000 goal for the wrapping paper/junk sale this fall -- I think the total was about $19,000. Can't remember the company but it was one of the worst catalogs like that I've ever seen -- I opted to do a $50 donation instead.

 

[clarabelle]

Thanks again everyone -this is very helpful
What chain restauraunts have fundraising available? we already do Stevi B's (pizza buffet chain) I am wondering if we may could add a few.
Not as a main fundraiser -but for a little extra