I need your help! My daughter goes to a school where I should have gotten a degree in marketing for how much fundraising we need to do to keep tuition from being astronomical. I volunteered to help with one of our big projects and now I've been nominated to the PTA event planning committee. I know, what were they thinking! :-)
From what I've seen we do the same fundraisers year after year and they are targeted towards the parents. I feel like many of the parents are burned out on buying cookie dough, books, etc. I would almost rather pay the higher tuition and forget all the fundraising since I'm writing the check for all this stuff anyway.
So I come to you oh wise parents of Mamapedia. What have your schools done that raised money without constantly dipping into the parents pockets? How did you get the larger community involved? Was there one that didn't work that I should avoid? Any suggestions you can throw this girls way would be appreciated.
Thank you Eveyone! I'm printing out this page to bring to my coordinating partner!
I thought of this for my neice raising money to attend a band camp for the summer.
Buy 5 Walmart cards for $100. Do a raffle for $1 a ticket. Make posters give exact date of drawing. Make it around some holiday or festival to do the drawing. Sell them everywhere!
Blessings
D.
My son's school does an annual dinner dance & silent auction. Most of the items are donated by local businesses, and credit is given to them when the item is auctioned off, as well as the biz's ad in the event's program. It is a VERY small school, with enrollment of under 150, but last year they managed to make a profit of $19,000.
They do a Vegas-style affair, with gambling. The entire affair (except the food) is managed by parents & benefactors. If your school has a large gym or something like that the profits would be even greater, as they wouldn't have hall rental fees.
Does the school keep in contact with alumni? Alumni are a great resource, as they usually are very motivated to help out their alma mater.
Good question - I'll be watching for some good ideas too!
My daughter goes to a public school but they are still constantly sending home fundraising forms - some have even come home before the items purchased from the previous one had been received.
Do you guys have a cap? Some PTA's have a cap on how much they bring in. I have a great non profit program that could raise money for your school but it won't work if there's a cap.
Let me know.
:)
check this out .... http://www.shopwithscrip.com/
my son's school does this - not the PTA so I do not know just how much it brings in but I know it takes a big dent out of my neices 10K/year for 4girls to cheer bill.
Most things will be for the parents to show up and it's a more fun way to pay for school unless you find a way to put on a benefit for the school. Check with the district or whoever regulates your school rules there may be rules on getting the public involved but we are tyring to put together a coupon book of all the local businesses to sell to raise funds- looks like we will not get permission to do it this year too much red tape.
We have a lot of fundraising with our Sr High school mostly done through the PTA and each sport booster club..... daughter is a cheerleader and in the cheer boosters, I am on the board.
Our main fundraiser is the activity program that is sold at all ballgames, mostly football but it is printed about 4 times during the year. We take a loss at selling these for $5 BUT.... the total advertising we sold for the books were well over $200,000. Our cheer group alone (26 girls) sold $30,000 in ads and our portion of that was around $15,000.
We also have write a check campaigns.
When the dreaded cookie dough, magazines, candy, etc is presented... we are offered a "buy out" vs actually selling the stuff.
Each booster club sells school spiritwear. Our group chose 5 main football games, designed 5 t-shirts, one for each game, sold sponsorship of the shirts for $1200 1 sponsor and split up to 3 sponsors on the shirt if needed for all 5 shirts. The girls then pre-sold a minimum of 10 packages each at $25 per pack. We delivered them at the beginning of school along with a face tattoo and on the designated game day, everyone wore the game day shirt. Our profit on this was $6000
We held a tailgate party for the football game when we had a rival game. ALL food/drink was donated by Corner Bakery, Market Street, Carrabbas (nice Italian dinner), Dr. Pepper and each girl sold a minumum of 7 tickets for $7 each. In the end including walkups, we sold over 200 tickets and it was all 100% profit because everything was donated. We probably spent about $50 in some condiments, etc and had a profit over $1300
We've done silent auctions which are a huge hit, especially with the good stuff. Last year someone donated Dallas Maverick tickets, Michael Johnson donated a $1000 membership and Nike shoes to his training facility, gift baskets were donated, autographed athletic wear, etc.
Good luck. I just have 1 more year.... she will be a Senior next year and I will be all done with school fundraising!
Scentsy makes a fabulous fundraiser and your Scentsy rep provides you with everything you need and handles putting all of the orders and so forth together for you.
Scentsy also does NOT mark up it product for fundraisers so people are not having to pay double just because it is fundraiser.
Check it out at www.flamelesswarmer.com and if you want some further info feel free to message me.
We have the McTeacher Nights (which we don't attend but for ice cream) or the one we do attend is the Buffalo Wild Wings...where like 10% of our food bill goes to the school. Another one they do is Pizza Hut 10%...they even did a Chuck e cheese one!
Like I said the only one we attend for actual food is BWW...look into the local chains in your area...they may do this as well.
Well first the offered a buy out if you didn't want to do the fundraiser. So say they want 50 dollars from each parent you can raise it through the fund raiser or write a check.
Other types of fundraising requires a lot of volunteers that must be there at specific times. If you have an unpredictable lot that might be why they do the fundraisers they do.
Like I chaired a fish fry, can't remember how much time we spent on prep work but it required a lot of workers, lots of planning, and only yielded us around 2,000 in profit. That number is also deceptive, it is a well planned annual event so people plan to go, a start up would not make as much.
I hate fundraisers. I think they are a waste of precious classtime.
That said, I do like those fundraisers that don't require my kids to sell anything. Ice cream socials (with pizza too!). School carnivals. Raffles where local businesses contribute.
The less you make the kids sell, the more parents will appreciate you.
Finally...just ask parents to write a check. I've seen some great "Opt Out" forms...which basically say "we'd like to raise this much money for this specific project (BE SPECIFIC, because I'm not going to write a check if my kids don't even know what the money is going to)...if you'd like to opt out of fundraising for the entire year, please donate to the cause" or something like that.
Finally, PLEASE don't use those crappy guilt-trip inducing fundraisers where they bring the kids into some big assembly and tell them about all the prizes they could earn if they sell so many items! It wastes classtime where my kids should be learning (4-times over!!...the "kick off," the collecting of orders/money, and the passing out of goods once they come in, and the prize assembly), and causes upset to those kids who cannot participate. I cannot describe how much I hate those things!!!
I hope this helps...from the perspective of a parent whose kids don't participate because their school hasn't figured out that the programs they use are really wasteful.
I'll bet you can do better!
our pre-school did a school cook book. they set the categories and then solicited recipes. the cost to the parent was about $12.... not sure how much profit was made though as I was not on the board then. People seemed to really like it.
The best fundraiser are things people actually use on a daily basis. Things people normally buy, but can buy off your school instead and feel like they've made a contribution. Here's what I'm talking about:
1. Hoagie/sub sales - People have to eat and a lot of people will be buying lunch out anyway. This means that you can even offer lunchtgime free delivery to a near by company that has enough employees willing to buy hoagies. Some grocery stores will even donate the bread! You just form an assembley line with volunteers. I'm hungry already.
2. Pizza kits- Either local or Joe Corbie's. People like pizza kits, because they can freeze them and use them when they don't feel like cooking.
3. Services - Have students wash cars or mow lawns to make money for school.
4. Dinners - Plan a simple meal and set the calf up as a restaurant. People go out to eat. Why not at the school?
5. School festival - Have parents donate items to give as prizes for games.
6. Tricky tray or an auction.
well our school does a few and this year they are trying to do more family-oriented events but to name a few:
-magazine sales
-moms night out (bring in local shops, or people who sell stuff like may kay, pampered chef etc). each vendor had to pay 10 bucks for a table, parents donated food and then whoever went to the event got to buy stuff and a percentage went to the school.
-scrip program (this one brought in plenty of money esp. during christmas season)
-the school bought a big hd tv, sold tickets (1 fix for 10 bucks) and raffled the tv.
-they are planning a carnival type end of year party. a park has agreed to allow the event take place for free. there will be games for kids, parents will do cookout. the fix will be sold prior to that. it's supposed to bring plenty of money
-springtime they're planning a garage sale. everyone donates stuff and the advertisement should be done all over prior to the event.
-they do the gertrude hawk chocolate sales in april (good chocolate)
-cookbook (parents donate recipes) the cookbook is sold for 5 dollars.
-yearbook (get local places to advertise)
-and spring auction (which has sucked every year)
Someone already said McTeacher night, we have that at our local McDonald's. Yes, it targets you as parents but it's a fun treat to take your kids to McDonald's and have their won teachers serve them and the school gets a portion of the sales that night. Sorry for those who object to fast food, it's a fun Fundraiser. We have also done this with other pizza restaurants although it's not the teachers serving. It's advertised that a portion of sales on a particular night go towards the school. It's usually a boost for business for a local place on a night that isn't usually busy and easy for parents to pick up a pizza and not have to make dinner that night while supporting their kids school. These are the fundraisers I like the best. NO ordering in advance, pick up, distribution etc. NO buying something I don't really need for too high a price.
There are many ways to come up with money for the school....
Our baseball league says "if you don't want to volunteer at games - then pay $50" - you would be surprised at how many kids fork over the $$$
Our school is an immersion program...so we have a Spring Fiesta. We get local companies to donate items for the silent auctions and have some parents do things for a bake off....
Our 6th graders do a car wash in the Spring for their graduation ceremony - the proceeds go to having a SMALL catered event at the cafeteria after they have the graduation ceremony.
Last year we had an art show - kids did drawings and made things - then the parents bid on them...there was some good stuff there!
However silent auctions seem to work the best. Make sure you have your schools TAX ID number when you ask for the donations - put it on the school letterhead and ask away!! the worst that can happen is they say no.
