 Discounted Fundraising Products for PTO, Band Booster, Sports, and Community Events Sale prices on popular products with high profits. Inexpensive fundraising products under 2$ cost.
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1. Explain Why You Need Money 2. Consider the Work/Reward Tradeoff Some fundraising programs are easier than others. But it’s not enough to consider workload alone. Balance the workload against the payback. For example, maybe the coupon book program is easy. But if every group in town is doing the same thing, time may be better spent on a different initiative. One group of scouts bought 200 Auto first aid kits and did a be prepared in your car fundraising direct sales day at a local car wash - they sold out and next week sold 400 more same way. 3. Understand Your Customers Typically, fundraising depends on the financial support of the group. You should consider the project from their perspective before automatically assuming you have a good fit. Many factors influence ability to support your group. Consider the local economy: Are these good economic times or bad? What about other fundraising requests around the community—with whom are you competing for your fundraising dollars? If you’re selling a product, do you consider the desirability of the product within your community? Try something new. Business can still write off ads. Some of our products can have coupons attached which actually bring a store business. You can sell a support my group refillable cup (NEW) and REFILLABLE MUGS give business to a local restaurant. Poms with coupon disks can help a bowling alley, pennants with tear off coupons can give a discount anywhere. The merchant may pay for the production just to get the audience - then you have no risk with pure profit. 4. Avoid Fundraising Fatigue How many times a year does your group ask for money? Are you constantly bombarding your customers with fundraising messages that could overshadow the good work of your group? Ongoing financial appeals can lead to a phenomenon called fundraising fatigue. Even a so-called little fundraiser consumes precious volunteer effort. Most groups would rather be known as the group that makes the community a better place than as an obsessed fundraising machine. School Fundraising Ideas from The Family Education Network here Perpetual Fundraising - here College Fundraising from Morterboard.com here 
KIDSAFECT - an organization dedicated to stopping the cycle of child abuse Connecticut Children's Medical Center- a great step forward in child care Safe Kids - part of a national organization who's goal it is to reduce preventable childhood injuries We are posting here ideas and links that we have come across or that folks have sent here. We recognize that as much as we would like to be involved in ALL of your activities- we cannot. So we make this a forum for ideas and links to things that work to help a charitable cause that we don't provide. Feel free to send me an addition by clicking here and typing a few words about something that worked for your group- Thanks - Kevin.
As the incoming president of our school's PTA and the owner of a recording studio I am putting together a celebrity answering machine message fundraiser. I have a friend who does very good celebrity impressions. We will be offering this service to the parents and community as perfect gifts for friends and relatives. $15 for one message, $25 for 3 messages and $35 for 5 messages.We have tested the concept and people are excited to buy Arnold the terminator, James Bond, President's Nixon, Reagan, Bush, or countless others on their answering machine totally customized with their names. Let me know what you think? I'll report back on its success. Here is another non-event idea. Hold a raffle where the grandprize consists of having a kindegarten class paint the winners living room, (walls, carpets, windows, etc.). Here's how it works: Every family at the school gets 100 raffle tickets entered in their name. They then have the opportunity to buy down their chances to win. Every raffle ticket they purchase will then be removed from the barrel. If they buy all the tickets they have no chance of winning. I'm Fundraising Chairperson for the Atlantic County Puerto Rican Parade and we had a fundraiser at a local nightclub where the owner allowed us to keep the money we received at the door from all of the patrons. He [club owner] printed up flyers and 500 tickets for us to advertise/sell. Then, we ordered t-shirts, pins, and someone volunteered to cook and we served authentic Puerto Rican food where we charged close to nothing. By then end of the night, we made over $4,000 and that is after expenses. Maybe you should talk to your local nightclub owner. The next fundraiser is a Skate Party at our local skating center where we're charging $7.00 which includes skate rental. $3.00 of the $7 goes to our organization. One of my favorite fund raisers is the "Why I
Would Give ___(Kids Name here)___ $1.00 to attend Youth Evangelism Camp. Usually
50 sentences are entered and people sign the sheet on a appropriate line that
pertains to them and gives the child $1.00. An organization I volunteered with sold "Halloween Insurance for $1.00 and guaranteed to clean up any soaped windows, cars, etc the day after Halloween. We sold a lot of insurance and had about 6 clean-up calls and everyone of them tipped the organization despite having paid for the insurance. We were a small group (7 members) and raised over $1000!! For our hockey leagues we are doing a trip of the month draw. We sell 600, $120.00 tickets and each month we draw a trip worth $2000.00 dollars or you can take a $1500.00 cash prize if you wish. We also draw a couple of tickets each month and they get their money back and are still in the draw we raise about $35,000.00 dollars in 2 mths. The other is a chuck a puck at the rink, we sell numbered pucks for a dollar and at the end of the second period everyone throws them on the ice and the one closest to centre gets 1/2 the money We raised about $24000.000 last year. I raised $3,100 for the Leukemia Society in 1995 "Team in Training". I found that old fashioned "begging" with a can at the local supermarket which raised about $500. We also did a raffle, which raised approx. $800 (local business donated prizes, we printed tickets on our PC). I also used the appeal letter (generated about $700), and 2 garage sales (about $800) - for the garage sales I cleaned out my house of old junk, my best friend cleaned out her house as well as her 3 kids' houses, and I solicited "useable junk" from coworkers. Have a Halloween costume dinner dance. See if you can make a deal with a local restaurant on the most economical meal. Have a costume contest 50/50 raffle and raffle off a grand prize. We got tickets from a local bus tour company for Atlantic City. Have entertainment, a band or DJ. Sell tickets in advance for those who want dinner and dance, then sell tickets at the door at a slightly reduced price for just the dance. This brought in many more people. Cow dung contest. Grid off a large high school football field. Sell the squares at 5.oo a piece. Day of the contest:One or more cows run free on the field. First place winner receives ______, second_______, and third________. Works well on the general education sites We organized an employee talent show to raise money for a fellow employee who has had extensive surgery. Some people performed although we took talent from the community, others worked behind the scenes, we sold ad space in the program guide, alocal high school let us use their auditorium at no charge, a group oflocal high school kids who have a band did back up music. WE sold refreshments and lapel ribbons to honor our associate. We netted and presented to her $4000. Expenses were minor, since most stuff was donated. We also sold tickets for great door prizes. It was a lot of fun. At a local Golf Course, Private courses are on the best, set up a small table and offer to clean golf clubs and ball, also sell raffle tickets for either a golf prize or cash prizt to be drawn that day. It is best to set up this concession during a golf tournament. Works great for cheerleading teams, bands. generally ther are 100-150 golfers in a tournament, and at 3-5 dollars profit per golfer, you can make 1500-2000 in less than 5 hours In addition to the typical car washes, bake sales and bottle drives we've come up with a few more interesting fund raising ideas. 1.) An impromptu talent show: get a lot of people together in one place (especially effective with church groups) and make offers to members of the group to sing, perform five minutes of stand-up comedy, whatever. Offers usually range between $1-$10.00. 2.) 50/50 raffle's are always effective. Sell the tickets and half of "profit" goes to winner of raffle. 3.) Slave auctions, I know it sounds gross, but a youth group (for example) auction themselves off as cleaners, babysitters...whatever. This would work best in the Spring as that is when most people are doing house cleaning. 4.) If you have computer capabilities offer to sell personalized return labels...say 200 for $6? Our gymnastics club held a "Stop-the-Clock" raffle to raise money for a new sports hall. A mechanical (wind-up) clock was wound and locked in a box in a bank safe. The tickets were numbered for each second in a 12 hour period. The winning ticket was the one which was the same (or nearest to, in the actual event) as the time when the real clock stopped. The grand prize was a car (which we unfortunately had to buy), so although we made around 320,000, our net profits weren't what we'd hope for. My local middle school did a fundraiser with coverlets. They had several historical town buildings placed on the coverlet. This one was in a Natural and green weave that matched the school and the town of Dublin's (Ohio) colors. It proved to be a great fundraiser for the PTO and a nice collector piece for the towns people. To raise funds for our housing rehab organization, we had the local high school vo-tech class to design and precut birdhouses. Material was half inch roof decking donated by the local building supply operations. Birdhouses were bagged unassembled in saved grocery bags and sold for five dollars to kids who were shown and helped to assemble and paint them at our Spring Fling. Every fall, our band sells Submarine sandwiches for $2.00. We take orders in advance, then let the local grocery store know the total about 7-10 days in advance of the Sub-Assembly day. All the food is picked up the day of assembly, and, with very little preparation and work, we make about $3000 profit! (Our subs contain 3 kinds of meat and cheeses.) At the annual spring fete, among other activities we have a sponge toss. teachers, principals, etc. are you best "targets". the kids buy tickets and get to toss water soaked sponges at the chosen target. the kids always think that this is the greatest. This is a little late, but definitly try it next year. Our council will implement a tourament challenge for the NCAA Tourament. Make sure that you give prizes (Chief's football tickets) and not cash though. Also our council is going to make a calender for Greek Week. This calender will have all of the beauty of the greek system. Parents love this stuff. Try it!!! For school programs, have a challenge spelling bee. Three member student teams need to get sponsors of at least $100. They will challenge a group of three faculty members. Each team is given the list of words to study (preferably from the scripps-howard spelling bee books) then have the contest at a site where a pizza party can be held for the teams and their cheerleaders. Corporate sponsorship is invited and it can even be held at a local corporation offering their site. We make $10,000 annually for our scholarship fund with this simple but fun event. Just for those people you are looking for ideas other than for kids you could have a Basketball 3 on 3 competition, with the entry fee of say $20 dollars a team, and then keeping half of the profits and sharing the rest between the winners. Have a benefit softball game. If you are lucky enough to have a spring training stadium in your area, see about them donating the stadium for your fund raiser. Organize 2 teams, maybe one police and one fire departments, or for better media coverage of your event, one team of all media and the other heads of industry in your area. Get a big prize to raffle off at the end of the game using the entry ticket. With a big prize, you are sure to sell many tickets and the profit potential is great. In Australia, most schools have a yearly fete (gala, carnival, whatever it's called in your area) held on a Saturday in spring or autumn in the school grounds. These fetes usually include stalls of crafts, jumble. plants, books, food, etc and lots of free or cheap activities for kids (from face painting to pony or camel rides). The big expensive private schools sometimes hold these events every 2 or 3 years and they are really huge and well organised. Lots of bargains for everyone and huge crowds. One school fete I went to had borrowed a kiln from some parent or teacher and had stacks of terracotta pot saucers (those things that stop water leaking from the bottom). They offered a saucer for $10 which you could paint and glaze any way you liked. Then you left it with them to fire in the kiln and came back an hour later to pick up. I still have the saucer we painted in 1985 with the names of our children and the date and school name. Makes a great keep- sake. They sold lots. Engraved Bricks, Recently a school in the N.E raised $520,000.00 selling $50.00 engraved bricks. I started the program for a church in Florida and I am happy to report in just 2 months we have sold 300 engraved bricks. There were no start up costs we did not pay for anything until after we sold the bricks. They even sent us a complete marketing plan to help us us sell the bricks.We hope it will be a continual source of income. They make great gifts for everyone, its like being a member of the star walk. If you have a big football or sporting event on those terribly hard metal bleachers, sell seat cushions. 12-20 ads from local merchants can be bought at $50-$100 and you can give the cushions away to spectators. The merchants get advertising and the spectators get a re-usable seat cushion! If there's any building going on around the school or even fixing up, children can design tiles to be used in the final decoration. Tiles can be sold at $5 each and children have some art work on the building that they can see forever. Check with your local McDonald's restaraunt. They have a program called McBucks. You get 50 cents on the dollar, but the consumer get the whole dollar worth of food at the restaraunt. However, they still pay the tax. It was a profitable fund raiser for our team. Try a garage, rummage sale at a public location (shopping center, parking lot etc). We did this for our High School team and it works well. The girls enjoyed this and so did the parents. Next time we are going to also have a bbq chicken lunch for sale and pre-sell the tickets (local stores sometimes will donate or cut rate the meat) 15 families can generate a lot of stuff!!! Good Luck I have heard of teams attending T.V. game shows in exchange for like $500 towards their league or team. Another think is the typical bake sale, car wash or snack bar at a tournament - Good Luck A differnet twist to the "down the river duck race". 5000 (donated)tennis balls are consecutively numbered. The balls are sold for $2.00 each. The balls that have been paid for are put in the scoop of a front end loader and on "race day" the balls are dumped down a hill in your community. The first ball to enter the home stretch trough wins the 50% of sales prize money. I read this idea in a fund raising magazine and would like to pull it off one day when I find an organization that is prepared to put the "fun" back into fund raising. At a local citrus festival last year, our pack passed out grapefruit with a note asking for donations based on the number of seeds in the fruit. I think the suggested donation was 10 cents per seed. We received about $1000. The fruit was donated This project would also work with apples and pears. I would not recommend using bananas, peaches etc., and kiwi fruit for obvious reasons ;) Hope this helps Collect 1,000,000 pennies in a large transparent box in school. A nice mathematics project and $10,000.00 for little (maybe years?) effort. Collect 1,000.000 pop cans (in Iowa that's five cents each). Tough storage problem, but great math display in a large area. Have Kindergarten plant Christmas trees for habitat near school. Buy in 5th-6th grade to make room for next Kindergarten. Sell to parents for profit (six year wait) Make T-shirts with local logo. Sent two to celebrity with return envelope and permanent magic marker. Tell about project, ask to keep one T-shirt and sign the other to auction off. A tape of recordings of song time - all the songs that they love to sing with their little voices recorded - and a printout of all the words. This has been great on long drives. It required the school to record the songs and put them on tapes. $10.00 was the cost. The kids make thanksgiving dinner for the parents. (my son was 20 months old and helped. ) They made 3 kinds of soup, bread, and pumpkin pie for dessert. They took the money raised at the event and gave it to a charity. ($5.00 a person). But you could give it to the fund instead. It was a chance for parents to see their kids during the day at school, and how great they all knew table manners! A rainforest dinner at $5.00 a head again. They made food typical to the rainforest (potatos, and fruit). The kids all studied the rainforest, the animals, etc. They decorated the school with plants, animal pictures etc. I loaned them a tape of amazon rainforest sounds. They all sang rainforest songs learned (the anana slug, the banana boat, etc.) My garden club does the following: once a year we have a plant sale. We all dig in our gardens and separate out the perennials that have taken over. Pot the shrubs, herbs, etc. It costs us nothing but our time - which we are doing anyway to thin and clean out our gardens in the spring. We make $1000 -$1200 a year on this one. It is our only fund raiser for the group. Because all of us are gardeners we all have some pretty unusual things in our gardens. Like pink lilies of the valley, ground covers, violets, etc. The sale is in late april when people are getting ready to garden. This has been great for us. Last year, our school held a bowlathon to raise money. It was very successful. People made pledges for number of pins knocked down. The kids and parents all enjoyed it and they are doing it again this year. I ran across a woman in Chicago earlier in the year who has put together a mathathon. I was at a fund-raising convention, and this was far and away the most constructive idea there. This mathathon was really an opportunity for kids to learn. As I recall it, the kids get sponsors for math problems,then receive booklets to take home (I think she even encourages the parents to get involved and help their kids work through the problems). There were booklets for each grade from K-8, I think--I don't know about pre-school. The idea was that each booklet had a certain number of points possible (probably 100) and that the kids collected on the number of correct points, like miles in a walkathon. She offered prizes too: calculators and t-shirts, IMHO, much better for kids than candy and pizza. The company was called Target Math. . Aren't you in Boston? With lots of colleges and universities there, you might see if you can let the kids earn their own money by serving as subjects for research projects. That's how we earned money for my son's band, and also our church youth group. I'm not talking about anything invasive, just psychological evaluations or pen-and-paper tests. Well, I really think a good old fashioned jumble sale is still good. People bring all their unwanted stuff which may be just what the next person along is looking for. Outgrown toys, books, even clothes. OK, the parents may still do much of the buying, but you can tell your friends about it without obliging them to come along, and also, you might actually get to buy things you *want* to buy! Also, do the school put on shows? Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles here often pay a small sum to see the kids on stage. Even some of the littlest can sing nursery rhymes and some of the older ones can act short sketches and so on. OK, it takes time to organise, but then again, so do most fund raising ideas. I saw your request for fundraising ideas on misc.kids. One of the most painless fundraising activities here in Indy is: saving grocery store receipts. I think the groc. stores agree to let the school redeem receipts from the groc store, and the store donates 1(?) percent of the total on the receipts to the school. When my son was in kindergarten, they had tshirts printed Class of _____. The letters themselves were filled in with the names of all the students in the kindergartern class (>100). They were pretty neat. I'm an occasional lurker on misc.kids and mom of a 10 year old son. I've been through a lot of fund raiser between school and sports. The most popular ones I've participated in have been bagel sales and wrapping paper. Hold a "non-event" -- you send out invitations that say "THE XYZ SCHOOL is holding its first annual Black Tie Non-Event. The event will not take place on June 1, 1996. Cocktails will not be served at 6 p.m. with dinner not served at 7 p.m. No program will be held at 8 p.m. Then you itemize the money they will save by not having to attend your event -- tux rental, buying a dress, babysitting, parking, cost of the dinner, having your hair done, etc. Then you ask for a donation for that amount. If you're looking for less money you can make the event more casual (no tux rental, etc) to get the suggested donation down to an amount you want to request. Garage sale for the preschool -- everyone brings their stuff and you put it in the paper, etc. They raise a lot of money but they're a LOT of work. Parents night out at the preschool -- do these every Friday night in December -- from 6 p.m to 10 p.m. and charge enough to pay costs plus make money. People really need a night to do Christmas shopping etc. Raffle! My board is currently having a raffle of a $2,500 Best Buy gift certificate. We're selling no more than 1,000 tickets at $10 each (3 for $25) so we expect to make somewher between $5,000 and $7,500. People are interested in buying because they know there is a cap on the number of tickets we're selling. My sons elementary school has a coffee hour every Friday. I know this might not work for pre-school but you might keep it in the back of your mind. Each class in the school hosts a coffee hour once a year. The PTA figured out how much food was needed. We have donuts, bagels, fruit, coffee, hot chocolate, cookies, orange juice, etc... The charges for food is reasonable everything is either 25cents or 50 cents. Last year my sons kindergarten made about $200 for 1.5 hours worth of work. Ask for money in an appeal letter. You can state in the letter that the money is for the scholarship fund (if that is the case). I think these are more effective when the appeal is for a specific project (as opposed to money to reduce general operating expenses). A rummage sale/flea market. All the families donate "treasures" which you tag and sell on one hectic Saturday or Sunday morning. Can raise a decent amount of money, but can't be repeated too often :-). Many of our local supermarkets have a deal where you can buy gift certificates at a 5% discount. You can sell them to your membership at face value. This has the added advantage of not incurring additional cost for the parents since they are spending money at the supermarket anyway. In addition, one local supermaret gives a 1% discount for register receipts. One of the local franchises (Bagelland, Bruegers) provides the bagels at a discount and the kids take orders. You might check with a local bagel shop if you have one! I've actually had people pursue me to order bagels - instead of having to track them down! The challenge is to do something to get everyone involved, have fun, and reach a goal. In general, my opinion is that it's best to have one large event, which appeals to as broad a group as possible. The most successful fund raiser I've been involved with is a 60's dance we put together for an 8th grade fund raiser. Getting local businesses to donate meals, hair-styling, nails, flowers, etc. was a geat move, and was actually easier to do than we thought. (Although, it still takes some active people involvement). Find a stretch of high traffic road at least one mile in length in your area, preferably by a shopping center. Set up stakes and heavy twine for One Mile. Start Friday at lunch through Sunday evening and try to collect one mile of dollar bills from passersby. Also sell sections to local businesses. People will come by out of curiosity just to see a mile of money. Could possibly raise over $10,000.....Good Luck, Rick! At a local Golf Course, Private courses are on the best, set up a small table and offer to clean golf clubs and ball, also sell raffle tickets for either a golf prize or cash prizt to be drawn that day. It is best to set up this concession during a golf tournament. Works great for cheerleading teams, bands. generally ther are 100-150 golfers in a tournament, and at 3-5 dollars profit per golfer, you can make 1500-2000 in less than 5 hours
My local middle school did a fundraiser with coverlets. They had several historical town buildings placed on the coverlet. This one was in a Natural and green weave that matched the school and the town of Dublin's (Ohio) colors. It proved to be a great fundraiser for the PTO and a nice collector piece for the towns people.
To raise funds for our housing rehab organization, we had the local high school vo-tech class to design and precut birdhouses. Material was half inch roof decking donated by the local building supply operations. Birdhouses were bagged unassembled in saved grocery bags and sold for five dollars to kids who were shown and helped to assemble and paint them at our Spring Fling. At the annual spring fete, among other activities we have a sponge toss. teachers, principals, etc. are you best "targets". the kids buy tickets and get to toss water soaked sponges at the chosen target. the kids always think that this is the greatest.
Engraved Bricks, Recently a school in the N.E raised $520,000.00 selling $50.00 engraved bricks. I started the program for a church in Florida and I am happy to report in just 2 months we have sold 300 engraved bricks. There were no start up costs we did not pay for anything until after we sold the bricks. They even sent us a complete marketing plan to help us us sell the bricks. We hope it will be a continual source of income. They make great gifts for everyone, its like being a member of the star walk.
If you have a big football or sporting event on those terribly hard metal bleachers, sell seat cushions. 12-20 ads from local merchants can be bought at $50-$100 and you can give the cushions away to spectators. The merchants get advertising and the spectators get a re-usable seat cushion!
If there's any building going on around the school or even fixing up, children can design tiles to be used in the final decoration. Tiles can be sold at $5 each and children have some art work on the building that they can see forever. Check with your local McDonald's restaraunt. They have a program called McBucks. You get 50 cents on the dollar, but the consumer get the whole dollar worth of food at the restaraunt. However, they still pay the tax. It was a profitable fund raiser for our team.
Try a garage, rummage sale at a public location (shopping center, parking lot etc). We did this for our High School team and it works well. The girls enjoyed this and so did the parents. Next time we are going to also have a bbq chicken lunch for sale and pre-sell the tickets (local stores sometimes will donate or cut rate the meat) 15 families can generate a lot of stuff!!! Good Luck A different twist to the "down the river duck race". 5000 (donated) tennis balls are consecutively numbered. The balls are sold for $2.00 each. The balls that have been paid for are put in the scoop of a front end loader and on "race day" the balls are dumped down a hill in your community. The first ball to enter the home stretch trough wins the 50% of sales prize money. I read this idea in a fund raising magazine and would like to pull it off one day when I find an organization that is prepared to put the "fun" back into fund raising.
At a local citrus festival last year, our pack passed out grapefruit with a note asking for donations based on the number of seeds in the fruit. I think the suggested donation was 10 cents per seed. We received about $1000. The fruit was donated This project would also work with apples and pears. I would not recommend using bananas, peaches etc., and kiwi fruit for obvious reasons ;) Hope this helps
My garden club does the following: once a year we have a plant sale. We all dig in our gardens and separate out the perennials that have taken over. Pot the shrubs, herbs, etc. It costs us nothing but our time - which we are doing anyway to thin and clean out our gardens in the spring. We make $1000 -$1200 a year on this one. It is our only fund raiser for the group. Because all of us are gardeners we all have some pretty unusual things in our gardens. Like pink lilies of the valley, ground covers, violets, etc. The sale is in late april when people are getting ready to garden. This has been great for us.
Well, I really think a good old fashioned jumble sale is still good. People bring all their unwanted stuff which may be just what the next person along is looking for. Outgrown toys, books, even clothes. OK, the parents may still do much of the buying, but you can tell your friends about it without obliging them to come along, and also, you might actually get to buy things you *want* to buy!
When my son was in kindergarten, they had tshirts printed Class of _____. The letters themselves were filled in with the names of all the students in the kindergarten class (>100). They were pretty neat. Garage sale for the preschool -- everyone brings their stuff and you put it in the paper, etc. They raise a lot of money but they're a LOT of work. Parents night out at the preschool -- do these every Friday night in December -- from 6 p.m to 10 p.m. and charge enough to pay costs plus make money. People really need a night to do Christmas shopping etc. A rummage sale/flea market. All the families donate "treasures" which you tag and sell on one hectic Saturday or Sunday morning. Can raise a decent amount of money, but can't be repeated too often :-). Many of our local supermarkets have a deal where you can buy gift certificates at a 5% discount. You can sell them to your membership at face value. This has the added advantage of not incurring additional cost for the parents since they are spending money at the supermarket anyway. In addition, one local supermarket gives a 1% discount for register receipts. We had a "lawn sale" on the school grounds. The class sponsoring the sale sold "booth space" to families and teachers. It was a fun time for families to get together, find a few bargains, and clean out their closets. School organizations such as our chorus sold refreshments. It was a good fund raising event as well as a good school/community activity. In order to raise awareness for an ailing downtown, we planned a street circus, which would benefit a nonprofit organization and bring new shoppers into the downtown area. By using three stages over one mile of busy road and rotating the acts, we accomplished both goals and the people had a great time. Go to your local college and see the sports director. Arrange to sell vouchers, redeemable for the best available seat to a basketball, or baseball game. One half goes to your charity, and the other to the college. At the end they count up the vouchers and split. Prizes we used were autographed team ball, and the youth got to be the ball girl/boy at the next game We are a Small rural hospital and did a Gala Celebration that profited $35,000.00. The event was held in November, we had a fantastic band that could play all styles of music for all ages, we had a tier raffle with around 48 items, we sold tickets for other items sold that night.This also included a sit-down dinner. The evening was full of activities and fun. We also sold engraved bricks for $50.00. This year we will be doing a Mardi Gras Celebration in Novemeber. Hope it is as successful! Our school is having a fund raiser by selling wood miniatures of our old school house. We send a photo and a brief description and then take orders. Editors Note: If you want a replica of your school or any other building done - contact skybolt fundraisiers for a replica in stained glass My women's club sold "Historic Chillicothe Coverlets". Since 1993 we have sold over 2,300 coverlets and have made over $46,000 profit. These are such a neat personal item, people just love them. We worked with Ty Mawr Classics to create a coverlet (woven throw) which had scenes and historic buildings from our community on it. Once our coverlet was designed, we received a sample coverlet which we used for a pre-order campaign. Our coverlets sell for $48.00 each. (about $3.00 tax, 25.00 coverlet cost, profit of $20.00 each) When we took an order we also took the money. When time came to place our order we had the money to send. Since we were able to run the pre-order campaign there was no investment on our part. This was a great fund-raiser. For girl's camp, we made large heart and egg-shaped sugar cookies, took advance orders, personalized the cookies with frosting designs and writing, and delivered them if requested (add't charge). Valentine's Day was a bigger success than Easter, but both did fairly well. Several women volunteered to bake the cookies and freeze them until an assembly line of women and girls could be coordinated for decorating. Delivery was easy. The girls were especially excited to do this part. Profit was approximately $500 for 300 cookies. Our Youth Hockey program raised money by getting local businesses permission to charge a small fee to pay to park in their parking lots. County Fairs or Soap Box Derby races bring alot of people to town. They all need to park. We made over $400.00 dollars parking cars. We raised money for our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate by sponsoring an evening of dining and entertainment at a local restaurant - the key to this event was that the "wait staff" were local celebrities, community leaders, business people, and they were all working for tips. We also had celebrity valets who parked cars for tips. The restaurant opened for us on a day when they were not normally open provided the food at their cost the entertainment was donated and the restaurant convinced 6 of their employees to donate their time to help us out. The ticket price for this event was $30.00 per person and we served over 400 people. With tips and the profit from the dinner, we raised close to $20,000.00 Find a stretch of high traffic road at least one mile in length in your area,preferrably by a shopping center. Set up stakes and heavy twine for One Mile. Start Friday at lunch through Sunday evening and try to collect one mile of dollar bills from passerbyers. Also sell sections to local businesses. People will come by out of curiosity just to see a mile of money. Could possibly raise over $10,000.....Good Luck, Rick! I am a Police Officer, in charge of a Police and Citizens' Youth Club in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. The club is a registered charitable organisation and must raise all of its' own fund, with the exception of my wages which are paid by the WA Police Service. Each year, in November, we conduct a "LETTER FROM SANTA CAMPAIN". Children are asked to send their letters to the PCYC for passing onto Santa. If they would like a reply and a small gift they enclose $5.00. Each participant receives a personal letter from Father Christmas, a Badge, and Small gift. A nice paper with an appropriate Christmas theme is used and some of the childrens' queries are answered. This is very quick to do if you draft a form letter and only personalise one or two paragraphs. We make from between 2 and 3 dollars per letter, raising over $500.00 last year. all the best with your efforts. Our girl scout troop needed money to go on a trip, but had very little resources to start from for a big fund-raising event. So we had a "Party in the Park" at our city park, which was free. For refreshments, we bought low-priced hotdogs and popcorn in economy size. We also had our local McDonald's restaurant donate a free orange drink. We had low-priced games, such as a "cake walk" (where four kids step on four different colored squares to music, and when the music and kids stop, we spin a Twister board and the kid with the selected color wins a cupcake), a "jail", in which kids pay to enprison their friends, and you must pay to get out), face painting, sack races, big-wheel races, frisbee toss, balloon toss, and a fishing game (for small prizes). We charged $3.00 per child, and for this they also received 10 tickets. Games were a ticket each, and extra tickets were 25 cents. You can charge as much as you like for food. We held our carnival for younger girl scout troop! P.S. and it was a success. We didn't make that much, about $200.00, but it is a good way to make easy money, because it is cheap to hold, and the profits are huge in comparison. Our Youth Fellowship group is using the idea of selling shares to our church congregation in order to earn money for a trip to Washington, D.C. We're calling it "ministry shares" and we are selling one share for $35.00 (10 shares pays for the whole trip). The members have the opportunity to buy as many shares as they'd like for the individual youth members who are going on the trip. After we return from our trip we will be holding a shareholders dinner (actually a potluck luncheon after church) and show videos, pictures and share what we've learned at the youth convention at D.C. This is our way of showing what their money went towards and how much we appreciated their donations. One of our local soccer teams did spring yard work that included power raking the lawn, raking the yard and spreading Eko compost (a local commerial compost product) on the lawn at the end. All raked material was transported to the commerical compost business and in return they allowed us to sell truckloads of compost at a bargain price to our customers. At least 10 players worked per day. Over 3 1/2 days (two weekends) each boy made about $240.00. Not bad for 16 year old boys and they enjoyed doing it as a team. Customers were asked to make a donation and all gave more than we would have asked for. Our Community Arts Centre held an open art exhibition called"Cup and Mugs". This event raised money through a $5.00 entry fee per item entered. The artists who entered also donated a cup or mug to be auctioned off at the end of the event. The event was a great success, fun, and the artists can't wait till the next thematic arts exhibition and auction. Stay tuned as the next one will be featuring "Hats" should be a blast! Our organization raises money for Cystic fibrosis we set up Loonie Posters or have Jean Days and Charge $1.00. It is a real simple and effortless way to raise a fair amount of money. Every year at my high school we put on a penny weigh. We get four big water jugs and label them Freshmen, Sophmore, Junior, and Senior. We set them out before school, break, and lunch. People then put pennies in their class, to earn "points" and put silver coins or paper money in other classes to deduct pionts" so if they put a quarter in the Freshman jug the Freshmen were just deducted 25 points. It works well especially between freshmen and seniors. A FREE car wash a thon. You have a FREE car wash. You get each club member to get sponcers to pledge one, two, or three cents for each car they wash in an afternoon. This makes money several ways. If you wash 100 cars in an afternoon, that is a dollar from each person on your list. (at a penny a car) If you have 20 people on your list, that is $20. If each person in the club has 20 people, that can add up. You will get a lot of cars, because people will get their car washed for free. If a hugh traffic gas station will donate the space and the water, it is great because people are already stopped. If you have a bucket that says "Donatations execpted", *most* people will throw in at least a buck. So if 75 out of the 100 that stopped by for the free car wash donate at least a $1.00, you have $75 more dollars on top of the money that each group member makes through their sponcer. Try an internet based silent auction to go along with the one your orgainzation would conduct. You can access people in your community who can not attend your event. Set up a web site to conduct a silent auction. It should increase the sales for your event. More exposure should result in greater sales. Our soccer region could reach many more people than the ones who show up at events. We had a town-wide halloween horribles parade, invited town's children to attend, and march following the high school band (dressed in costume) . Had five different games for the children to play, sold coffee, cocoa, soda, popcorn, baked goods (all donated), had raffle (american girl for girls, remote control car for boys) also donated , pony rides and picture taking & magic show. Labor intensive for short period, but families enjoyed it and was successful. Cleared over 2100.00 The fraturnity that I am a member of had temporary tattoos made of our university logo. We then sold them at all the home football and basketball games. We earned over $10,000 in the first two months. Raffle off a "day of beauty". Local beauty shop that offers hair care, massage, facials, manicures and pedicures. Sell raffle tickets for $3.00. Convince the beauty shop to give the day away for free! My sorority raised $800.00 on this fundraiser. It was very simple. We sold Personalized Children's Books. We sold the books for $13.95 and made from $3.50 - $4.00 per book. We ended up selling close to 200 books. There was no cost to the sorority. It was very successful. The books sold really well because almost everyone knew a child to buy a book for. I bought 3 books and gave these as Christmas presents. Our school holds Market Day each month. The parents place orders for food products (which are very reasonably priced and 100% guaranteed satisfaction). Two weeks later the truck arrives with the products and the parents pick up their purchases during a 1 1/2 hour period. Our school has 365 kids and we raised approx. $4000 this year with very litle effort, and the parents got what they needed - GROCERIES. We've got the parents hooked on the program now and we make 10% profit off of the total sales. We also held a spaghetti supper which raised about $ 0. The Spaghetti Warehouse sold us "plates of spaghetti" for $2.50 which we pre-sold for $5.00 for adults and $3.50 for kids. They provided all the food and dessert as well as tea AND THE STAFF TO SERVE THE MEAL! I know other schools who have the kids round up the ingredients and they cook and serve themselves. We also had a raffle. I sent a letter to Southwest Airlines 6 months in advance and asked them for 2 round trip tickets on their airlines. They gladly responded. I also put together a night in a local hotel with a limo ride and dinner - and it was THE MOST POPULAR raffle item of all! Lastly, we sold Glamour Photo Sessions (pre-paid of course) and a local glamour photographer set up at our school on 2 pre-selected days and took glamour photoes. We made $10 off of every photo session sold!!! It was VERY popular! Good Luck! I volunteer for a non-profit hospital which had no fund-raising programs until we formed our Brick-Kick committee.We sell engraved Bricks for $100.00 and have raised $50,000.00 so far We are now replacing worn out carpeting in the lobby with engraved tiles that we will sell for $250.00.These tiles will be personalized signatures. People love the idea and stop traffic looking for their names.This program has been great for us, nothing to store, no inventory no money outlay.And best of all we hope to continue the program for years to come. Our Babe Ruth Leage raised over $2,000.00. A company in Florida supplied us with a scratch-off game which we sold for $1 a ticket. We made 50 cents per ticket and they supplied everything, including the prizes. At $1 a ticket it was an easy sell and the kids seemed to enjoy it.
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5-25-09
