It may seem when you’re on the school fundraising committee that coming up with school fundraising ideas is an impossible task. The events have already been done, the items to sell are too expensive and yield too low a profit, or the amount of time and the level of complication is greater than you and your group have to spare.
But you can make use of the volunteers to brainstorm for ideas for school fundraising efforts…and you might be surprised with what the team comes up with, piggybacking on each other’s suggestions, modifying the results, and sharing the excitement of positive outcomes.
In one session for school fundraising ideas at a community college learning center one year, for example, a small group of five staff members played around with the following possibilities:
Hold a Scrabble Tournament – Those involved with words, language, writing, or learning, really, can start chatting with “English” peeps, generating interest, getting volunteers, and even soliciting for sponsors.
Hold a Bingo Tournament - Hold the Bingo tournament the same time as the Scrabble Tournie for those who dislike or could care less about language or word games but like numbers, so to speak. Sponsors might fund the prizes and refreshments, and entrants could pay a buck or two to compete.
Conduct Chocolate Bar Sales - Have someone who is connected—who used to work for an incentive sales company, or knows the CEO of an own incentive company, for example—provide some informal stats on how utterly lucrative this is (we’re talkin’ thousands of dollars profit). Or get access to the Sales Reps for those fundraiser chocolate companies such as Sees Candies (on the West Coast), for example.
Raffle off a Car? A Computer (Desktop System)? The car might be a reach, so you may want to leave that to the Lions or Elks—who do so to donate proceeds to the school anyway—but if your school fundraising budget allows for the purchase of a popular and useful piece of electronic equipment—pc, ipod, TV, boom box, Palm Pilot, etc.—the one to five dollar raffle tickets will sell out in a matter of hours or days!
These ideas aren’t even all that original, either. You could get as creative as your organization’s protocol will allow. That is, I recall in my first year of college, as a kind of orientation and school fundraising effort to benefit the fraternities and sororities involved, we participated in a “Slave” Day. Students bid on freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, who, once “won”, would spend the day with the highest bidder, taking out the trash, cleaning the dorm room, or just hanging out and partying, really. Of course, that was the seventies in a school in the woods, and we hadn’t gotten so hypersensitive to politically incorrect implications, blah blah blah.
You will use your discretion, follow the rigors and rules, and take advantage of the cleverness of your students…I’m sure. Best of luck to you.