what I like about this idea is that it gets kids active and out and about... And they raise the money because they are taking action... not just selling stuff... I will definitely recommend this next year for our school...
We just had our first walk-a-thon. We're a primary K-5 school with 525 students.
We're a very diverse school and have many low income families. We asked that each child bring in at least $1 to walk.
If the school raised $10,000 we would purchase a dunk tank for our Fun Fair and the Vice Principal would get in the tank. For each $20 that a child raised they would get one ball for the dunk tank! As collecting went on and we didn't get many envelopes back, many teachers added themselves to the dunk tank list. Their grade had to earn between $2500 - $5000 in donations each (but again, the school had to raise $10,000).
Our walk-a-thon was yesterday and it went GREAT! We had many...MANY students bring in only $1 and they got to participate. Some businesses donated backpacks, pencils, candy, bandaids, free kid meals.
Just finished counting this morning and we raised $11,000! We are so happy! This was more than our fall catalog fundraiser, so we are going to be doing it again, and hopefully never have to sell that catalog stuff again!!
We just completed our 2nd spring walkathon. This year we profited about $18,000 (about $5k more than last year). We have a school of just over 500 students, so we are quite pleased with our results. We tried to have something for everyone:
Flat donations -- envelopes sent home with kids. Contests for most donations individual, class, grade, etc. Plus extra incentives for certain goals overall. Non-cost incentives such as putting certain people on the roof for certain amounts of money -- with the final being the principal, a song, and a dance. Plus the Coach (who is a big hit with our kids) will shave his head! Kids absolutely went crazy for this. Unbelievable!
We got donations from local businesses for visors and water. Then we purchased oranges and sliced them. We played music while everyone walked.
We walked Kindergarten for 15 minutes. We walked 1, 2 & 3 grades for 30 minutes. And then we walked 4 & 5 grades for 30 minutes. Last year we tried to walk everyone together, but the little kids got trampled. We asked parents to pay $5 to walk with their child.
We then came back in the evening and had a dinner, silent, live auction, and basket raffle. We made $10,000 on our live auction, about $2,500 on silent auction. I don't know the total on the basket tickets, but tickets were inexpensive, so those that couldn't participate in the live or silent auctions could purchase chances for the baskets.
Our total expenses were around $4,000 -- but profit was about $18,000!
It was fun. There was something for everyone. Everyone is happy! And we've made budget for next year!!
Did I say our profit was $18k? We're so excited. That is awesome for our school. We average about $10k - $13k for our fundraisers.
We will be having our first annual walk-a-thon June 1st as our spring fundraiser. We also chose to do a flat pledge instead of laps. Our teachers are donating the snacks and our student council is donating the water bottles with the school name on them. Every student will walk regardless whether they bring in pledges or not.
We used 3 of our donations we received this year as prizes for the top 3 students to bring in the most in pledges and the top class with the most will receive a pizza and ice cream party.
T-shirts are going to be given out to the students who bring in $20.00 or more in pledges and they will say our school name 1st annual walk-a-thon 2007 on them.
The only thing I was wishing we could get was a DJ or a radio station to come out but the radio station told us no but that we could come down to the station and plug it.
So far all I have heard from teachers and parents are how excited they are about this event instead of selling items. The teachers have told us they are going to incorporate healthy activities into the learning that day.
We are sending home flyers next week with 2 pledge sheets attached along with a manilla envelope with a space for the child's name and grade/teacher for the money collection. Pledges and forms will be due back 1 week before the event so we can get the t-shirts ordered.
Now we just hope for it to not rain! This seems like one of the easiest fundraisers I have ever been a part of so far.
I would like to do a walk-a-thon as our top fundraiser next year. I too would just like to do a flat donation instead of pledges. This would eliminate somebody having to count how many laps walked. Plus you could get the money in before the actual event. I was thinking of getting all of our kids a small trophy with their name and date of the event. We have about 250 kids, is it realistic to average $50/child, even with several low income familes?
One other thing we do is have a DJ. If you can do that it makes the event better as everyone enjoys the music and the DJ also engages them to walk or do certain things at different times. This makes it more enjoyable and helps to pass the time so the kids do not get bored as the time goes by.
