I kind if agree with WFS. If you are going to go to the point of separating profits per grade then why not go the next step and make it per child? I know that would be a lot more work, but it might be a great way to motivate the parents into helping you out. Let them know that the cost of the Field Trip this year will be, say, $20, but the fundraiser profits earned by their child will be used to reduce that cost. Any child that earns more than the cost of the trip would not have to pay anything and the extra funds could be used to help those families that could not afford the trip otherwise.

This is a radical idea, but the grade profit separation idea as well. If you end up deciding to do this I would recommend not going any further than per classroom. That way the kids in the classroom would encourage the others to take part, the homeroom teacher could possibly halp facilitate this as well.

The fact that you are a K through 12 school makes this even tougher.

Another idea might be to make it so that child that earns a set goal would not have to pay anything for the field trip and maybe even invite them to a PTO sponsored Ice Cream party, or something like that. The point would be to help promote the fundraiser while rewarding the ones that do the best.

If you think about it, why should the child that earns more than the cost of the trip have to pay anything?

Good luck,
PresidentJim

I'll second WFS. The parents who are selling a lot know from the beginning that the money is going to benefit all the children. If they had a problem with that, they wouldn't participate. You can also have issues from grade level to grade level and classroom to classroom such as socioeconomic status and parents' ability and willingness to participate. "Punishing" the students for those issues isn't really fair. You also have to take into consideration how much those other parents may give in time and volunteer efforts. For example, I work in a small office and another mom I know works at a huge business. We both take our fundraisers to work, but I could NEVER bring in what she can. She has no problem with that, because she doesn't look at it as a contest, she is just raising funds for the school. It's her way of helping because she works full time and can't be there as much whereas I only work part-time and spend many hours helping at school. We're both giving what we can, where we can.

To me, every child deserves to go on a field trip no matter what their grade pulls in for a fundraiser. You also have kids that go out of their way to sell their items and others that don't. So should their trip be determined how many kids are motivate and how many aren't?
budget a fixed dollar amount (we use $10.00 per child) for each child for field trips and then teachers must plan within that range. some will use the entire $10 & some will not. Those exceeding can ask parents to make up the difference, but then you are allowing all kids the same opportunity to have a worthwhile field trip. Plus, consider that although your students are handing in the order, THEY are not the ones making the purchases or really the ones doing the selling; its the parents. You have to have a fundraiser that the parents are interested in. If you have time at the end of this year, take a survey at your end of year events and ask them--what would they prefer. You may be surprised at what you hear!

To motivate sales, we have a class contest in our school (k-5). The classroom within each grade level with the highest % of student participation in the fundraiser wins a PIG for our Pig race. Its a windup pig that we race on a track. We have 2 races (k-2) & (3-5). The winners of the pig race each win $100.00 in classroom supplies. Some teachers get computer games, some DVD's, some basic supplies, but they all appreciate the opportunity to add to their classrooms. We have seen an increase with the sales since they all want to win a pig for the big race! I have to say that by going by the percentage and not the dollar amounts received, it is less stressful for parents that cannot afford to purchase a lot. They can purchase one $4.00 item & it counts for their child's classroom.

Our group is kicking around a idea of how to increase the number of families that participate in our fundraisers/events and yes increase the profit.

We are a k-12 public charter school w/ an enrollment of 1,000 students.
It seems that now matter what event we hold, like a fundrasing event or family fun event we get the same 100 families participating and almost all of the families are from the lower school K-5th grade

This year we have been asked to reduce the number of fundraisng events to two so we need to get a big bang for the buck.

We are thinking of sharing the profits for the fall catalogue sales to each grade to be used for field trips. For example, if the 5th graders generate a profit of $500 , $250 will be banked for that grade to use on their field trips.

Just wanted to bounce this idea off you guys as a sanity check and to see if other schools do something like this. In the past we have given pizza party to top 25 sellers.