One of the problems we have in our schools is that we reward everyone no matter what they do. Why should a student be rewarded when they did not do anything? In a similar scenario if Julie studies for her spelling test and aces it, and Joey gets a 40 shouldn't we give him a 100 also so he won't feel bad?

I have found that some of the top sellers are students who are not usually recognized by academics. Lets get them in the real world, those who work get rewarded, either by selling or studying, hopefully both.

We are trying to make our Fun Run our biggest fundraiser. This year we are focusing on classes as winners. The top 3 classes with the most participation will win prizes as a class. We are also starting a tradition of a Fun Run Trophy that the winning class gets to keep in their classroom.

We also have a school wide goal and if we meet that then the whole school gets a popsicle party and assembly (well we are going to make that happen whether or not we make our goal).

We thought about doing a raffle if kids got xx amount in pledges, but we wanted more kids to win stuff.

I believe schools and Parent/Teacher Organizations would dramatically increase involvement not only with fundraising but other activities if parents and students feel they are being treated fairly. Sometimes it just takes good discussion to open the eyes of others (schools, PTO's) as they may not have realized how many people they were excluding. With fundraising, team work is definitely a more positive approach.

Our fundraiser (uncle jerrys tees) provides incentives for us so we don't have to, however, we still reward the top 3 sellers with a gift card for Walmart...

I agree it's not fair to leave some of the kids out of the wrap up party; esp since the above writers are right; it's not the kid's faults if they can't sell as many items or any! So, the best way is to just reward the top 3...out of 200 kids last year we only had 40 participate...the idea for the fundraiser was for the playground, which mainly benefits the elementary, so we had a "free gym" period for middle and high school with popcorn and music, even if they didnt participate. That way, everyone got something out of it....we are hoping this year will be more participation...

Our lower el school principal sets a goal for the profit we need to make as a school. If that goal is met, then the entire school is rewarded with an inflatables party, complete with a D.J. Each grade level gets a certain amount of time, so that kindergarten is not out with our third graders.
As a PTO, there are two things we do to balance the prizes. For Cash for Trash (boxtops for education, etc), I changed it from the "class with the most items" to each class having a goal and earning a prize when it is reached. The goal is an average of so many items per students. This way, when Jacob can bring in 100 items, but Alyssa brings in 5, they all count together towards the goal.

The other area was in our magazine sale. Everyone who sold at least one subscription earned an entry into the grand prize drawing. That prize also changed to being more family oriented than for an individual. One year we awarded an annual family pass to our county's recreation building, including swimming and ice skating.

Our school district superintendent received so many complaints about unfair PTO fundraising practices that a meeting was held with every principal in the district to inform them that the PTO should have a school wide goal and if the school wide goal is met, each child would be allowed to attend the fund raiser party. It's just wrong to extort money from parents to buy fundraiser items and to make money at the expense of hurting childrens' feelings. In many cases, the child who didn't sell anything worked harder trying to do so than those whose parents could afford to purchase the items to make the individual goal. Many PTO groups are so insensitive!