We dropped all fundraisers selling trinkets and trash and went to a read-a-thon. We have done it 2 years, and matched our previous income, and our parents have had to spend half as much money, as it is pure profit. The kids, parents, grandparents, and neighbors all love it!

Did Celebrating Homes Candle fundraiser last year, did very well great profit margin, and no money to purchase stuff upfront. Can send you my contacts if your interested:)

I am the fundraising chair for our kids' brand new school and I hope to raise a lot of money this year. We are doing a fun run which has been done several times in the community and was a huge success. The school we moved from has done it for three years now and have made an average of 13,000 dollars each year. This is plenty of money to do all of the activities and events we want to do and provide books and technology for our students with at least $1000 leftover to carry over for the following year.

We have replaced magazine subscriptions, pizza and cookie dough sales, and "Santa" shops and this is our only fundraiser for the entire year.

My only problem is coming up with prizes for the kids who collect at different levels. For example, what is an appropriate prize for a kid who collects $100 or more? And what is a good prize for the highest collector per grade?

IF, and that is a big if, I have to do more than one fundraiser, I am going to try the "Send your teacher on vacation" fundraiser. We would purchase (or have donated) a weekend getaway for two and then sell tickets for $5 a piece to the students. They put their teacher's name on the front of the ticket and their name on the back and all the tickets go into a drawing. I read about this in a Family Fun Magazine and I think they raised over $8000. Only one teacher wins and the student whose ticket is pulled gets a prize as well, like a limo ride to dinner for his/her family with the teacher, or a wii or something big like that.

Our school did the Can You Spare a Dollar last spring it went over really well. We only gave the sheet with 20 names on it and most kids returned their signed shetts with their 20.00. We did give small prizes for those who turned in a sheet. Everyone always has a dollar to spare. This year we are doing the Race for Education.

Things we done in the past aside from the typical brochure sales fund raiser...

Sold poinsettia's at holidays and hanging baskets near Mother's Day. This went over well for a few years then we started not getting as much interest so we stopped doing it. I liked this fundraiser because it was something that people were possibly buying anyway and we took orders in advance so we just order what we needed. It might be time for us to try something like this again.

We sold teddy bears dressed in school colors varsity jackets or cheerleader outfit and we sold cookbooks. With both of these things we had to order mass quantities up front and had a hard time getting rid of all of them. I try to shy away from anything that you might get stuck with and not be able to sell for a profit.

We also had an auction at our carnival of donated items. This was a big event for several years. It takes quite a lot of leg work collecting and storing the donated items. Plus I think it takes away, somewhat, of the "family event" of the carnival since the kids didn't really care about mom or dad bidding on oil changes. For that reason I was never a huge fan of having the auction. We haven't had it for the past few years.

I think with our school people get bored with stuff and we need to switch things up to keep it exciting and keep people interested.

Mrs.Christie;150114 wrote: I just started as the fundraising chair for my kids school.

We are doing the traditional fundraisers that they do every year and we also have a fall and spring festival.

Can anyone give me any other ideas for fundraisers in the school that we can maybe do at events or during the school day?

Any other businesses you may know of that we can earn money though like Safeway, Good Search.com, box tops, soup lables, that kind of thing?

There is a great program called permanent impressions. The program is made-up of police officer's that will do safety kits at your child's school. We did it as a fundraiser and it went very well. Their contact info is FingerPrintsForLife.com or 714.471.9404...hope this helps!