My wife just had a great idea. We are going to solicit companies for prizes to give out to the kids who make a sales goal. Gift cards to restaurants, movie tickets, bowling coupons, putt putt, amusement park or whatever.
I'm sure if we tell them we're not looking for a money donation(they're hurting too) and this might make them feel that they can get exposure for this, it will work.
This is not some cheap top that will break in a day. We are selling jose madrid salsa and my wife asked if they would donate a gift pack to the prize and they said yes.
We tried salsa fundraising and they don't hide the cost of the prizes in the profit, they passed it on to us to decide. So we had a pizza party for the class room that sold the most jars and the student that sold the most got a $50 visa gift card.
But I'm open to suggestion on other things to do as well.
My daughter's school is doing a fundraiser where every kid who sells 3 items automatically gets to attend an ice cream party during school, and in addition earns a chance in a raffle drawing for some really big prizes - the winner gets their choice of a Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, iPod Touch, or $200 Cash. Also, for every additional 3 items sold, the kids get another chance in the raffle. I think it's great because I think it will work to motivate more kids to participate.
I ran our chocolate bar fundraiser and I, too, get tired of the junky prizes. Because we forgoed the prizes, WFC gave us free boxes of chocolate (which we sold) to offset the cost of buying our own prizes. I used the money to get the kids 'pizza certificates' I worked with our local pizza place and made up pizza certificates good for a slice of pizza and a can of soda for every first box of chocolate sold. The kids, parents, and pizza place liked it (the pizza place gave us a break on price). For each box over the first sold, I gave a $5 certificate good for our school's scholastic book fair, which went over big. Yes, the prizes probably cost a little more but I felt they were worth it.
