Our school held a Race for Education event last year. Although it is alot of work to organize we profitted over 18,000.00 and the kids and parents LOVED it!
Involve the teachers and staff- we do a volleyball game against a nearby school. We also considered a basketball game. It has been a HUGE success. Takes a little organization, but brings out a lot of people, doesn't feel like a fundraiser and makes lots of cash for both schools!
Our most successful fundraiser this past school year was our Math-a-thon. It was our first ever Math-a-thon and we raised $8500. At the time we had 760 students (k-5) approximately 300 students participated by collecting donations/pledges. Almost all of the students participated in the actual Math-a-thon. Our costs were around $500, this included certificates for all participants, pencils for those who raised money, and 2 gift cards for prizes for the raffles. If students handed in pledge money they were entered into a raffle, 2 raffles were held k-2 and 3-5 grades. There was a bit of brain storming and logistics but I think that was to be expected since none of us had even heard of a Math-a-thon. We created everything from scratch and it was a huge success. We will be dong another Math-a-thon this year and I know it will run much smoother and hopefully generate even more funds. Parents were very tired of the same fundraisers, (i.e. catalog sales, cookie dough etc.). The PTO listened and created a fundraiser that the PTO earned 100% of the profit, was educational, created a challenge for the students and was FUN!
We do a little bit of everything in order to avoid overloading our families including cheescakes, candles, penny party, nite at the races and pizza. One of the major changes we did last year was to do away with the candy bars. Instead we did a money raffle. Every school family ( approximately 160 total) had to sell 75 - $1 chances twice a year. We gave away cash prizes of $2500 - $1000 and $500 each time. Your main expense is the cost of printing the tickets. This year it is $500 to print them. Check around, last year it cost us over $1500 but we still made a lot of money. We were able to buy our school 2 smart board systems. In addition we gave our principle a very sizable amount of money to be used as he saw fit. We were able to have dances and parties through out the year for our students and a field day with t shirts for everyone at the end of the year.
I believe the most successful fundraisers today are fall gift catalog, frozen cookie dough and well-organized events such as auctions, carnivals and a-thons (walk-a-thons, read-a-thons, etc.).
It would also appear that dollar candy bars are still doing quite well in many cases despite the trend towards less junk food.
Do you think the school would put less effort into marginal fundraisers and really focus in on one solid fundraising effort per semester? If that were the case, you could do a fall catalog or cookie dough sale in the fall and a spring carnival?
I know every school is different and maybe looking at the history of fundraising at the school will give you clues as to what worked best and why?
