Brochure (Catalog) sales are still the best if you want to make the most money. Mr. Z's Fundraising has some great fundraisers my children have used. They also have outstanding service.

A calendar raffle is a relatively newer raffle game. It is a month worth of drawings for prizes. You draw one ticket a day and the winner wins whatever the prize of the day is. You start selling the raffle tickets a month in advance and the tickets are $10 each (or whatever price you determine...I think $10 a ticket is the average price.)

Now as for prizes..you can get some stuff donated as well as use some of the money that comes in from selling the tickets. Let's say you sell 1000 tickets at $10 each. That's $10,000 you have to work with in prizes. Now let's say you decided to keep $6,000 of the money (your fundraising profit) and use $4,000 of it for cash and prizes. The daily cash prizes can be whatever you want $25, $50, $100, $250, etc... you determine what prizes will be awarded on what day. A daily prize should be at least $25. Usually on the last drawing day the cash prize is the biggest (say $500 - $1,000). The non cash prizes are typically dinner for two somewhere, dvd players, mp3 players, etc.. no basket stuff, just good prizes and cold hard cash. Some organizations do cash only.

In the school around here that does them the tickets sell themselves. People know they have 30-31 (depending on the month) chances at winning something plus if you win your ticket gets thrown back in as opposed to being removed, so you have 30-31 chances on every ticket you buy. Obviously the bigger the school the more tickets you can sell thus making your prize payouts even bigger, but the tickets do sell themselves and many people buy 2-3 tickets each. It really is a great way to make a nice lump of money without having to do way to much work.

What is a calendar auction?

I agree with Bertha (Hi Bertha [img]smile.gif[/img] ) With food legislation being enacted it is going to take a huge bite out of food based fundraiers. Tricky Trays/Auctions are the way to make big money these days. Another thing we have been doing more and more are raffles. We do really well with them. Especially at this time of year before the holidays. We got a Nintendo DS to raffle off in the school and we are selling tickets like hot cakes. We sell the tickets $1 each or 6 for $5.
Everybody takes the $5 worth. We have good response too...people would rather spend $5 taking a chance on winning something then buying things they do not want. Another thing that is becoming big are calendar raffles. Many of the parochial schools by us do them and they are making big bucks.

I'd like to see more innovative products, like personalized items that have higher value to the buyer and programs done completely on the internet. Innovative products should be fun for the kids and family while the school is benefitting and on the web so there's little to no strain on the school or parents.

with the food police coming to town after the new year, I can see us doing more catalog sales or tricky trays. No more cheesecakes or candy bars