Candy Bar Sales are almost "Easy As Pie" very profitable and easy. When a school wellness policy promotes health & wellness for the children would this be a conflict? Most of the members on the PTA feel that it is up to the parents to decide to buy or not to buy. Many school PTA do runs and walks but in our area so many walks take place I think it's walked out.
Take a look at this site for some info regarding a healthy fundraiser: just put in that you are interested in "other" and then type "fundraiser". Include how to contact you and the company will get you the info.
I would be interested to know more about nwmom's read-a-thon. Could you please post some details, i.e. how much you earned, how many students you have and how many participated, how long it went on for, anything that would help us get ours off the ground!
we collected 'healthy only' recipes from parents, let kids do the illustrations. of course, you need someone to look them over closely, to make sure they are 'healthy'. everyone has a different idea of what is healthy. then publish it on your own, or use a service (google for school/cookbook/fundraiser) and sell the books to parents and community/local MOPS or MOMS clubs etc.
Our two most successful fundraisers are our jog-a-thon and read-a-thon. Both have little overhead and the kids all get really excited. This year for the read-a-thon (children get flat pledges or pledges by the half-hour of reading)the kids got a scale for each hour of reading they completed. A local artist (and school mom) painted a wonderful dragon down our main hallway and the dragon scales were put up everyday during the fundraiser...it was wonderful!!! The final result was over a 1500 hours in reading, great amount of $$$ for our PTO and a beautiful colorful dragon in our hallway...showing the kids what they had accomplished.
