Here's a new concept that's out there and seems to be pretty successful. Owning your own DVD store, free of charge for non-profits. It definitely is unique and goes along with our information technology age.
As a non-profit organization, you can start your own dvd store and make tons of money from dvd sales. There are lots of educational and family friendly dvd's to choose from. You can market the website to the parents (especially with upcoming holidays) and they'll take comfort in knowing that some of the money is going back to their children. Check it out!
This program is great just by clipping box tops off of a huge number of food items and sending them in. It would basically take one person to be in charge of sending the message out and collecting them. We had two drives last year and made $1400.00! Free and clear, no bugging the parents for money, no parental involvement besides for tearing them off and putting them in a pack to send to school.
Check into it! Its a great program for anyone. At our school its not even considered a fundraiser but a "program" that goes directly back to the kids for whatever they need.
My daughter's school is also a private school with the same restrictions. We recently had success with a program that offers free school ID cards to every student, and gives incentives for other safety products if the parent/student participates in the fundraising component of the package. The fundraising part is totally optional... so, worse case, you're students all get free ID cards. The site we visited is www.2stepstosafety.com.
Interesting about that fee Jen. Never heard of that, but in this case a local bank is helping them out. So I guess if anyone does this they should tallk to a bank.
We are doing cell phone donations at our daughter's school. All you do is collect cell phones from your group's members, friends, families, etc. over a period of time. They give money based on the amount of phones you collect. Nothing to buy or sell!
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The a-thons are great. I went to a private school and they opted not to have catalog fund raiser as well. Two other "edicational fund raisers" that did very well were our craft fair "bazaar". Students would make their own crafts with help form parents (parents usually donated items as well) and then we would have a fair one Saturday usually close to the holidays. This would usually encourage "arts". My aunt who is the principle of a private school has her PTO support a character tea. Normally on a Friday after school they will have 3 or parents dress as charaters in a book and children come and have "tea and cake" (kool-aide and cupcakes) followed by activites that the character may do. Such as LAura Ingles may show you how to make a doll. Tom Sawyer may trick you into picking up the litter on the playground. Pippy Longstocking and The Cat in the Hat has such aweful notions it keeps pleanty of the children occupied babysitting them. Clifford the Big Red Dog is always ready for lots of hugs and lessons in manners. For this they simply charge a $5/ child and easily earn $3000- of corce the few cents they spend on kool-aide, cupcakes and costumes. This is normally not much since most parents with donate the cupcakes, and drinks. And most costumes are handmade and fun, but honestly what is a $30 costume rental for the payoff. Not only the money but the reading that is done afterward when the children want to get to know the charenters better.
