Howdy,
We just held our spring carnival on April 8. It ran 5-8 and was a huge success. We typically make $1000 on the carnival. WELL... this year with the help of some changes I pushed for, we made $5000! Whew-who!!
For the games, we offered a bowling game, golf game, duck pond, face painting, sand art, tattoos, ping pong ball toss, plinko, lollipop tree, hair coloring,& cake walk. Each activity had a different punch amount from 1-3 punches.
I hate those dang tickets! So, we made up Gordy Carnival Cards. These are essentially punch cards. They sold for $5 (20 punches) or $10 (40 punches + 4 bonus punches). I pre-sold these for one month (ending the day before the carnival). I pre-sold almost 100 cards with the majority of them being the $10 card. Our school has a student population of 685 and is VERY econimically diverse. As an incentive to pre-buy the carnival cards, we had 4 tickets to Sesame Street Live donated for the raffle/silent auction, so we offered an exclusive raffle for those SS tickets only for those folks that pre-purchased their carnival cards. If they pre-bought the $5 card they received 1 blue raffle ticket back with their carnival card, if they pre-purchased the $10 card then they received 2 blue raffle tickets. You can always try to get a donation from a popular b-day party place (like Pump It Up or Mad Science) and use that as your incentive. Most parents would love to have a free b-day party for their kid. I filled the orders as they came in and returned them with the child for their parent.
I also pre-sold raffle tickets (red) for the regular raffle for the evening of the carnival. We offered a Market Place this year during our carnival. For the fee of $25 a business (Mary Kay, Karate, CTMH, local jewelry store, a couple candle reps, etc) they got 1 table and 2 chairs. This was set up to the side of the carnival games. We offered a free spot to the police dept. and Boys & Girls Club.
With the pre-sell in raffle tickets, carnival cards and market place vendors we were at $1400 before the carnival even happened. We had only cash for the food. This was the first year they had a silent auction. We received over 150 donations and used these for both the raffle and silent auction. We made $5000+ on our carnival activities this year which is a 5 times as much as they did last year.
If anyone would like to see the flyers or cards we used, feel free to email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Good Luck,
Holly