At our catholic school of 99 families (this year) each family signed an agreement that they will fundraise $300 in profit for the Home School or pay a buy-out option of $500. But we also have incentives in place for families who fundraise more, if they fundraise $500 in profit they get a $50 voucher if registered for the next school year, $750 in profit gets a $200 voucher and $1000 in profit gets a $500 voucher. We started the incentives last year and I will again be getting a $500 voucher for next year, it's not that hard to do with all the fundraisers that we do. We gave out $6050 in vouchers last year. We have a budget of $60,000 so we have to come up with a lot of things to do.
We usually allow people the option of a straight donation when we do our fundraisers. We send out a cover letter stating what we hope to raise per child, and then give people the option of supporting the fundraiser or giving a donation instead. It has worked for us; people like having a choice, those people who choose to donate get "credit" for their donation (in terms of fundraiser prizes), and it doesn't place us in an all or nothing scenario.
in our school we are not allowed to do "fundraiser" fundraisers, ie: NO SELLING.
So we've had to be creative. (note: we have 485 students with an income range of $20k to $100+, we raise $16-19k a year)
We only have one so called fundraising event.
All of our events do raise money, BUT we do not refer to them as fundraisers because each have other purposes, and families get something in return, Holiday Festival: crafts, visitwith Santa, Pizza Game Night: dinner and fun.
Our Jog-A-Thon in October is our one fundraiser. we earn about 10-11K. kids collect pledges from family and friends. The students can win prizes. We have 85% participation probably because the kids want to win the prizes.
Our newest "service" which we do in the begining of the year is Silver Graphics, (NOT refered to as a fundraiser, but as a service.) The kids do a project during an art class and each childs picture can put on anything from a mouse pad to a magnet to a shirt for the parents to order. We schedule it so the merchandise arrives the first week in December. we do it as a "service" for parents to help with gift giving. we make 4-5k and have about 70% participation.
I figured that out after reading the next post. But my question still stands from others - how do they refer to their family events? Do they promote them as fundraisers?
On the donations - we tried that a year ago. We wanted to make a 7,000 and voted on different ways to raise the funds (bingo, candles sales, etc) and donations was the overall winner. But, when it came time to do the donation drive we ended up with 39 families of nearly 600 in the school that donated a total of $1,095). It's great in theory but it did not work for us.
Originally posted by Daddio044: Tim - can we do that? Something as simple as "Does your group promote family events as fundraisers?"
Hey daddio -
I think the poster was referring to polling it in your own school (since each individual school is so different on topics like this -- income level, history, preferences all play a roll).
But I'll see if we can't get an upcoming front-page poll question to hit on a similar topic to see what groups around the country do.
You know one year, about six or seven years ago, our school tried something along those lines (we are a private religious school, also). Normally,we have a big auction/gala party and raise $45-$50K. Someone had the idea of soliciting parents for donations in lieu of the big auction and it was a big flop and , at the last minute,they had to throw something together. It didn't work at our school.
Shelly
