Well.. it's alot of work on your part but this year we've had a Family Fun Night where we have a bunch of stuff for the kids to do and you have to buy raffle tickets to do any of it..
We have a huge basket raffle where each class gets a theme and parents donate things for the basket than the PTO wrapped the baskets in clear celliphane (sp?) w/ a big bow.. the only thing we bought was the baskets at the dollar store, everything else we got donated.
We had a cake walk which was like muscial chairs but the winner... who's number on the chair was picked out of a hat, got to go pick out one of the many cakes that were made. We had close to 60 cakes and you should of seen some of the wonderful cakes that were made!
We had a face painting table that was 3 tickets to do and it was a HUGE Success.. There was a line at that table all night long.
We had 2 craft tables and each craft was one ticket
We even had someone wear a SpongeBob costume that we got donated for the evening and you could have your pic taken w/ him w/ a polaroid camera.. we had to pay for the film but we got it at a big discount from CVS and that was 4 tickets... (ended up being like 1.25 a pic) That also was a huge hit.
We also had a pizza dinner that parents paid for before hand. 15 bucks got you a pizza which we bought at cost, soda which was donated by a local soda co and we got icecream and topped donated from BJ Wholesale club.
Everything is 1 to 4 tickets and it was a huge success.. we made $2500 from the evening.
It was a fun evening but if you decide to do something like this you need to start planning at the begining of the school year. We had ours in April and although it was alot of work we are already making plans for next year now that we've had it once and we know what we can do to make things run even smoother!
Also... we haven't done this yet but want to try next year... Have some fun nights through out the year...
We are going to try to have Movie nights where the entire family gets in for like 5 bucks.
We want to try a "bingo for books" night and it's only 2 bucks to get in. The books we get from our book fairs for free
Have a craft night..
A game night where there is a different game on each table... parents are willing to pay a small fee to get in to have a fun night to do w/ the kids... specially during the cold winter months!
And if you have more stuff like this the parents won't see it as a fundraiser so they will be more willing to go.
We have bake sales at every event that parents goto and that's always good for a couple hundred bucks each time but we have a few of them so they all add up.
For a couple of years our school has had a basketball game between the teachers and the 4th grade students. The gym teacher helps the kids learn the game and we even had the other grades make posters, stickers and banners and we got a ton of snacks and juice boxes donated so it costs 3 bucks to get in and a buck for a snack and drink... And we could buy a banner or sticker for a buck. The kids have a blast and of course they somehow always win in the very close game! LOL But I think our school made $2000 from that and the kids loved it and it was fun for the parents to watch. Any 4th grader that wanted to play got to play... I don't know how many "Innings" are in basketball (yea I know... I know nothing about basketball so I know I said that wrong. LOL) But we had 7 of them so every kid got to play.
You've got to think outside of the box! It's more work for you but in the end it's actually more fun than those boring fall fundraisers and the more you do them the more kids will get excited to goto the stuff and you'll make more money as the years go on!
Is there anyone out there that might have good ideas for fundraisers that do not involve the students to sell? Our schools are not being allowed to involve the students in the selling of products for fundraising. We use to have a huge pie sale that generated around $11,000 profit for us. This last year we had to have the teachers try to sell the pies with incentives going directly to the teachers to use for their classrooms. It work well but we only received $4,000 in profits. Instead of one huge fundraiser a year, we are having to do 2 or 3. Any suggestions?
