School Fundraising

[Cazhass]

Anyone got any good ideas?

I am the world's biggest bore on fund-raising, I just love it (but get a bit depressed as few of my friends seem to share my opinion!!) - I do fund-raising for playgroup & charities, not yet school, but these are some of the things we have tried, with varying success!

Cake sales, table top sales, jumble, car boots,lunches, quiz evenings, fashion show, cheese & wine, auction of promises, coffee mornings, 80/20 sales (clothes/toys etc), book sales, discos, race night, tombola - don't forget that sometimes a 'direct appeal for donations' can work well if people can't be bothered to support you, they may prefer to send a few quid.

IMO it is important to try and target different people who will spend money, ie: do not automatically assume that all the school parents will support you.

For schools I think that those printed tea-towels (with children's handprints) sell well - parents will buy them for Christmas presents etc.

I also think you need a specific target to let people know what you are raising funds for ie: we need £250 for library books or whatever.

Good luck - what are your ideas ?

Was just going to add about a fashion show, thanks SueW - we did one recently (I even allowed myself to be a model - joke - actually I have been asked to do it again, perhaps I have missed my career - BTW I am a large size 16, going grey & in my 40s !!!!!!) - anyway, it was a great evening & like SueW's raised approx £350. You could try approaching any local independent clothes shop - I am sure they like the opportunity to promote their stuff.

If you have any keen gardeners people always like poking around gardens so you could open three or four within walking distance, serve cream teas etc.

I am personally not too keen on sponsored events but they can raised loads, if you can think of something original.

I am a bit sad about this aren't I ? !

Something else worth looking into is party plan events - Body shop or similar, make sure you get a decent commission from the sales and sell tickets to the event, to inclde wine, or coffee & cakes, have a raffle etc. A great organisation is 'Chocoholics' which only operate near Easter or Christmas but do have fairly original chocolates ( & free samples !).

Something our school has done which raises a lot, with little effort on most peoples' parts, is selling videos of school productions, but it requires:

1. a competent camcorder artist who does close-ups of everybody and doesn't focus on their own little darling all the time and
2. someone who can do cheap reproductions. We found a chap in the yellow pages who would make copies at £2 a time - he has multiple VCRs set up in a spare bedroom - you can get blanks at £1 each or less these days, and if you can combine recordings of infant and junior productions on one tape you can sell quite a lot of copies at a net profit of around £4 a tape, if you charge £6-£7. (Pre-ordered and prepaid.)

Another thing our school does is to get all the kids to paint a plant pot at £1 a time, prepaid, and send it home on Mother's Day or whenever with a primula or something in it.

Thanks for the ideas!! so many so quickly!!
Eldest daughter now at school and they always seem so short of cash (as I'm sure most are)
it such a difficult one as most people seem to be of the opinion 'oh no not another piece of paper/notice asking for more money' so I think the secret seems to be come up with an original idea and sell it well promising a good time for all into the bargain... 70/80's disco's always seem to go down well, we can all pretend to be 20 again!!

www.marsfundraising.co.uk is one after my own heart - choccies are always popular! Easy to sell at workplaces cos they are just "there"!

Dd's school sometimes raises funds by just having a Free dress or theme/fancy dress day, where they have to "pay" to participate ie the teacher collects a small donation from each child not wearing a uniform. These work really well. You can also hold quiz nights or have an auction. These need support of local businesses/parents to be successful as you need donated prizes/items. The auction can work on a ticket system, where you buy so many tickets in advance, at say 50p each and then you can bid on an item up to however many tickets you have. That way all the money is dealt with before the event and things can run more smoothly on the night. Always good fun and a nice alternative to a raffle.

Probably the best UK site I have seen about fundraising is www.schoolzone.co.uk/documents/fundraising.htm Well worth a look. HTH

Just wanted to share with you an excellent fund raising event I attended last night - it was a vegetarian cookery demonstration (eating the food afterwards!!), I am not vegetarian but found it incredibly interesting - and the food was delicious.

You would need to get about 100 - 150 people to make it worthwhile, there were about 150 there last night & the organisers said they made (profit) £400 from ticket sales plus there was a bar & raffle so I am sure they are looking at a considerable amount more.

The presenter was very good indeed, very funny not over serious and does these a lot - he comes from Essex so not sure how far he would travel.

His details are:
website.lineone.net/~leon.lewis/

[email protected]

We've hired Activity World (soft play centre) for an evening - and sold tickets making it slighthly cheaper than usual but still giving us a profit.
If you can find any-one at Barclays they will match money raised at an event!!!

School summer fair yesterday - great fun, great success. Just wanted to tell you about the most popular 'stall': A football goal, with yr 6 children acting as goalies (on a rota) and 'fielders'. Customers paid 20p* for 3 shots at goal. 2 out of 3 got a small prize, 3 out of 3 a bigger prize.

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Last Christmas I organised personalised letters from Santa - it was quite time consuming, but I raised over £100, so it was worth it.

Catlie, my son is at a very small school and that sounds perfect for us. Could you post details when you have the chance? Thanks!

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Hi JJ

All you need to do is to design a template - there are loads of Santa Letter sites to give you ideas.

I personalised my template by using names, girl/boy, what they wanted for Christmas, the road they lived on (so Santa knew where to deliver the presents of course).

The school sent letters out about 3/4 weeks before the end of term to all the parents/carers in the school with a tear off form to return with the required information - eg. name, road they lived on, presents wanted for christmas, etc...., and I set up a Santas Postbox so the return slips + money could be posted into it. I charged £1 per letter, but you might get away with more than this.

It is quite time consuming so I would do the letters as they come into you and set a deadline for the slips to be returned, at least one week before end of term I would suggest. Be prepared to use a lot of printer ink. Good luck.

The head teacher at my daughter's infant school is having custard pies thrown at her in a couple of weeks. She's also jumped out of an aeroplane to raise money for the school.

That is a fab idea, Catlie. Which site did you get your Santa letter template from? Thanks.

I can't remember which one now, but do a search on google, or askjeeves, etc... under "personalised santa letters" and loads of sites will pop up - some will show you examples of letters, and some will not. It just gives you a few ideas on what to put in the template.

Catlie, thanks! It'll definitely be on our list for next year (unless the PC police try and spoil the fun).

Thanks from me too!

We are going to get eco friendly cotton bags printed with the school logo to sell next term. Any sponsor ideas for infant school children to take part in?? Have previously hired bouncy castle and had sponsored bounce which was very popular.