Your School Can Have Consistent, Successful Fundraising Efforts - Despite the Economy!

It's easy to forget that traditional fundraisers and large events make up the vast majority of school-wide fundraising income. A fall gift & wrap catalog, frozen cookie dough and large events such as a-thons, auctions or carnivals are still the way to go when it comes to raising the big bucks.

With the economy being what it is, every type of fundraising is being challenged... It's not just selling fundraisers. An article I just read reported less attendance at spirit nights, less attendance at their fundraising events and less overall volunteerism. Everything is down across the board.

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Read Schools suffering as PTOs feel pain from the recession

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Despite the economy, any school can have consistent, successful fundraising efforts - and even raise more than ever. It takes a good simple plan, consistency and a bit of stern communication.

So, I have been following this post on the ptotoday.com messageboard. It has a number of replies for fundraisers that do not raise much money.

These fundraisers, as pointed out on the messagboard, creates fundraising 'noise'. This overabundance detracts from the success a school will have with their efforts.

I am not saying that these smaller fundraisers aren't valuable in the right circumstances, It's just that today's school-wide fundraising has some challenges. In particular, parents are more willing than ever to not participate in school activities and 'fundraising fatigue' is common.

Today, for a fundraiser to truly succeed, it needs to stand out and take center stage so to speak - it needs to be remarkable.

Here's why:

If parents get the impression that another fundraiser is coming right around the bend, they will pass on the current fundraiser. If parents believe a fundraiser will not have any positive effect, they will not participate.

If the parents do not participate in the fundraiser with the highest average sold per student and the overall participation rate, fundraising revenue for the school will drop significantly.

By offering a high number of small fundraisers, mediocre events and spirit nights, schools make it easier for parents to pass on the fundraiser they really should be participating in. Some schools exacerbate the issue by allowing teams, groups and charity drives to fundraise freely without due consideration.

By limiting fundraising efforts, parents will want to be involved with their kide education and will support it. The trick here is to offer the fundraisers that produce results. After all, a fall gift catalog, cookie dough sale or well organized events have a dramatically improved average over these other types of fundraisers.

Do what works and don't worry too much! You don't have to dismantle your entire fundraising scheme necessarily to succeed. Just start by thinking critically if there is anything you can do to focus efforts on the fundraisers that work best for you and minimize promotion of the ones that just don't.

(to be continued after some shameless self-promotion...)

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Shameless self-promotion:

Knowing what is a large traditional fundraiser and what is a smaller niche sale can be difficult. My company, Believe Kids, offers a spring and fall catalog as well as frozen cookie dough programs. We consider our offerings to be the most profitable product fundraisers in existence today for elementary schools.

Please visit www.BelieveKids.com to take a look at what we offer.
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(End shameless self-promotion)

Here is a screenshot from a school website I recently ran across. It is an example of how bolding and highlighting can send the wrong message. In this case, the school is hosting an upcoming fundraising event, however, based on this screenshot, parents need to be focused on box tops. The lesson here is to focus efforts on what works and reconsider promotion of things that are not making a huge impact.

This same school just wrapped up an event where they raised $700 but offered a limo ride which I can only imagine was $400. How is it worth their time and effort to promote this fundraiser when they could concentrate efforts on something that would raise many more times that amount. The $300 they raised could be made up by just a few students participating in a catalog or cookie dough sale. It's cleary a case of effort spent on things that don't produce results.

Concentrate on less frequent, more focused, heavy-hitting fundraisers.

By way of example, our largest cookie dough sale this year was $97,000 and 50% of that went back to the elementary school. There would have been no way for this school to achieve such a success if they hadn't done some things very right.

There are wildly successful event fundraisers as well. I recently heard about a private catholic high school that raised an astounding $750,000 in their fundraising efforts. Although for most schools something like this is unrealistic, we can still learn some valuable lessons from them.

Here are some quick thoughts on what is contributing to fundraising success today:

1) Choose the right company and fundraiser type for your group.
2) Limit the total number of fundraisers throughout the year.
3) Vigorously express the importance of participation to parents.
5) Incentivise students, parents and faculty in every way possible.
5) Involve principals, faculty, staff and volunteers in a cohesive effort.
5) Use every tool at your disposal to market the sale.
6) Extend the sale beyond just school attendees parents.
7) Make it remarkable!

Regardless of what type of fundraising you do, make it special and make it important. Remember that less is more!

If there is one thing that you take away from this article, please just remember that if you roll from one fundraiser to another, it will become very easy for parents to dis-engage and lower participation will surely follow. On the flip side, if you keep it simple and focus your efforts, you will work less and profit more!

Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts and I hope the information is of help to you and your school!

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Jay Moneta is the vice president of Believe Kids Fundraising. If you enjoyed the information on this site, please consider forwarding on the link or following my blog. I also encourage feedback, comments and suggestions here on my blog or on twitter.com/BelieveKids Thanks for looking!