Elementary School Carnival Ideas

Friday, July 30, 2010

Less is More - Get Rid of School Fundraisers that Don't Perform...

So, If you had a chance to read my last post entitled  Your school should keep records on fundraising trends You may be a bit more aware of the importance of your past fundraising data. 

Your past successes and failures in the school fundraising department can help you immesurably in how you structure your future school fundraising.  You can use past data to understand what works and what doesn't for your particular school.

When you take a look at the past school fundraising results or remember back to what didn't work so well, can you point to any of the following examples as being true for you?  Go  ahead and ask yourself the following questions:

-Did you have a spirit night or other event that generated little income?


-Was there a fundraiser that you marketed well that made under a thousand dollars?


-Have any of your fundraisers required an unreasonable amount of man-hours to pull off?

-Have you incurred rental fees on any fundraisers that barely broke even?

-Have you tried a type of fundraiser that is so new and unique that parents and the community didn't support it?


-Have you received a much larger number of complaints from any one fundraiser?


-Did you use your printed and email newsletters to promote a box tops, soup label or recycling program instead of your main fundraiser?

-Have you ever fallen short of your fundraising goal?


-Have you hosted safety nights or other educational or community service events and called them fundraisers?

-Have you added fundraisers to make up for lost fundraising income?

-Have you sold a single product that wasn't as popular as anticipated?


-Do you require approval for all fundraisers at the school?


-Are fundraisers allowed to operate one after another?

-Do you believe parents will only be satisfied with new and unique fundraisers?

Perhaps one or more of the above situations are true for you and your school.  We know there are a lot of considerations and that's why there are professional out there to help.  You can call my company or any other reputable elementary school fundraising company  and get honest advice free of charge.  Good fundraising companies should allow you to choose them and not try to take your desire for straight-up information the wrong way and pester you.

Regardless of your interest in calling around for advice, may I suggest you check my blog out again since I am planning a follow up to this post with some answers to the questions raised here.

In the end, you may be able to get rid of at least one fundraiser by using the questions above. Not every fundraiser or fundraising type will be right for your school so looking closely at the effort and results will certainly help you put things into perspective.

As usual, thanks so much for looking and I appreciate your comments more than anything else.  If you can, please just write me a little ditty below - good or bad.  Thanks!

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