Yikes - Homecoming parade fees

Council members get tanked, Wal-Mart donates nearly $3,000 for homecoming parade fees

Yikes, I have read this several times now and I'm really not sure I like this at all.  Government makes school pay homecoming parade permit fee, Government and school tries for 2 days to raise fee, Walmart pays fee.

 Checkout the article - complete with videos - here.

This is pretty sad and I can't really put my finger on it. I'm not disappointed with Wal-mart, in fact I think they did a great thing.  I think that the fact that goverment wouldn't wave this fee is sad.  Am I wrong?

What are your thoughts?

Why Cheerleaders Break the Fundraising Mold...

It's hard to compete with an entire schools fundraising efforts but there is one group that can compete - Cheerleaders.

Out of all of the groups we fundraise with at Believe Kids Fundraising, Cheerleaders consistently outsell other groups.  So, here are a few tips for cheerleading squads considering doing a school fundraiser:

1) Create a successful team - adults and students on the squad should work together to plan their fundraisers!  Are there any parents that would volunteer to help your squad with fundraising efforts?

2) Have a compelling reason to raise funds - don't raise money if you don't need it but when you do, make sure the reason is strong enough for the community to want to get involved. Being able to express the importance to the group is necessary.

3) Be fair and reasonable - Keep your products and services affordable so they have sufficient value.  There is nothing worse than going through the motions of fundraising only to create what people feel is a 'ripoff' or a bad value.

4) Fundraise at the right time - Picking the right time to host your fundraiser is very important.  Make sure the squad will have the ability to focus on raising funds.  For that reason, avoid competitions and times of vacation or travel.  Hosting a fundraiser during exams is also avoidable.

5) Consider using a school fundraising company - Although many fundraisers can be successfully held without professionals, you may be surprised at how much can be raised through an organization that specializes in school fundraising.

6) Have fun!  There are a lot of lessons to be learned in life and fundraising teaches many of them.  The thing is, no fundraiser is worth doing if the groups is setup for failure.  Have an attainable goal and then have fun raising money and everyone wins!

Go team!


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Thanks for reading!  Please, please, please leave a comment good or bad below.  I appreciate every comment I get.  Thanks!

Oh, here is the info on my school fundraising ideas in case you want to see if www.BelieveKids.com is a good fit for your organization.

Elementary School Fundraising Ideas

Elementary schools all across the nation are being affected by budget cuts.  School programs are being cut, there are less teachers and less money to purchase much needed supplies and technology for learning.

Having said that, there have also been a number of changes in the fundraising industry.  The economy has taken a toll on several industries and some school fundraising companies have not been able to adapt. 

Today, parent groups such as PTA, PTO, PTSA and PTSO groups want to do their own thing.  They want exciting, new and unique school fundraisers.  The thing about new and unique is that sometimes it doesn't perform.

So, if you are a parent group such as a PTA, PTO, PTSA or PTSO and you have not chosen your fundraiser, keep the following in mind:

The numbers won't lie.

Any fundraising company you consider needs to be able to offer you a sales history so you know what to expect.  You take what you know about your past sales and determine if a fundraiser will perform for you or not.  If something seems out of place when you speak to a fundraising company you will know they just want to earn your business and not keep it.

Elementary school fundraising companies should want to offer you their REAL sales figures.  This protects the school from estimating their income too high and being disappointed and it but the fundraising company will look great when it sells in excess of what it estimated.

In the end, when you choose an elementary school fundraiser, get the numbers and compare them against what you know about your past sales.  If you are going through the trouble of fundraising, make it count! 

If you want new and unique elementary school fundraising ideas and you don't get the estimated sales figures, don't be surprised at the results!

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Thanks so much for looking.  I encourage comments (both good and bad) below :)
You can always take a look at the Believe Kids Elementary School Fundraising Ideas.  Thanks!

Elementary School Fundraising - FoCUs

So, if you're tracking with my multiple blog posts here, I'm walking folks through how to determine what fundraisers are best for your school or group. 

My first post was about tracking the successes and failures of your school fundraisers over time.  This allows for you to get a better idea what works and what doesn't.

Your school should keep records on fundraising trends.

Secondly, I posted a number of questions that could put into perspective some of the traits to look out for.  If you see something that is not working for whatever reason from reviewing these questions, you may want to think twice about those fundaisers.

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

Here is a summary of a few thoughts I have on the matter.  When it comes to elementary school fundraising I believe that schools do too much fundraising.  I further believe that too few schools look critically at their fundraising efforts to determine how to maximize fundraising revenue while being considerate to parents.

If you have a solid main fundraiser, regardless of if that is a school-wide event, catalog sale, cookie dough or some other heavy-hitting fundraiser, you can earn more with that fundraiser than you can by adding smaller ones.

It just takes focus.

Focus on the large high-profit fundraiser.  Remove any distraction or noise from any lesser producers and then create teamwork and unity between children, parents, parent groups, administration and principals.

Actually get rid of fundraisers that earn less than a thousand dollars a year!  Yes, you can and here's how:  Increase participation in your main fundraiser and you should be able to more than compensate.  It only takes a few additional sellers and by making your main fundraiser more important to faculty, parents and the community, you will attract more attention.

It's easy for me to say.  The reality is, the involvement of the school in the fundraiser is the single most important aspect of the school fundraising process.  Without the help of principals and administrators, you send the info home and blindly see what comes back. This method of fundraising generally takes a larger number of fundraisers because the same parents are supporting the fundraiser instead of more parents supporting fewer efforts.

Yep, you may want to read that paragraph again.  It's not easy to grasp in a way but here's an example.  Would you rather hold one fundraising band concert with 1,000 different people attending or have the same 100 people go to 10 concerts?

Focus your efforts on what works best and get behind it!  That's the way to increase fundraising returns.  It's a teamwork that only comes when there are deliberate choices being made. 

Choose the proper main fundraiser and then stop at nothing to succeed.

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I encourage comments here on my blog - please leave a comment good or bad below  :)

Visit the link to see what types of Elementary School Fundraisers my company offers but regardless of who you use for your fundraisers, if you can learn from the past and focus on the future, you will succeed!  Thanks!!

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!

Your school should keep records on fundraising trends.

No sugar coating... Here's the way to enhance your school fundraising and you can use these tips right away!

Your school should keep records on fundraising trends. 

Keeping a simple log of enrollment, student's that participate in the fundraiser, items sold, dollars raised, average item price, average sale amount, fundraising profit percentages, etc. will help you immensely. 

Further, you can create this log to include all of your efforts, product or not, and list the time requirements that each effort required (ex. 10 hour planning, 2 hour event, 12 volunteers).  This let's you balance the outcome with the work needed.

Analyze your data

The numbers won't lie.  Take a hard look at what is working and what is not.  Every individual is different in terms of how they look at data but one thing is for certain.  You should be able to determine which fundraisers produce little income or take too much effort to make it worth while.

Less is more

There are only so many resources a school has access to.  You can either tap these resources one time effectively or you will need to tap them many times ineffectively.  Yes, this sounds a bit cold - after all, we're talking about parents.

Here's the truth of the matter:

If you concentrate your efforts on one main fundraiser per semester, you will put more emphasis on the main fundraiser.  When you put a priority on something it naturally becomes more important. 

You can make it very clear that this main fundraiser is going to keep you from hosting continual fundraising efforts. You can let parents know that you will not have continuous fundraising efforts if you hit your goal and that XX items sold is requested by each family.

The closer you get to parents thinking that their support is mandatory, the better your participation and in turn, your fundraising revenue. 

Spread your fundraising out.

Do not have it appear that another fundraiser is around the corner.

If, by way of argument, you host multiple fundraisers back to back and parents are aware that this is your strategy, which should parents support?  After all, if they skip the first one, they can just give on the next or the next or the next.

In my opinion, multiple fundraisers is one of the biggest factors in school fundraising revenues dropping.  Everyone is quick to blame the economy but the truth is... schools have added fundraisers and put less importance on each one causing a drop in participation.

It would appear that there are two types of parents.  Parents that will support repeatedly and parents that will stop participating in fundraisers at the first sign the school is going to repeatedly hit them up.  Yes, this is an exaggeration perhaps but you will lose the support of a group of parents after hitting them up repeatedly.  'I'll just get the next one' is a gesture your school should work hard to avoid.

In the end, I was pretty blunt in this post but I hope you can use the information to determine which fundraisers work best for you and then how to host them so you receive a maximum return for your time and efforts. 

If you find this information valuable, the best thing you can do is leave a comment - good or bad and share the website address if you feel someone will benefit from my school fundraising posts. 

My conflict of interest is my fundraising company Believe Kids, where we are the leader in new high-profit school fundraisers.  I do not expect that my company services are for everyone but if you are an elementary school, you may just find out we're the right fit for your needs: www.BelieveKids.com

Thanks for looking!

How to Have a Successful School Fundraiser

Here's the top 6 things you can do to have a successful school fundraiser:

1) Plan ahead.  The earlier you organize your thoughts the better.  Asking when, how, who questions can help you put into motion a plan.

2) Have a goal.  Make sure you know how much you want to raise.  It seems trivial, but you will be able to determine to what extent you should promote, reward and incentivise.

3) Start early.  If you start your school fundraiser in the first few weeks of school, you will have less competition and generate more interest.

4) Get people involved.  Involving administration and the principal in a fundraiser can single-handedly make the biggest impact on your fundraiser.

5) Market your fundraiser. Spread the word any way you can.  The more you get the word out, the more important the fundraiser becomes in the eyes of the community.

6) Reward hard work.  Put into place incentives and rewards.  These will keep the fundraiser exciting and if done right will get parents and students on board! 

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We have a large number of informative posts located at thefundraisingpln.com regarding hosting a successful school fundraiser.  Thanks for looking and please share and comment :)