How To: Sprinkler Blowout Fundraiser

This isn't for everyone but it may just be for you and your fundraising group.  Offering a sprinkler blowout fundraiser!  Here's how to do it:

Sprinkler Blowout Fundraiser

Difficulty: Hard

Preparation time:  4 weeks

Fundraiser duration: 2 weekends (or more)

Serves: small groups

Startup cost: High

Profit potential: High

What you need:

Marketing Flyers

Time Sheets or other tracking method

Credit card processing (recommended but not necessary)

1-2 experienced adults per team

Ladder

Commercial air compressor (could be rented)

Basic tools (screwdriver, shovel)

Method:

1. Advertise in school and around the community beginning in September and schedule appointments for the first two weekends of October.  Charge a fair market rate depending on how many zones a customer has.  In our area presently the fair price is $35-$45 per small residential system but yours may vary.  Avoid commercial work and focus on neighborhoods unless you have abilities beyond the scope of this post.

2. Schedule and confirm with every customer leaving enough time to stay on schedule even if you have some delays. 

3. Show up on time and complete the work effectively.  Allow children to only do elements of the job that are safe and age appropriate.  Do not let a child operate heavy machinery under any circumstance.

Notes:

1. This fundraiser requires professional experience outside of the scope of this post.

2. There are safety concerns with heavy machinery including emissions, loud noise, moving parts, fire danger.  Please make sure no children are in danger at any time.

PROS: Big money potential for a small group given great need in many parts of the country.

CONS: Seasonal, time intensive and requires equipment and experience.

Last Minute Elementary School Fundraising Ideas

Ok, you've waited until the end September to find a fundraiser for your elementary school.  There's not much time left.  I'm not big on self-promotion, in fact I won't do it here.  I won't be talking about my company or products but I will be making a suggestion to you.

This is for you if you are looking for last minute elementary school fundraising ideas!

A suggestion that can make you tons of money in just two weeks. A word of warning though.  I sound a bit sarcastic when I rant about this stuff.  I blame extreme amounts of coffee for my tone.  Please don't be too hard on me for how straight-forward I approach this topic.

You have a good week or so to find a quality fall catalog or cookie dough company and get a fundraiser going. What you will find is that these two fundraisers are doing well right now and will work for your school...  for a few more weeks that is.

The reason these product fundraisers work so well is two fold.  First off, the school fundraising companies have a system in place on top of offering products that sell and incentives to increase participation.  Secondly, there is no real need to put in all the work associated with school events.  Hey, I'm all for school events but with just a few weeks of the fundraising season left, you can host a successful catalog sale now and still plan a spring carnival, auction or other volunteer intensive event for later in the year!

If your school misses the boat on offering a quality fall fundraiser, you will be so far into the holidays that making significant funds is much more difficult.  This get's into wreath and christmas tree fundraising time and that's tough for an entire school to effectively run.

There's only a few reasons not to offer a quality fall catalog or frozen food fundraiser at your elementary school:

1) You know that zero effort will be put in and I mean zero.  It's not all that fair to make a fundraising company do their part without just a little bit of excitement being generated on the school side.

2) You offer a ton of small fundraisers and get very little participation.  You don't want to offer cookie dough if you are going to get stuck with shipping costs.  It's expensive to ship frozen goods so make sure you can get over the minimum order quantities to get free shipping!


On that note, I better call it a day before I get myself into trouble.  I'm fired up!  The fact is, a good fundraising company is not out to scam anyone or make things worse or take all the profit.  A good fundraising company only exists to allow schools to make more money than they can on their own.  That's the case with my company and others I know about.  Find them and allow them to help your school raise more money, more effectively!