Parents Need to Support Schools... Fundraising Companies Should Improve... Schools Need To Promote!

In the last few days, I've heard from some fundraising reps that the number of incentives required to effectively promote a fundraiser has gone up - way up over the years.

Incentives are intended to be a subtle encouragement during a school fundraiser, not a bribe.  I have been reminded that marketing and incentives can easily become overbearing.

There is also a fine line between encouraging sales and interruption and bribery.  The fundraising industry by and large, can effect change so parents will once again support fundraisers in large numbers.

The solution...


1) Parents need to participate in fundraisers.  It is really that simple.  They have to do so as part of a team. To work with the school, family and fundraising company to host one successful fundraiser.  This is how we achieve supremely effective fundraising that does not interfere with schooling or coerce students to participate.

Then, after one condensed successful fundraiser, don't spend the rest of the year fundraising, but rather having some fun, entertaining or educational activities and events.  Celebrate your successes by not fundraising multiple times throughout the year!

2) Fundraising companies need to improve to offer heavy-hitting fundraisers that can be school-wide successes so that schools do not need multiple fundraisers.  Fundraising companies also need to offer the type of quality products and services that leave parents happy.

3) Schools need to effectively portray the main fundraiser as the main fundraiser... put focus on it... make it important!  If 'save those box tops' is on the scrolling marquis before you launch your fundraiser, your main fundraiser of the year will not perform as well.

As you can see, the solution is not to offer more and more incentives.  The answer is to work together to make one fundraiser important.  By encouraging all parties involved to participate and asking them all firmly, amazing successes follow!

Ok, until next time!

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Principal Incentives and Contests in School Fundraising Work!

Promotion is everything when it comes to successful school fundraising and this shows just how exciting using a principal promotion can be!  What a fun reward for hard-working students!



If you want your school fundraiser to be more than just another paper sent home, make it special!

Better School Fundraising: Motivation is the Key to Success

Motivation is the key to a successful fundraiser. If you want to get the most from your school fundraiser, you have to motivate parents as well as children. Getting parents motivated and excited about participating is the fastest way to having a better school fundraiser.

Follow these tips and you will more success and have to do less fundraising.

Inform
In order for parents to participate, they have to know why the fundraiser is a necessity for the school. Before anyone can help solve a problem they must know what the problem is. Let parents know why the fundraiser is important to their school. Hold a meeting and address the budgetary needs of the school for the year and clearly explain how the money raised from the fundraiser will go towards helping meet those needs. Send out informative emails detailing the areas in school that the official budget won't cover. Show videos explaining the need for the school fundraiser. Whatever you do, make sure to emphasize the necessity for the fundraiser. Parents need to know that their money is being used for essential educational needs.

Encourage
For the fundraiser to be as successful as possible, you need to encourage everyone to participate. Teachers, parents and administrators need to all lend a hand in making the fundraiser a success. Encourage teachers to do daily announcements to keep their students informed about the fundraiser. Ask principals to send emails to parents asking for support. A principal's email list can generate thousands of dollars in a matter of minutes. Reach out to parents and encourage them to register online with the fundraiser and send emails to family and friends asking for support. Teaming up will take your fundraiser over the top!

Incentivize
Everyone loves prizes. No matter how big or small, kids love walking away from something with a concrete item. Offer one big grand prize that every child will want to get. Then, make all the prizes great. If there is more than just one prize that interests them, they will try to keep selling to reach the desired items. Use a variety of long and short term incentives. Offer a pizza party, limo ride, or ice cream social to the class or grade level that sells the most. Hold daily raffle drawings. Use principal incentives. If the school meets their fundraising goal, the principal can get a pie in the face, have to spend the day on the roof or as a student. Incentives don't have to just be for the kids either. You can have teacher and administrator incentives as well. Offer gift certificates to teachers whose classrooms meet their goals, or limo rides to the administrators if their school meets its goal. Just remember, great incentives will always keep everyone motivated!

Elementary School Fundraising Prizes and Prize Programs

If you have been involved with fundraising at your school, you are certainly aware that there are many ways to get students and parents excited about your elementary school fundraising efforts.

The basis for a good promotion of your fundraiser will likely be a student prize program. Most fundraising companies offer these and some are better than others. Schools also can purchase product on their own if they want the extra work.

A student prize program that is cumulative is the most effective. These student prize programs allow students to earn numerous prizes depending on how many items they have sold.

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Self-Promotion Warning:
In the following sentences, I tell you how great we are.

Make sure to get the highest quality prize program you can. There are reports of cheap prizes out there and if you purchase them yourself, try to get the highest quality items you can.

Believe Kids fall prize program is very good. If you need a prize program to compare to, let me know. Believe Kids offers 11 cumulative prize levels. There are 4 prizes at 10 items sold and the top item is at 125 items. You won't believe the items being offered either. Please get in touch if you would like to see it. You will get a sense of what a truly exceptional prize program is.

End self-promotion

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On top of a student prize program, many times one or more incentives or goal rewards will be offered. These could be really anything that adds to the excitement of the fundraiser because of hitting goals, rewarding top-sellers, daily incentives or group rewards.

Here are a few ideas in no particular order that cost a lot of money:

Lunch Limo Ride
BMX Show
Video Game Truck

In these scenarios, a fundraising company will likely pay these for you and they should not take profit percentage away. I have heard of some companies taking 5-10% of profits for these events. I would recommend that you work it out in terms of the cost of the event instead of a percentage - if your sale does well, you would be spending a lot more than the event costs to host.

If you are hosting your own fundraiser of some sort, make sure that the money these efforts cost do not make your fundraiser profits suffer. I read about a $700 gross fundraiser that a school held where they incentivised it with a $400 estimated limo ride. You really have to be careful about these things. These incentives work best when enhancing your highest-profit fundraisers.

Here is a quick list of a few promotions that don't cost much:

Invite a student to be principal for a day
Lunch with principal or favorite teacher
Movie & Popcorn with principal or favorite teacher
Ice cream social for top-selling class
Ice cream for entire school when goal is hit
Principal gets a mohawk when goal is hit
Principal spends day in tree (or other zany idea) when goal is hit
Duct Tape faculty to wall (be careful with this as there has been some sexual related problem lately. Always cover personal parts with cardboard before taping.)

There are some daily drawings that also work well... Consider these:

Some sort of treat for children who hit their sales goals (yes, I guess I mean candy and yes, my kids eat too much of it already so I am hesitant here).
Have a drawing of an iPod or some sort of popular electronic item
Purchase various prizes and have a drawing every day the fundraiser is going on.

If you put some incentives into your fundraiser the results will follow. You can rely on a fundraising company to help or do it yourself. In the end, anything you can do to build excitement around the fundraiser will help create success.

Thanks for looking!

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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising and can be reached via comment on any of my blog posts, at www.BelieveKids.com or on twitter - twitter.com/BelieveKids

I wrote this one pretty fast so it is not my best work. I still would love any comments, feedback or suggestions you would like to offer. Thanks so much!

Fundraising Incentives for your School!

One thing is clear! Incentives work.

In planning your next fundraiser, make sure you are providing a good reason for folks to get involved.

Everyone loves encouragement

Regardless of what you use to encourage participation in the fundraiser, the more you can do to get people excited and interested in helping, they more effective your fundraising efforts will be. Here is a list of groups that could use encouragement:

• Students
• Teachers
• Administrators
• Faculty
• Principals
• Parents
• Relatives
• Community

So, it certainly seems impossible to provide incentives to all these groups but it's really not all that challenging.

Here's why:

Parents, Relatives & The Community

The reality is that parents, relatives and the community at large receive the gift of charitable giving, helping children and improving education. Having said that, they still need some encouragement to purchase. That's where running a quality fundraiser comes in. A good gift catalog or a cookie dough offer should be enough to earn their support.

Faculty, Administrators & Principals

When it comes to the school, it's not always easy to garner the support of teachers, principals and administrators. With everything going on today in schools with budget cuts and lower fundraising returns due to a bad economy, many schools are getting more involved on their own.

Our best advice is to ASK!

Ask the principal to send out an email, ask the receptionist for help if needed and ask teachers to encourage their classes to participate. Yes, perhaps a bit different asking for help but it will produce results. Keep in mind that not all incentives require money - freebies and delivering cups of coffee go a long way.

Students

Students should be incentivised in a few different ways if possible. A good fundraising company will provide daily incentives to remind them to work on the fundraiser daily as well as a quality prize program. There are a number of other ideas that will help so consult with your fundraising rep. Most likely they work for a company that will supply other ideas as well such as a top-seller prize.

This is one case where your fundraising company can really be of assistance. If a school does little to promote a fundraiser, the results will likely reflect that. On the other hand, if a school and fundraising company work together to really promote the fundraiser, it will be a huge success!

In the end, here's your success challenge: get everyone you can involved and reward everyone you can!

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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising and blogs here regularly. If you would like more information visit www.BelieveKids.com If you enjoy the information here, please share links or leave comments, questions or feedback for me. I can also be reached on twitter - twitter.com/BelieveKids Thanks for looking!!