Ideas for Elementary School Fundraisers and Fundraising Success! Pt. 1

Setting the stage

It's can be scary realizing you have to find a fundraiser for your school or group but there's some good news.  Although I am not going to make the claim that you will succeed at every fundraiser, if you follow the ideas here, you have the very best possible chances.

When I was 10 I had a school fundraiser.  It was horrible.  I had to sell raffle tickets.  They were the worst photocopies ever and I was quite sure that everyone I approached thought I made them myself.  I gathered my confidence best I could and headed off to sell.  As the doorbell rang, I could barely get out my sales pitch.  The only reason that I was able to sell my "quota" of tickets was because my school had a secret weapon.

They told me how much I needed to personally sell and I sold it.  They told me what the money was for and I told everyone I pitched.  It was in these sentiments that the importance of the fundraiser transferred from them, through me and on to my customers - even with a fake looking product.


So, as I was selling these in my neighborhood alone after dark I realized that it's not in what you sell, but in how you sell it.  Although I was scarred by the situation, I did become a successful sales professional many years later.

Your elementary school deserves to spend time doing effective stuff - things that work!  An elementary school fundraiser is only effective if it's important and that the reason it's important is communicated.  Secondarily, there has to be an achievable goal that can be broken down to a per-seller goal.  That is how true success is achieved.

If we're in agreement on that, we can move on to part 2. The Goods

101 Low & No Cost Promotions for Your School Fundraiser

I just posted 101 Low & No Cost Promotions for Your Fundraiser to The Educator's PLN (The personal learning network for educators). This is my latest book written together with Hunter Thomson here in the Believe Kids School Fundraising office.

This book outlines challenges, contests, drawings and games that can be used to encourage participation in your next elementary school fundraiser.

101 Low & No-Cost Promotions for Your Fundraiser

Please take a look and share!  Thanks so much!!!

Any feedback?  Let me know on twitter - twitter.com/believekids

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This document is available for download directly from Slideshare as well.  Just go directly to the book 101 Low & No Cost Promotions for Your Fundraiser and select the download button from the top of the presentation.

I also have printed versions available and if you would like one, just let me know!  I'll get it out in the mail to you.

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!

A school fundraising lesson courtesy of a major brand - Walmart.

Doing what's expected.

If your school is searching out a new and unique fundraising idea for fall 2010, consider this lesson from a major retailer. It reminds us why getting rid of things that people want is a risky proposition - even if it's not the most popular!

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Walmart returns items to shelves after lost sales
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To summarize, Walmart, in an effort to replace items with lower sales with new items, pulled a number of items from stores. It turns out that by removing something the community counted on, they lost the sale.

In the case of Walmart, they realized that instead of customers selecting another item in it's place, they choose to go elsewhere in many cases and do their entire shopping where they could get the specific item they were originally looking for.

When it comes to elementary school fundraising, if you can create a consistent set of fundraisers, whatever they are, you win! The Walmart story reminds us first-hand that if you remove something the customer is willing to support, they may not be willing to support it's replacement.

Concrete Examples

If you do a gift and wrap catalog sale in fall you are already doing the biggest and most profitable fundraiser of the year that we know about.

If you do a well-promoted event such as a thon or an auction and it has popularity and support within the community you are building a repeatable success as well.

If, on the other hand, you were to replace these with the newest and most unique school fundraisers, they must be more popular and more exciting than ever! As Walmart reminds us, you will lose customers just by switching to a new fundraiser the community doesn't understand or expect. Sometimes, new and unique fundraising ideas are not all they appear.

Plus, anything new and unique to fundraising doesn't sell anyway (whoops, did I say that out loud?). What seems perhaps a better way to close is to say that the world progresses by introducing new and unique things - we just need time to get used to them :)
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Author Note: I believe that there are some risky fundraisers out there for this fall. They include gift card sales for online shopping, home cookie dough delivery vouchers or any fundraiser that does not have a proper student prize program. Until there is a proven track record with these items, you may consider something else if you really have to meet a fundraising budget.
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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising and I blog nearly daily here at fundraising-advice.com

If you enjoy my posts, please follow my blog and write comments and send it to your friends and even criticize or send feedback to me here or on twitter - twitter.com/BelieveKids

My company homepage can be found here: http://www.BelieveKids.com

Thanks for looking!

Believe Kids Elementary School Fundraising - The Low Down...

This blog has never been self-serving. I didn't intend for the information here to ever be about my company and certainly not about me. It's time though, given some feedback I have received to give a quick summary about me and my company. I think it will give some valuable insight as to why I spend my time writing about how to improve funding in schools.

First off, I believe my personal mission is to speak up for children that won't speak up on their own. I have two kids and have found that they are very resilient. If they lack something, they find a way to cope and they move on. I believe adults in our society need to intervene any way they can to better provide for children when they wouldn't say otherwise. In my case, I believe good teachers are the key to recognizing when children lack a learning tool.

I believe in good teachers.

A good example of this is my belief in, and commitment to quality teaching. I believe that teachers should make every student feel like they are the teachers favorite. I believe there should be enough teaching styles to reach out to the future artist and the engineer and the zoologist and I don't believe reciting facts is the way to reach these very different personalities.

I believe in technology.

I believe that schools should commit to being ahead of the technology curve and not behind it. Technology has changed the way we teach but I'm not convinced we know that yet. All the research tools and resources needed to create a new and collaborative learning experience already exists in handheld devices and computers already on the market.

I expect a technological revolution in schools within the next 10 years whereby paper is largely replaced with hand-held devices.

I would like to be at the forefront of financing this revolution.

Professionally, Believe Kids Fundraising is about excellence. We pay attention to detail in every product and service so that we not only raise money for schools but maximize the fundraisers profitability so schools can fundraise less. Fundraising less means improving relations with parents and we think having a hand out too often creates resentment. We want parents and schools to work together because after all, both parents and schools need each other.

So, while we raise the bar with our elementary school fundraising programs, we will continue to set our sights on improving relationships and enhancing education with good teaching and technology.

One thing we know about the future of education, is that we are honored to be a part of it!

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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of the Believe Group and blogs here and at the School Fundraising PLN. If you enjoyed the article, please comment or share the link to this blog: www.believejay.blogspot.com or hit me up on twitter: www.twitter.com/believekids

Thanks so much!