Our PTO lost $3,000 due to embezzlement. We need a fundraiser in order to pay for everything we have in our budget.

It makes me very sad that our children may suffer because of one person's selfishness.

We have approx. 720 children at our elementary school, we would like to do something that does not involve food, and something that the children will enjoy. Has anyone done any of the children's artwork fundraisers?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. We have a spring carnival planned for mid-April but without an influx of cash we will probably have to cancel.

Thanks for any help!

Look at soybyamy.com. She is located in Georgia and has awesome soy candles. Allison will do EVERYTHING for you, including individually packing each order if you want her to. She gives 50% back to you...we just raised over $1000 with 15 cheerleaders selling. Hope this helps...good luck!

We have found that our school auction is our biggest ($-wise) fundraiser. Last year we moved to doing our auction online because parents complained about having to pay $40 a person for an auction night ticket (dinner & auction at hotel). We use biddingforgood.com and love it. We still do a community event to kick it off but it's pot luck and at our school cafetaria.

My son's school held an art gala and it was great. 3 pieces of art were featured from each student on an artboard with prices on them. Parents could buy individually or get the matte board and the three pieces for a special price. Parents were invited to preview artwork and have cheese, fruit and sparkling juice. It was decorated with class and was great fun. They even had a classical guitarist! The invitations were nicely done to give it that extra class.

What an awful situation!
Here's an excerpt from another dated post, but sure is packed w/great ideas, esp. the "car wash vouchers". Keep in mind, this was for a playground fundraiser. Here's the original source page:
ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/school/msg0418502520073.html


Some of the events we held to actually raise money:
Penny/Coin drive -raised about $1500, the gimmick was to fill the bed of a pick-up truck
Soldparts with kids names on it -bricks in a sidewalk might be the easiestthing at a school. Parents love to put their kids name on somethingpermanent. We sold bricks for $100, but only paid around $15 for themengraved. So that leaves you a lot of room to reduce the price of yourbricks if it suits your school better. Remember to budget for acontractor to install them, though.
Something called "flocking"involving individuals paying to have a friend, relative or neighbor'sfront yard filled with pink, plastic flamingos over night. It was ariot, raised about $1500. If that sounds interesting, email me I'lltell you the details of how it worked.
McDonalds will notoutright give money to this kind of thing. Most, however, will let youhave a fundraiser at a restaurant. I suppose it might vary betweenfranchises, but our allowed to have a "Voucher Night." We distributedvouchers to be turned in during specific hours of a given date. Acertain percentage of the sales with vouchers came back to our cause.We even got the local paper to print a voucher in the paper for thatweek. If you play your cards right, you might be able to get your localMcD's to schedule Ronald for that night. If not, maybe you can get amagician or clown to donate his/her time for entertainment. At the sametime, you might be able to get a local business to donate at item forraffle. We did all those things at our "Voucher Nights" to increasetraffic into the event and to increase sales. I mean, given a choice, alot of people get their food to go. If there is entertainment for thekids, they stick around, order dessert, sales go up. Every little bithelps.
Then of course, the traditional raffles and bake sales.I like these things because there is little or no cost involved. Unlikethe candy sales or other gift sales fundraising companies get schoolsto do. They can be good fundraisers, but also require a lot ofvolunteer time and the biggest profit is made by the company. Thehardest part of a raffle is getting the prizes donated. But, if you goto businesses to sponsor a component and they tell you "we can't" thenyou can pull the prize card, they might be more able to give an itemthan cash. You could have a dinner and involve the students by havingmusical groups perform, or having them help with serving and clean up.
Whateveryou do, don't forget to invite the local paper or even news channel. Alot of times, they have bigger stories, but call them every single timeand they might show up once or twice. A little press coverage goes along way. They prefer events involving kids, it gets better ratings Iguess.
Ask your core group of parents for help. It's amazingonce you starts asking people for things, what resources are out there.Somebody might have done a silent auction before, get them to do onefor this cause. Or a golf tournement. List out a bunch of ideas forfundraisers, knowing that you can't do all of them, and see who stepsup to chair what. You might find some hidden talent in someone youthought had none :o)
Things to get the kids involved withoutselling, any -a-thon. Walk, bowl, how about a swing a thon at anotherplayground? Pet wash, car wash. The best washes that I've seen sell"advance tickets." OMG, what a genious who came up with this! The kidssold the advance tickets, to neighbors or whatever, to come a coupleweeks later and get your car washed. Though on that date, you couldstill drive up and pay for a wash. But they had to have sold hundredsof those advance tickets, and I bet half of them were never redeemed. Iwould always forget to redeem mine! At $5 each, that is just plainprofit!! I still want to shake the hand of the person who thought thatup!



I've been maintaining a site specific for playground fundraising, too. See below.

rulesoftheplayground.com/fundraising-gra...d-fundraising-links/

Hope this helps.

Josh

For our winter family night we did a "Cookies w/Santa Family Night". We had a raffle of prizes that were donated by local area businesses such as gift cards for stores, restaurants, an ice shanty, golf coupons etc. We sold raffle tickets for $1.00 each, 7 for $5.00 or 30 for $20.00.

The raffle was a great success and our local businesses were more than happy to help with the donations.