These are all good points that are brought up. It's kind of like ‘the chicken vs. the egg' dilemma. However, one thing that can be gleaned regarding prize programs is that students drive sales, not parents. One way to prove this is to hand out the brochures to your parents instead and see how much selling actually takes place. Our experience is unless you involve the students, you'll get very little response. Of course the parents usually decide if their students end up participating or not so you actually need to appease both. We wrote an article about this called Why Student Prize Programs Fall Short .

Clay Boggess
Big Fundraising Ideas

I have kids in two different schools, and one sells Sally Foster, the other Innisbrook. I think the quality and the design of the paper for Sally Foster is much better than Innisbrook, but that's not to say that the Innisbrook quality is poor. I have to say, though, that the school that sold Innisbrook this year is now switching to Sally Foster for the next year, for a couple of reasons. First, when we saw the sample paper we were simply horrified at how ugly a lot of it was--unfortunately for Innisbrook, they seem to have put the really ugly paper in front of the decent paper designs. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there were about 10 of us sitting around the table with our mouths hanging open when we were looking at the sample book, and the feelings were universal. Second, Innisbrook cut a few feet off their rolls for next year to be able to keep the price the same as this year. A number of people also like the Sally Foster candy better than the Innisbrook candy.

As for prizes--my kids aren't terribly motivated by any of those things, and they all end up in the trash pretty quickly. Most stuff gets sold to our neighbors and relatives, and the kids really don't do a whole heck of a lot of the selling. While those prizes might motivate some kids, my sense has always been that parents do most of the work anyway, and the prizes don't make a big difference to most people. I've always been tempted to try the family prize idea instead.

Also, we make our kids go to neighbors/family together with both the Sally Foster and Innisbrook catalogs, and, while many people try to make their purchases come close to evening up between the kids, we've noticed that people choose more of the Sally Foster paper than the Innisbrook paper. Innisbrook sales of the other stuff they sell seem to do a little better than Sally Foster.

We did the Entertainment book fundraiser with Sally Foster this year, and that was very successful; you might consider that. For next year, at least one of the schools is adding magazine vouchers, as well. I think the magazine voucher program is available through both Sally Foster and Innisbrook, and it appeals to those who don't need wrapping paper or the other stuff that is sold in the catalog.

After a few seasons of fundraising we found that although they don't advertise it, just about all fundraising companies will let you design your own incentives and prizes. My son's old (he's now in MS) elementary school has used Sally Foster for about 4 years now. We were going to change in 2004 but after inviting presentations from a few other companies we again chose Sally.

We have given entertainment books and gift cards for toys r us. You might have to make up your own flyer, but you do not have to go with the junky prizes.

We had a different catalog company this year, the products were great and in leu of the junky prizes the kids earn we went for a family prize. We thought it was a great idea because we parents know that we do the selling and would love to win something like this (a weekend getaway for the family at a family oriented resort no less). Second and third prizes were money. The fundraising company gave us a carnival for credit since we didn't go with the junky kid prizes.
Our fundraiser was way down this year, like $4,000 + under what we had earned in previous years. We think it had to do with the prizes. We hate the junk but thats what motivates the kids. They have the shiney brochure to look at and wish on and that keeps them motivated. We were disappointed to say the least. I think we'll be going back to the previous prize program. We are also considering a "one time only" fundraiser if we can raise enough money with it, maybe a fun run or something.
Hope yours goes well. We'll try again next year!

Innisbrook hands down is a far superior company in both product and prize program. Their prize program is more family oriented and families get more prizes compared to other companies. We have done Innisbrook for a long time and we get comments all the time about how great the quality of the products is.

I'll share something with you we learned the hard way. It doesn't matter how good a prize program is unless it is family oriented when you consider that it's usually the parents doing the selling. Also, if your rep isn't good and the company isn't organized and helpful, it can tuen parents with problems away from doing fundraising with your group. I have never worked with either of these companies because their products don't seem to interest our families so I can't help you on that front.