We too were faced with the same problem of the same old fundraisers. We do Cinderella Cheesecakes, Gianni's Pizza and Yankee Candles, Tupperware , Nite at the Races and our annual Penny Party which all seem to do well. Our major complaint as parents were the candy bars. Tired of buying them and certainly don't need to be eating them. so we came up with a new idea for the School MANDATORY fund raiser. Give the people a chance on what they want - MONEY. At our school each school family - not student - must seel 75 $1.00 chances twice a year. We give away $2500 - $1000 $500. We raise enough money to give the prizes, pay a set amount to our principal that he would have made on the candy bars and were able to purchase 2 new smart board systems to compliment the 5 we received a grant for. We hope to purchase a 3rd one by the end of this school year and hopefully purchase the last 2 next year. We also set a date midway through the month long time to allow for selling the chances so that any child who turns in their tickets by this date go into a drawing for a chance at a prize. We give 5 $20.00 and 5 $10.00 cash awards. A $1 chance is easy to sell and everyone seems happy about it and everybody benefits by it.
Saw that PTOMama used Smencils. My daughter's school recently did something similar with Snifty pens. Haven't heard the results of the fundraising effort, but I brought these to work and sold out in all about half in hour! I liked these because they were inexpensive, looked awesome, smelled awesome, and are made in the US.
I got some ideas from a
free online class
on bake sale fundraisers and our school hosted a cupcake auction.
The jumbo cupcake start at $5 per cupcake and depending on their decoration went as high as $30 for a chocolate truffle and raspberry filled jumbo cupcake. We auctioned off approximately 42 jumbo cup cakes and all others went for $4, raising about $750 after all expenses were paid. I would try to scan photos if I could.
The PTO at my school has been looking into a company called Loopah. It seems pretty interesting, it's fundraising based off community service projects rather than selling items door to door. A friend of mine in Nevada is doing a fundraiser this month with them for her middle school. I've talked with them as well, and it sounds really refreshing, giving back to the community and raising money at the same time. And, the kicker is that because there are no products to sell, a school will keep 85% of the profits they make. that pretty much convinced me. their website is www.loopah.com
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best of luck!
Margo
We also did a very successful soy candle fundraiser with Eco-Scents in NY. The candles were amazing and only $10 for a large pure soy candle. They even sent a rep to do distribution for us and everything was pre-sorted. We made $10,000 and got our product in less than 3 weeks.
We made a couple thousand dollars just selling Smencils (scented pencils). We had a booth set up in the morning and sold them before school. The kids LOVED them. We did this for about a month and made around $2000 which is great considering we are a small elementary school.
