i work with my elementary and church camp to fund these events. we have done the coupon card that is the size of a credit card. it was not the best but it does work. what we do for our school is That's my Pan; the local pottery place brings ceramic ornaments that the kids decorate for xmas and the parents purchase; we collected pennies to have a pizza party for that classroom; we have a yearly carnival in the fall that we use the inside and outside of the school, we use every classroom for games sometimes doubling the classrooms into two games, one at each end of the room. we have a haunted hallway that is a large crowd pleaser, dunking booth, cake walk was huge, we sold sandy candy (you can google that) also and that went over well. keep it away from concessions. it will sell and the consessions won't. we had inflatables that we sold wristbands to those. we have a fun run in the spring. we had a kid run and adult run around the neighborhood. we had winners for each age range and when the run was over we had nutrition lessons, kids kitchen where they learned to cook, zumba, and local drs. came and gave heart exams, weight exams, eye exams, etc. this did real well for us too. we were raising money to build a new playground. not including grants or senator donations, we raised at least 75,000$ with the above mentioned items. we also at the carnival gathered baskets to raffle off using the empty copy paper bohatxes that the teachers emptied. we raffled about 25 baskets, and we had a donation of a painting, a corn hole set that was silent auctioned off too. I hope this helps everyone, there is no limit to what you can do when there is a goal to be met.
Our PTO is exploring a residual fundraiser with an energy company that markets green energy. With deregulation, the customers can choose their energy supplier in our market and if they do so under our PTO website, we earn $2/month for every bill they pay. We have just started, and so far the rates with the green supplier are cheaper than our utility company and there is no contract/fees/penalties. If the customer wants to switch back, they can at anytime. We felt it was a win/win, cheaper bills for something our families must have anyway (electric), no risk for our participating parents and green initiatives. We don't know how it will work out, but we figured we would try it for 6 months and re-evaluate then.
This past school year our school did terrible with our Sally Foster fundraiser (catalog sale) and decided to change things up this past spring with a Math-a-thon! We raised $8500 through pledges and donations. If you want more info let me know.
