Wow. What area are you in? We just did a food fundraiser this spring and will 600 kids we sold over $60,000! We earn 40% of that! $24,000 which is amazing in our small town. This is the 2nd year with this company and we had been with another company in the past and our sales were never over $20,000.
I hear you!! It seems like everyone is selling something now!! Our school did a Gold fundraiser. Parents brought in their gold and there were people writing them checks on the spot. Everyone was so relieved that they didn't have to spend money! It took about 3 hours and at the end of it they gave us a check for $1,684!! I think they give a minimum of 12.5%. The best part it that the money is still coming in after a month! We are getting $50 for each party that someone booked as a referral!! The company was called "Golden Girls" their website is www.GoldDoesGood.com
Talk about a quick and easy moneymaker! One parent left with a check for over $2,000! They really needed the money, so it was a huge blessing!
Getting donations from the community would be great. The $40.00 I mentioned was for the class that brings in the most books....which means that you would only spend $40.00, but like you said you could ask a parent to donate the ice-cream, a pizza place to donate the pizza and so forth.
Remember if you don't ask you won't get. The only thing you might get is a NO from a vendor, and I doubt that they would refuse to help a worthy cause.
P.S. I did this at a school and we had over 5000 books. We made $2500.00 in 1 day, and had another book drive the following month again, and had 6000 books donated. After having the event 3 times over a 1 year span we raised over $9000 for PTA. The one thing that was clear to us was that were were recycling books, encouraging reading, and not making our students sales people. It's a win win situation.
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I'm not trying to split hairs here but if you are spending $40 per class on incentives, you're not getting 100% profit - at least not in the typical way this is usually explained. You do get 100% of the profit after expenses. It's just a bit confusing that's all. If you spent $0 on prizes then you'd really be at 100% profit.
For example, if each class sold 80 books for $1 each, you'd be at 50% profit after giving away $40 in incentives.
Makes me wonder though if there is a way to get some raffle prizes or incentives donated to the school? Maybe a museum, park, concert venue or movie theater would donate a bunch of tickets to the cause? It does take making some calls but lining up some freebies should definitely increase participation.
After working in the fundraising field for 15 years with PTA's my passion was burnt out with the way the company I was working for was heading.
I came across an article on book fairs and came up with this green fundraiser. It goes like this:
Ask each class to bring in their slightly used books. Provide each class their own box.
The class that brings in the most books receives a pizza party, with ice-cream and extra time at the playground. Cost about $40.00.
When the 2 weeks are up your books are pre-sorted by grade. So make your own stands to display the books you just received and sell them for no more than $1.00 each.
If you are having book fairs with companies they are making the bulk of the money. In this case you are actually making 100% of the profits, and if there is a child with no money you can actually comp them for 2 books and give the gift of reading!
This is a great way to keep books in circulation. Keep the trashy gifty things out of the book fairs, and make 100% profit on everything you sell. You are also keeping parents, from buying $10.00 rolls of wrap, and $25.00 coupon books! Parents will be more apt in helping, donating when you are looking out for their children and giving not using our students as sales people.
WE have found the spring carnival to be our most effective fundraiser...we earned tons of money and really did not need another fundraiser with that...is your spring carnival successful? Do you do it every year? We have decided not to do the spring carnival every year, since I think it is to hard to put such a big event together and people tire of it. We do a silent auction and raffle off class baskets and this is where we make most of our money. The other successful fundraiser which we do every year is a candy drive before Easter. Everyone buys there Easter candy from us and we usually raise about $7,000 every year from that.
I would suggest bagging the catalog fundraisers as most of the stuff is junk and no one wants to buy it. Another idea we had some success with was a cookbook which we opened up to the parents, teachers and staff.
