Classroom Fundraising: No More Buying Cookie Dough
The average teacher spends $500 of their own income each year on classroom expenses such as books, supplies, technology, or even food and clothing for underprivileged students. Surprisingly, one in 10 teachers even spends over $1,000 of their personal funds for the children in their classrooms. Teachers give their sweat, tears, lives, and finances to the kids they teach. We want to lighten the load.
Here at Sixpence, we recognize that the teacher’s heart is often bigger than their wallet. And that’s why we want to help teachers across America, and the students in their classrooms. Specifically, we can change the game of fundraising for you.
Fundraising can be a strenuous, time-consuming, and ironically expensive activity for teachers and schools to engage in to make ends meet:
- Product-based fundraising can often take up to 60% of donated funds.
- Third-party fundraising organizations eat up instructional hours with their rallies.
- School fundraising is typically a one-time push with a one-time result.
- Limited donation funds may go to whole-school objectives rather than to teachers for use in individual classrooms.
Sixpence is here to solve those problems. We aim to simplify your fundraising, and potentially even build community in the process.
With Sixpence, instead of parents and guardians having to put in hours to help their kids fundraise, they can support their children’s educations little by little, with small and consistent contributions made in a painless way. If teachers create a page on Sixpence, parents and guardians can support their kids' classrooms by “subscribing” to roundups on the page. Whenever parents make debit card purchases at any point in the day, at any place in the country, their purchase will round up to the nearest dollar. That change goes directly towards their child’s education.
All that our model requires is a conversation between the teacher and the parents, an introduction to the painless “roundup method” of fundraising through Sixpence, and a quick sign-up on the part of the parents.
Voila, you have a sustainable, painless, and cheap fundraising method running for the whole year.
Invite students’ relatives or guardians to use the app at open house or in a newsletter. And it doesn’t need to be only student relatives or guardians donating — one can easily enlist the help of friends and family as well. Donors simply subscribe to the class donation page, then go about their life knowing each debit or credit purchase helps enhance your classroom’s experience. Donors can donate their roundups however long they want (or you need) — and roundups can be ended at any time.
If you’d like, you can update the page with content and shared stories from class to further engage with parents and build community. You can set specific fundraising targets and goals and keep parents informed on initiatives their donations are making possible. There are myriad possibilities with Sixpence.
Teachers aren’t in it for the money, but they shouldn’t have to spend their incomes to help students either.
Budgets are slashed and tight, but our children deserve a fully-funded education. We at Sixpence want to help alleviate financial burdens of teachers across America to create the best instructional experience for students.
Easier fundraising, more funds, and parent engagement as an added bonus; Sixpence can improve your school and class in a plethora of ways. Let’s make this happen.
