Setting up fundraising across a full school district can be a logistics nightmare. Everything from the planning to the execution takes time and resources away from your fellow administrators, teachers, and most importantly, parents! Here are 3 simple fundraising concepts for school administrators to consider when developing fundraising events:
Three Simple Fundraising Options
1. Good Ol'Fashioned Product Sales
Catalog selling is a great way to get parents and students to support the school without financially burdening families. The best thing about product fundraisers is that they're familiar. No need to take the mental energy to figure out how to best "pitch" parents and community members on this fundraiser. The path has been well-trod and communities know exactly what to do with these things.
However, the simplicity comes with the tradeoffs of significant time-consumption and massive costs, with less than 50% of revenues generally going to the school. They'll also likely require significant support from school administration to parents in order to drive sales. While product sales can be a time burden for parents, it does support classrooms without requiring individual donations. Product sales can include baked goods, school-branded apparel, candles, and more (but you probably already knew that).
2. Event Sales
Bring your community together! Event sales are a throwback to the days of local community events and neighborhood pride. Bake sales and car washes require a significant amount of time and money upfront to set up and plan, but are a great way to generate large donations in a one-day period. Need more funding for a future project? Try incorporating a raffle item or 50/50 raffle prize as well!
3. Roundups: A Digital Change Jar for Your School
Welcome to the internet-age! Roundups are a fairly new way of donating; a service that enables parents and community members to round their daily purchases to the next whole dollar, depositing those roundups to your schools, classrooms, field trips, or other fundraising projects.
While parents need to be motivated to sign up and download roundup apps, roundup services can serve as a stable and constantly growing fund that can cover almost any classroom expense imaginable, all year long. Crowdfunding roundups such as Sixpence estimate a single user to donate around $20-$30 per month, every month, all from a one-time setup. Click here to see how much your school could be generating from roundups!
Conclusion
Each of these three options comes with unique benefits and disadvantages that can greatly affect your fundraising outcome. Regardless of which option you choose, an emphasis needs to be placed on motivating your supporters. Share your goal! Presenting potential supporters with your goals improves transparency and builds goodwill with your community. Good luck making "change"!
