Purchase a wholesale amount of chocolate products from Equal Exchange and resell them in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day.

This is perfect for church groups who are looking for a mission to support. Churches can set up a display in their fellowship area and sell the products after worship.

School groups studying fair trade can raise funds by selling Equal Exchange candy bars during school sporting events or Valentine’s Day activities.

The Equal Exchange Fundraising Program offers 40% profit to groups who partner with them.  Check out their Daily Deal on Chocolate Bars to sample their product.

Arrange space for an on-going fundraiser where you can sort and display items people donate for sale. Open up the shop one or two days a month with the help of a volunteer staff. Promote throughout the year that you are accepting donations. Merchandise your items well, like other retail stores to increase traffic and sales.

Contact local stores about donating their merchandise that doesn’t move. The business can write it off as a tax deduction and get it out of their way. You benefit by having new items donated to your sale regularly.

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Allow teachers to use the garden in their lesson plans, getting kids involved in the prep work, planting, maintenance, and harvest of the produce. This provides great curriculum for a summer school session.

Sell the produce each week to parents and community members. Consider selling shares of the garden produce on a prepaid basis. This will provide the funds upfront needed to start the garden. Then each week divide your produce among the number of shares.

If you have enough space, plant some pumpkin seeds in the spring and harvest the pumpkins in the fall. Allow kids to pick their own pumpkin for a donation to the school.

Organizations who coordinate school picture day can utilize this annual event as their next creative fundraiser by offering family sitting sessions. Coordinate with the photographers to be on site for two days, instead of one. Offer afternoon and evening sessions for families in addition to the regular student photos that happen during the day. Set up some family-friendly backgrounds, or if weather and space permit, set up some backdrops outdoors.

Offer the chance to view the images before deciding if you want to purchase. You’ll make the customers happy and more willing to use your service if they can “try before they buy”. And, if you have a quality photographer, your sales should increase because families will love all the shots taken and want copies of them all.

Offer a premium service, like turning the photos into a scrapbook. Create and preserve a Smilebox scrapbook in minutes! Just drag photos, videos, music, and words into amazing scrapbook designs.You can then email them to others or print them out to distribute.

As childhood obesity levels rise, schools are looking for healthy fundraisers as an alternative solution for raising much needed funds. Many school districts have even banned fundraising candy sales, so what kind of school fundraisers will help bridge the funding gap?

Here are several ideas for healthy school fundraisers:

Participant events

Many schools have discovered that events where all students participate in a fun exercise-based event do a good job. Examples of this are school walkathons, rope jumping contests, and fun runs.

Students raise funds by getting sponsorship pledges linked to their performance. For instance, a pledge sheet for a fun run or a walkathon might suggest a donation of $1 a lap or $5 a mile.

In a jump rope contest, pledges might be raised by the number of consecutive jumps a student performs or by a set amount for each participant. The important thing is that parents are encouraging their children to be physically active as part of a fundraiser versus buying candy to help support their school.

Nonfood product sales

There are also plenty of fundraising products that can be sold that don’t involve candy or other unhealthy foods. Examples include books, magazines, gift wrap, flowers, plants, calendars, candles, pumpkins, and kitchen accessories.

All of these items have the same type of markups as products like candy, doughnuts, or cookie dough. The key point is that these are all healthier alternatives.

Healthy food products

For food-based sales, why not offer items such as fresh citrus fruit, nuts, spices, coffee, granola bars, or bottled water? Each of these items will generate the same kind of revenue and profit as their unhealthier alternatives.

Service events

School groups can raise funds with service events like car washes, dog washes, or community cleanups. Students get the added benefit of working in teams to earn money through their own efforts instead of just having their parents open their checkbooks.

School spirit items

Another good school fundraiser involves selling items adorned with the school logo such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, shorts, book covers, stadium cushions, and water bottles.

All of these promote school spirit and provide a good value for the parents who are the ones writing the checks. These same school spirit items can also be offered over time through a school store as well as an ongoing fundraising activity.

Summary

Many schools are looking for healthier alternatives to traditional fundraising products that contain large amounts of sugar and in some cases, trans fat as well. Event-based fund raising is one alternative that’s growing in popularity.

Schools can also offer catalog sales of nonfood products that will raise just as much funding or they can offer healthier alternatives such as fresh fruit, nuts, coffee, etc.

Service events like car washes also work well for school clubs and cheer squads. They also teach a good lesson in the value of hard work to get what you want.

The bottom line is that there are many healthy fundraisers for schools to choose from, so choose wisely!

Kimberly Reynolds writes for national publications about cheerleading fundraisers, ideas for healthy fundraisers and nonprofit fundraiser events. Find more school fundraising ideas on her website, FundraiserHelp.com

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FUNdraising: 50 Proven Strategies for Successful School Fundraisers by Frank Sennett lives up to the claim on it’s back cover – ” Creative new approaches and clever twists on classic fundraising events!”

We are in difficult economic times and fundraising is becoming increasingly more difficult. Schools are taking a hard look at the fundraisers they are offering, being more creative with their choices, and understanding what the return expectations are of the school families and community.

Parent volunteers are seeking to bring some of their fundraising back into the schools, rather than rely in-full on outside vendors. From advertising, promotion, and fun games to motivate the students, right down to the administrative details, they are doing their homework and succeeding!

This past Fall, one Massachusetts school decided they wanted to try something new for a change. That something new was a PTO Ideas’ Spelling Challenge. The result for their creative effort was that this 200-student, public school raised just over $13,000 in just about 2 weeks.

How did they do this? Students collected pledges for each correctly-spelled word on a spelling test. A simple concept with a dramatic outcome!

A fundraising committee of ten parent volunteers armed with the PTO Ideas’ eBook titled Budget Bashes: The Ultimate Educational Challenge were the keys to this fundraising success story. PTO Ideas is a web-based Massachusetts company dedicated to helping schools build a better parent-teacher organization.

Like many schools, who run a gift wrap, cookie, or candy fundraiser every Fall, this school wanted to try something different. Something that allowed them to hold onto the majority of the money donated by their sponsors.

This PTO Ideas’ Educational Challenge fundraiser was an enormous success because it involved the students, was academically based, was fun for the kids, offered a tax-deducton benefit to the sponsors, and had minimal expenses. Expenses were only about $285. That meant that 98% of the money collected went directly to the school.

In addition to the more than 600 individual sponsors secured by 170 students, fifteen local business stepped forward and sponsored the classrooms. The key to obtaining so many individual sponsors was understanding how to motivate and excite the students to drive the event. And, the key to gaining corporate support was that the school only asked for very small dollar amounts of $30 and $60.

Products offered by outside fundraising companies offer a quick and easy profit and are still recommended; but when combined with a creative, educational fundraiser like this Educational Challenge that’s planned in-house, the total package can make for a much more successful fundraising plan and many more satisfied parents!

V. Blaze is the Editor and Publisher of PTO Ideas, the website were schools share profitable fundraising ideas and learn how to build a better parent-teacher organization. For more information, visit PTO Ideas at http://www.ptoideas.com

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Schools are always looking for unique school fund raising projects to raise money for a wide variety of programs and needs. Traditionally many schools have sold magazines subscriptions or colleted cans and bottles, but these standard methods are getting out dated by more unique school fundraising methods. This article will help you create a school fundraising event that will not only generate more funds, but more importantly teach your kids to be more responsible.

School fund raising is an essential part of life. There never seems to be enough money to go around for the many activities that our kids get involved with. You may be one who has been put in charge of such an event, and perhaps you are at loss for new and creative ideas.

Perhaps the lesson should be just as important as the cause. What I mean by this statement is — maybe your students could be in charge of all activities and learn more than the value of the money that is raised. Let’s look at the various key points to a school fundraising event.

School Fund Raising Step One – You will need to have a committee. This committee should be chosen by the students, with some guidance by the teachers. A good committee will be made up of at least one leader and one or more students who are good at organization.

School Fund Raising Step Two – The leader and committee must first decide on a theme for their fundraiser. Once they have a theme they will be better able to divide the remaining class members into effective groups.

School Fund Raising Step Three – The committee should be instructed to evaluate each student for their unique skill sets to determine what project will fit them best. Some students are born leaders while others simply need set instructions. You may find that some students are natural at communication while others are very intimidated by this type of thing.

School Fund Raising Step Four – Since they already have theme you could advise the leaders to brainstorm some effect ways that they can create a fundraiser. You should allow them to do some research online. They could then combine that with some traditional research in the library. Once they have compiled some good data they can begin the school fundraising process.

School Fund Raising Step Five – The committee will need to assign one person to keep accurate records for every single item that is donated and purchased. They will also need to keep record of all donors and expenses that may occur for advertising or advertising materials such as poster board and such.

School Fund Raising Step Six – Some creative ideas for a school fundraiser may be to contact local and statewide businesses online. Each student could spend some time online searching for websites of businesses and then contact them. They could explain their cause and the responsibility they have been assigned. This could generate some very nice funds.

School Fund Raising Step Seven – Once you have the committee inline and each person in their proper responsibility, and have created a unique fundraiser. You are ready to have the event. You should set your sights high. If the fundraiser is not as productive as you had hoped you may still have won by teaching the kids responsibly that will last them long after the money is spent.

For more information on fundraising events and projects for your organization try visiting http://good-fundraising-ideas.com, a website that specializes in providing helpful tips, advice and fundraising resources to include School Fund Raising and more.

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My seven year old was so excited, telling me about an assembly that they got to go to today. “The man said if we get 200 cans and blankets, then they’ll bring the inflatable jumpy things to the school.” This is what he took away from the “assembly”. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that they were doing a food and blanket drive for the local food pantry. Something I could have much easier gotten behind. Instead, his backpack is full of information about the rewards the kids and school can earn for sell “x” number of items.

I give the organizers credit, they do a lot of hard work to earn this money. And, this year they changed the corporate fundraising company to expand the offerings. But really, who needs $15 cookie dough or reversible gift wrap?

So I’ll decide whether to give into peer pressure and buy something from the catalog or simply write them a check without filling out the order form. The check option is much more beneficial to everyone, however if I take that route, my child doesn’t get the chance to “dunk the principal” for selling only 15 items.

I welcome your comments…