Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

If you have been thinking about adding a new event to your school fundraising calendar, a school carnival is an excellent idea.  Here are nine great reasons why your school should be having a carnival, if it already doesn’t.

1. School Carnivals Are Incredibly Popular With Students and Parents Alike
Quick, which would you rather do- go to the school carnival or visit to the dentist? See? No contest. OK, maybe that’s not a fair fight, carnival vs. dentist, but the fact is, a school carnival is one of the absolute highlights of the year for any school that has one. It has all the best rolled up into one great package: people having fun, the school making money, and if it’s a really good carnival, there’s always food of some variety on a stick.

2. Carnivals require lots of people as volunteers, but the work is fun and not stressful.
Even though carnivals require a number of people willing to take charge of a wide range of responsibilities, the vast majority of jobs involve having fun and interacting with people. Whether it’s baking items to sell, running games, passing out prizes, decorating the carnival space, face painting, or even selling tickets, the atmosphere of a school carnival is light and enjoyable. These are exactly the kinds of jobs to break new volunteers in on. Once a person has mastered the art of the school carnival, he or she may be ready to take on more challenging volunteer duties within your fundraising team.

3. Carnival Expenses are Low
Since carnivals are held in the school building itself, there won’t be any facility rental fees the school will have to pay, which can often be one of the most expensive items in the budget. Also, food can be donated, and games can be used year after year. Many decorations can also be used more than one year. Of course, there will be a desire to add some new things each year, but the core of the activity can be relatively inexpensive to operate year in and year out. continue reading

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One of the best ways to raise money for schools is to do as little work as possible. In my estimation, the best money is the easiest money, because it saves you that priceless commodity- time.

Here is a very simple way to raise money at your school without much effort- My Coke Rewards from Coca-Cola.

The idea is simple. You sign up for a “My Coke Rewards” account. You become the account manager. You will have access to check your account and trade in your “points” for items for your school.

Then, let everyone in your school community know that if they drink a participating Coke product (Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Dasani water, Fanta, Mr. Pibb’s, Fresca, Minute Maid Lemonade, Vault, Powerade, and Barq’s Root Beer) they should donate the bottle cap (with the code printed on the underside of it ) to your school. Also, be sure to remind them that they cannot enter the code in themselves prior to giving it to you. It must be un-entered for it to have value to the school. (No double-dipping!) continue reading

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Wow! I have to share an incredible piece of news with all of you who mange volunteers in your school. It doesn’t matter if the volunteers are for a classroom, the library, recess duty, or a fundraiser, if you have ever tried to get people to sign up and then show up, you’ve got to try this new piece to technology out.

It’s a web-based application called VolunteerSpot.com.

1. First you create a (free!) account.
2. Then you use a “planning wizard” to create files for all the events that require volunteers. You also type in the times and the job descriptions.
3. Next, you invite volunteers with an email or through a link.

Your potential volunteers will instantly receive an attractive email invitation in their inboxes, asking for help on the date you specified. The reader has the option of clicking a “No Thanks/Not This Time” or “Sign Up Now/Learn More” link.

“The Sign Up Now” link takes you to a very graphically pleasing calendar that has the exact times and jobs that are available. The program automatically tracks and edits who signs up for which jobs, and it will tell future volunteers when certain times/jobs are filled!  You, as the volunteer coordinator, just have to check back on the calendar to see which jobs are still open.  It’s amazingly simple. continue reading

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One of the most reliable types of school fundraisers is the product sale. A product sale is an event in which a school hooks up with a company that provides an item that students try to sell to friends, families, and others in their social networks. Each company has their own formula to split the revenue between themselves and the school.

Some common examples of items used in product sales are: cookie dough, chocolate, wrapping paper, magazines, and popcorn, although virtually anything, as long as it’s sellable, can be used to make a profit for the school.

Product sales are popular for four main reasons:

1. They are simple to plan and execute. The companies have really made these things fool-proof for both the school administration and the parents.
2. Over the years, people have grown to develop an expectation that they will have to sell something to raise money for their kid’s school, so they are already pre-disposed to participate.
3. School administrators generally don’t like to spend too much time thinking about creative fundraising ideas, so product sales have become “no-brainers”.
4. Product sales are very reliable financially. You can take the number of students participating in the sale and get a fairly accurate estimate of what you can expect to bring in.

Even though the actual planning and executing of a product sale are relatively easy to navigate, there are still a number of questions that you should ask either yourself, your product sale representative, or the people in your community before making a commitment to one particular product or company. Failure to ask these questions or questions like these put you at risk of having a substandard fundraising event. continue reading

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The great thing about writing a blog on a regular basis is that the author has the opportunity to really dive into a subject and examine it on a microscopic level.

Today is such a day, when we pull out our microscopes and peer deeply into our organization’s image. Let’s talk about voice mail and answering machines. We’ve all got ‘em, but are we getting the most out of them that we can?

This may seem like a very basic point, but I do believe it is worth covering, since I’ve heard many, many dreadful messages that have spoken very poorly of the people who recorded them.

10 Cardinal Rules of Recording Answering Machine Messages

1. Keep it up to date.
It’s embarrassing when you have a message that talks about an event or a date that is two weeks old. If you ever change your outgoing message for a time-sensitive purpose or event, make sure to change it immediately afterwards.

2. Make sure you actually have an outgoing message.
Some schools, who don’t have a fancy voice mail system, still use an old-fashioned answering machine, and these can lose their memory if there is a power outage. Don’t have a client or a school family member have to tell you you don’t have a message on the machine. This is the equivalent to being told your zipper is undone. continue reading

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I think when a person is deeply involved in an activity, he or she runs the risk of becoming a little over-sensitive to people saying dumb stuff about that activity- even if the offender was just kidding.

Case in point- this past week, I was attending a meeting of a group that one of my children is involved with. This group recently completed a major product sale fundraiser that underwrites many of the group’s expenses for the entire year. They put a great deal of emphasis on families meeting or exceeding sales goals.

Well, at this meeting, they were handing out the awards for the top sellers. I was sitting in the audience. The person leading the ceremony was actually an assistant, since the leader was ill and could not attend. I think the assistant was nervous talking in front of the audience, and he made a joke about the kids getting scraped-up knuckles from knocking on hundreds of doors to sell the product. At least, I hope it was a joke. Ha Ha Ha.

What!?! Was he kidding? Unbeknownst to me, were there kids actually knocking on strangers’ doors, selling the items? continue reading

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When I was the principal of a private elementary school, one of the things I always tried to do when planning a fundraiser was to get the teachers on my side.

You would think that simply because the teachers were school employees, they would be more than happy to do whatever they could to make sure we had the funds needed to do things like purchase supplies, buy new textbooks, fund field trips, and cover payroll. Unfortunately, however, that wasn’t always the case.

I found that some teachers, not all, actually resent the fundraising process. They believe that they were hired to teach, and that’s it. I agree that teaching is an incredibly demanding job and these dedicated servants don’t get nearly the recognition nor the compensation for what they do on a daily basis.

However, a school, in my opinion, is a community, and everyone has to pitch in to make it work. One of my favorite movies is the film Gandhi with Ben Kingsley. There is a scene in which Gandhi’s wife refuses to “rake and cover the latrines” at their ashram, deeming that job for a lesser type of person. In no uncertain terms, her husband, a peaceful sort, straightens her out, and she finally agrees to “rake and cover the latrines”.

Now, I’m not saying that fundraising is analogous to cleaning a toilet, but you get the point. Nobody is too good to help at any job. That’s my motto.

So, I heartily believe that teachers should be active and cheerful fundraisers. No exceptions. If they believe enough in the school to accept a paycheck they should believe enough to sell some cookie dough, if that’s what it takes.

Here are ten strategies I used to win over the more reluctant educators. continue reading

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