This guide contains many practical tips on how to make your next carnival a success. Jim provides advice based on his own experience and from those of other school volunteers like you. Besides just planning the carnival, the book helps you reach the goal of making the carnival a great school fundraiser.

This book will save you lots of time and add a fresh, creative twist to your event. Check it out: the School Carnival Guide

They created the school’s first ever Mega Media Sale. Volunteers and students have been working since October to collect and sort books, movies, comic books and video games to make the sale a success.

The sale will be held on Saturday, December 1st at the school from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m..

“In the past, we’ve done typical fundraisers, where the kids go out and sell wrapping paper or something,” said PTSO vice president Laura Beardsley, who organized the sale. “We, as parents, were tired of that.”

Prices are very appealing for customers. Paperback books are two for $1, hardcover books are $2 and up, children’s books are five for $1 and DVDs and CD are $1 to $2. The sale will also feature a silent auction with items donated by the community.

The sale is Dominion’s main fundraiser. Funds raised will help fund contest entry fees for the music program and also permit teachers to buy classroom supplies, and also bring in artists to speak to the students.

Source: ThisWeek Community Newspapers

The event is held in the high school auditorium. There is a luncheon and the author speaks. The event is followed by a book signing and dessert. To attend a single event is $25. To attend the entire series is $65. To attend only the lecture and cook signing is $15 for one event and $35 for the entire series.

There are also patron packages that include preferred seating and being listed in the program. Patron tickets are available for $100.

The authors for this year’s series are:

September 26th: Brain Groh, Summer People; Bonnie Bajorek Daneker, The Compassionate Caregiver’s Guide to Caring for Someone With Cancer.

October 24th: Robert Olmstead, Coal Black Horse; Russ Musarra and Chuck Ayers, Walks Around Akron: Rediscovering a City in Transition; Betsy Carter, Swim to Me.

November 14th: Dalia Sofer, The Septembers of Shiraz; Mary Ann Winkowski, When Ghosts Speak: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spiritgs; Connie Schults, And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man.

Source: Ohio.com

A Scholastic Bookfair can be a great way for a school to earn much-needed funds for their programs. Just about everyone loves Scholastic Books. A bookfair can help your students and families create home libraries of books that they will enjoy. It is also a terrific way to build your classroom or school libraries.

There are many benefits to hosting a bookfair at your school. Most importantly, it encourages children to read books that they will enjoy for fun and pleasure and the joy of learning. A bookfair can also be a wonderful opportunity to develop a larger library of books for your school or classroom library through encouraging classroom or school donations. A bookfair generates community participation and interest on many levels, as children of all ages will show interest in reading books at a bookfair. Finally, a bookfair is a great way for a school to raise funds for its school while also encouraging learning in a fun and interesting way.

If you host a Scholastic bookfair your school can earn cash, books, reward bonuses or Instructional Resource Catalog Profits (vouchers to select educational tools or books). No matter what you choose, you will certainly benefit your school in every way simply by holding the bookfair.

Scholastic Bookfairs Give Great Step-by-Step Guides To Help Schools

The best thing about a Scholastic Bookfair is that they offer instructional guides to show you step by step how to manage your bookfair. These guides cover every topic you can think of, and all that you need is at your fingertips. The guides help you to save time and they show you what other schools have done to be successful. There is a guide for Families, for the Principal, for the Librarian and for Teachers. Each guide offers specific and valuable resources that will help these families, professionals and educators make the most of the bookfair for their school.

At the Scholastic website the Principal’s Guide has a Resources section with “copy and paste resources” about reading that can be sent home in anticipation of the bookfair. These resources include “10 Ways to Nurture a Lifelong Love of Readings” and “Connecting with Advanced Readers”. There are more than fifteen copy and paste documents that can be added to flyers, newsletters or other documents that a Principal can send home. There are also research and industry links about reading that cover topics of interest. This section is excellent because sending a flyer or some sort of communication home about the bookfair is critical, and these resources offer lots of interesting information that the Principal can include to make it unique for your school.

The Principal’s guide section also includes Success Stories to inspire. They offer other interesting ways a Principal can consider interacting with Scholastic for a positive educational experience. One such story is from Donna Barton, Principal of St. Joseph Montessori School of Columbus, Ohio. The fifth graders at this school won the grand prize for the nonfiction 2006 Scholastic Book Fair Kids Are Authors competition. They wrote a book about riddles called “What Do You Call a Rhyming Riddle? A Hinky Pinky?” The students had a terrific time collaborating on their book and creating fun riddles. Apparently they were very pleased they won the grand prize, but they had so much fun working together on the project — that the prize was less of a motivation than simply working together and sharing ideas. Stories like this work to inspire fellow Principals to participate in other Scholastic events such as the Kids Are Authors competition, or the Klutz Build-a-Book Event also held by Scholastic for younger children.

The Teacher’s Guide section includes lesson plans based on specific books published by Scholastic. Students are encouraged to name their favorite character based on Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson in one of the lesson plans. There are also printable “wish list” sheets to help a teacher build their classroom library through classroom, school and family donations.

There is also a discussion board for teachers to connect with other teachers around the country to discuss bookfairs, lesson plans and classroom libraries. This is a wonderful resource as teachers can “bounce” great ideas off of each other.

The guide for Families encourages families not to miss the bookfair because it is a wonderful opportunity for them to obtain books at a great discount and to encourage their child reach higher with their reading skills. There are printable resources about children and reading. These are according to age groups and offer tips on finding the best books for your children.

To learn more about holding a bookfair, visit the Scholastic website.

Keys to planning the marketing strategy for your book sale:

• Create a webpage specifically for your own sale, preferably host it on your organization’s website.
• Market not just the sale, but also for donations.

• In this case, an inch deep and a mile wide is the best strategy – cover all possible markets, do not rely on one place to market your sale.
• Have a cause! If you a part of the Friends of the Library group, add what the funds will go toward (or have went toward in the past). If you are another nonprofit, what program will these funds help?

Places to market your book sale:

Book Sale Scout (http://www.booksalescout.com) – Book Sale Scout is the net’s only searchable book sale directory. It’s professional service and appearance matches your professional needs perfectly. Basic sale listings are free and, for bigger sales, our paid advertisement options are the cheapest out there.

Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) – Don’t deny the power of Craigslist to promote ANYTHING.

Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org) – Freecycle is a great program that is run in a ton of local areas through an email mailing list. Basically you can post things to give away or request free things. The moderation is pretty heavy on these lists, for good reason, but I talked with a few moderators who said a WANTED ad for used books would be permitted. This is a good way to drum up some more books for your book sale. I think book sales underutilize this tool.

Submit a press release (http://www.prweb.com) – PRWeb offers free press releases, which would be perfect for book sales. You’re probably not going to drum up any news stories from their free press releases, but it does help get notification of your sale out on the web.

AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) – Promoting a book sale on Google, using their Cost-per-click system, may not be for every sale, but it definitely would be worthwhile for events with gross sales of $10,000 or more. There are only a few book sales currently promoting on AdWords and they are very large. For most sales, including the large ones, it is most wise to limit your campaign to a local area. Also, you’ll want only to run your campaign on keywords that wouldn’t already bring up your sale webpage or notification.

Post at Upcoming (http://www.upcoming.org) Another free resource for posting and finding events (works best in urban centers)

-Post on the Amazon or other bookseller discussion boards – Booksellers love a good book sale and they are going to be the ones who really drop the money at your sale and, perhaps more importantly, clear out much of your stock.

- Free classifieds – There are a variety of local newspapers who offer free classifieds, if space permits. In Washington, DC, the City Paper does so. A great way to promote book sales in print (off the internet)

- Use organization newsletters and boards – This may be a no-brainer, but I definitely remember stumbling upon a book sale at my own public library, without even knowing it. Don’t forget to get the word out their in your organization’s newsletter, bulletin board, website, wherever!

- Hold your sale during a larger event – This way is the best, because you do not need to do anything extra. If you plan your book sale during a town’s garage sale days or community fair, you automatically get indirect advertising for your sale from this event.

- Get creative! Now, the return on time invested begins to dwindle here, but start Googling things like “post an event” and your city. Or “community calendar” and your city.

About the author: Lucas R Ames is the owner of LRABooks , an independent company providing services to the online bookselling community. Mr. Ames has been in the online bookselling business for 10 years. The company’s latest endeavor, Book Sale Scout, is the net’s first searchable book sale directory. Mr. Ames also is the editor of the Bookselling Online Blog.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

But the Community School is especially interested in hearing about a particular character in his latest novel becuase he shares the same name as a resident of the town, Josa A. Ocariz. Last year the school held a raffle that reached across the nation. The prize: the winner’s name would be used in Russo’s latest novel as a character.

The raffle sold 78 tickets and Ocariz purchased two of the tickets. One of those tickets was the winner, and his name was included in Russo’s latest novel. He is included in the novel and his character is a middle school teacher in upstate New York.

The school raised $7,800 from the raffle event. Tickets for the reading are $20. Russo’s book will officially be published on September 25th.

If you are a library, school or community group then you may have old books on hand. Sometimes running a used book sale is not convenient, as you need to have volunteers to coordinate the sale and organize the books. Blue Rectangle offers an alternative way you can fund-raise with your books.

By using Blue Rectangle, you are simply selling your books to them in buy-back program. They in turn are then selling your books to consumers.

This fund-raiser is simple and easy to follow

The steps to run this fund-raiser are very basic. “It is really simple, just go online to our website and then fill out your organization’s name and address. Then select a method of payment — its super simple! Create an account with us this way and then enter the ISBN (for the books you are selling to Blue Rectangle).” said Chris Cahill, Customer Service Representative. Literally hundreds of schools and other organizations have worked with Blue Rectangle. They have been in business for about ten years. They have been doing the book buy-back business for three years.

What books are they interested in purchasing? Cahill encourages interested not-for-profits to look at the F.A.Qs page on the website for further details about what type of books they are interested in purchasing. “We are especially interested in textbooks, how-to books, books that have been published in the last ten years and generally books that have an isbn but are either out of print or are hard to come by,” said Cahill

Blue Rectangle according to their F.A.Qs page is not interested in purchasing books with odors, book club books, encyclopedias, magazines, Time-Life books, Teacher’s editions, books in poor condition, condensed books (such as Reader’s Digest), advanced reading copies, corrected proofs, workbooks with writing in them, books marked not for resale, books missing a section of the cover, books with any profanity in them, pornography, and unbound or partially bound books.

They suggest that customers send books that they consider are at least in very good to excellent condition. This means no water damage, no missing covers or pages and minimal highlighting or tearing on the pages.

Blue Rectangle purchases books depending on market demand for the books

Prices for books depend on the current interest for the book. “We buy the books in order to resell them so our buyback is based on market demand,” said Cahill. When you input your ISBNs into the website, you will be given a price. That price is then good for five days. After five days that price is subject to change. You are encouraged to send your books in quickly. Payments are sent to customers on a weekly basis.

When shipping books to Blue Rectangle you are encouraged to obtain insurance for your package. Insurance should not be very expensive, and this protects you from any damages or loss while in transit to the facility.

Blue Rectangle is an excellent alternative for the organization that is unable to hold a book sale but has plenty of books that they would like to turn into fund-raising dollars. Visit their website for more information.

Fortunately Sam was supported by her friends and classmates at Lincon Heights Public School in Waterloo, Canada. The 6th grade student was inspired to raise funds for the MS Society through the charity’s annual MS Readathon and she asked her school and classmates to join her. They readily agreed.

The school of 340 students dove in to support Hutchinson. They worked hard to raise $10,665.89. This placed them in the top five of all the provinces for all donations raised for this fund-raiser. Hutchinson herself raised more than $1,000.

Hutchinson was honored for her charitable work as one of the recipients of the Victoria D’Agostino award at school. This annual award is given to a student who has made a significant contribution to society and their community.

The Writers and Illustrators Club is now selling their book as a fund-raiser for the club. The book is available for $10. The students enjoyed writing the book so much they are now planning their next book. Write on!