Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

I subscribe to “Google Alerts” for the topic of school fundraising. Anytime Google picks up on a new blog article, news item, or website update that involves school fundraising, I get a link sent to me in my email. It’s an excellent and easy way to stay up on everything that’s going on in the world of school fundraising.

These articles actually come in from all over the world, so after reading these news items, or at least scanning them, on a daily basis, I’ve believe that I have gained a bird’s eye perspective on this topic. I can see what’s going on across state lines and across international boundaries, as reported by the local media. I can watch trends develop and opinions change. It’s kind of like flying over a traffic jam in a helicopter. I can see where the crash is up ahead, while the drivers stuck behind a half-a-mile of cars on the highway can’t.

With this perspective, I can report that there’s something that has been going on for a long time that really drives me crazy and that I feel hurts schools in their fundraising efforts. I’ve written about it before, but nobody seems to be picking up on this besides me. I don’t hear anyone else complaining about it, although I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why not.

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Here, I just grabbed a handful of headlines found in the School Fundraising Google Alert emails I get each day. I didn’t have to scour the Internet for them. I could have easily added dozens more to this list, just like them. They just popped into my inbox- over and over again. See if you can find a common theme to these stories.

Slidell Relay for Life supporters dogged about fundraising

Fundraiser Tonight For Narberth Woman Fighting Cancer

High School Insider: Knoxville does its part for ‘Coaches vs. Cancer’

Student fundraisers bettering third-world schools

Empty Bowls fundraiser at Saline High School Thursday will benefit Food Gatherers

Gelinas Junior High Raises Thousands for Children’s Hospital

1-800-GET-THIN Proudly Supports JDRF Kids Walk to Cure Diabetes

“Pennies for Patients” going on at Robertsdale Elementary School

Ok, did you spot the trend? continue reading

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If I were asked to teach someone who had never been involved with school fundraising before the steps that would lead him or her to success, these are the things I would say:

1. Have a plan before the year starts. Nobody likes being surprised by fundraisers.

2. Stick to that plan. You’ll lose all credibility if you’re always changing your mind.

Click here to enroll in Jim Berigan’s FREE year-long school fundraising e-Course!

3. Ask the teachers what has worked best in the past. They are on the front lines and have the best info.

4. Be creative in the fundraisers you choose, but not too creative. People don’t want to do the same thing year in and year out, but they also don’t want to throw their money away on something totally unproven or just plain weird.

5. Keep all earning percentages as high as possible, like in the 70% to 80% range, but never go below 50%. Parents really hate giving their money to somebody else.

6. If you are going to do a product sale, make sure the product is high quality and that people will actually want to buy it. Don’t be afraid to run a parent survey before committing to the sale.

7. Don’t get depressed that so few parents want to participate in the fundraiser. Volunteerism is a challenge anywhere. Approach it as a sales job. You’ll have to sell parents on the value of the fundraiser, before you should expect them to kick in.

8. Follow up after the fundraiser is over and tell everyone how you did. This will give people a sense of closure and prove you did with the money what you said you were going to do.

9. Don’t just raise money for “the general fund”. No one gets excited about “the general fund”. Put a name on every single fundraiser. You’ll have to get creative, but people are more likely to get behind a specific cause than something so nebulous.

10 Be consistent over the very long school year. If you launch a soup label drive in September, don’t fizzle out with it by Thanksgiving break. It takes time for those little suckers to add up. Keep pushing it all year long with monthly contests and reminders.

Photo by: Rex Pe

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Just recently, I posted an article that talked about schools who are turning to advertising to generate much-needed revenue. Regular fundraisers weren’t cutting it, so some schools started to sell sponsorship space on tests, on lockers, in gymnasiums, and in cafeterias.

I have read about this before, so I knew it was a growing trend, but I had never seen as actual sales figures.

Until now. Normally, I wouldn’t return to a topic so quickly after publishing (unless it was a scheduled two-parter), but I just could resist sharing this information with you.

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The Orlando Sentinel just published an article that knocked my socks off.  They are reporting that the Orange County school district in Orlando, Florida, has jumped onto the advertising bandwagon with gusto.

Here is a list of some of their income streams with the amounts they’re making:

• Orange County’s school district recently posted a Panera bakery sign outside the Winter Park High gym and at the scorer’s table. Profit: Almost $3,500 for the school year.
• The district also asked sideline officials at football games to wear vests that advertise Bright House Networks. Profit: About $100 for each game.
• Open up an elementary school lunch menu, for example, and you might see a Disney ad. Profit: $3,300 a month.
• It may not make a ton of money – about $270,000 over the past year and a half – but it’s a start. And it’s generating cash that educators can use as they please, when most tax revenue comes with strings attached.

This is something to think about with your school district.

Photo by: AMagill

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Recently, I started to outline the steps for creating an annual fundraising calendar. This is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to trying to raise money for a school. Without a plan, you don’t know what you are going to do next, and neither do your school families. This leads to frustration, mis-trust, and an unwillingness of parents to jump wholeheartedly into whatever the situation calls for.

So far, I have listed the following steps in making your fundraising plan:

• Assess the school’s needs.
• Compile a master list of those needs that is agreed upon by school administration and staff.
• Study all of the fundraisers that the school has done in the recent past to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t, dollar-wise.
• Do the math and determine how much money you’ll need to raise for this year’s goals, based on what you were able to raise in recent years.
• Figure out what the total financial need is and then divide it per family, just to see where you are at
• Create and send home an attractive flier that states exactly what the school’s needs are for this year and what those needs will cost.

In the second part of this article, I will tackle five more steps in this important process. continue reading

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There is a great post over at the Wall Street Journal blog “The Juggle” that tackles an issue that many schools might be facing in the not-so-distant future: that is the need to generate revenue from advertising sales.

Back in December of 2008, I wrote a blog post here called “This Final Exam is Brought to You by The Double Whopper”. It was about a teacher, Tom Farber, at Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, California. Due to budget cuts at his school, his allowance for making photocopies shrunk from over $500 per year to only $316.

Since teachers already spent significant amounts of their own money to buy school supplies that are unfunded by their districts, he sought to find a more creative solution.

He decided to sell advertising space to local merchants on his homework and test papers- $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final. At the time, he was managing to sell the ads, but most of the sponsors were parents of the students, wishing them luck on the tests. So, it was a very personal thing.

However, the post in the Wall Street Journal flashes forward to 2011. Things aren’t nearly as quaint as they were back in the good old days of 2008. continue reading

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