ARTICLES

Here is an article from the site Kamloops.com called “Healthy options to raise cash”. It offers some quick suggestions for alternative fundraisers that are actually good for us.

Ok, ok, we all know that bake sales aren’t diet-friendly. When was the last time you ever heard of a school having a vegetable sale, though? But does that mean that bake sales should be outlawed? Here’s an article from the San Francisco Chronicle talking about this very issue. It’s called, “School bake sales victims of nutrition rules”. (For my own take on how to make money at a bake sale, check out my post “9 Ways to rake in the dough at your next bake sale“.)

How many times have you heard people complaining about school fundraisers? My guess would be a lot. But the next time you hear someone whining about schools being out of line by trying to raise extra money, I want you to tell them about this article from the Craig Daily Press (Colorado). The article is “Fundraisers target school technology, equipment”.

Here is another reflective piece on the values of getting involved in our children’s schools. It might be a little on the political side for some readers, but the point about being involved is a good one. It’s called “Volunteering, income taxes work together” from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.

When you’ve exhausted the cookie dough, the raffle, the golf outing and the auction, it might be time to turn to a private foundation for a grant. Here is one school’s experience in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article entitled “Cash-strapped schools turn to foundations”.

Written by “The Monk” at the Home and Family blog, this post touches on something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. So many people suddenly find themselves thrown into a fundraising situation with virtually no experience or training and are expected to “save the school”. That’s not fair and not smart. I think I’ll have some things to say about this myself in the coming months. But for now, read this post as a good introduction to the topic. It’s called “Key Elements for Planning Successful School Fundraising Events”.

We’ve all heard about fundraising stories in which the poor teacher or principal gets coerced into shaving off or dying his hair a strange color. Here’s the latest entry into the genre… (From the Hass Foundation Blog.)

Here’s a blog entry that thinks big. Imagine prom kings and queens all over the country making a difference. Dance on!

Here is a fundraiser that I haven’t heard of before! It’s a “Great Chefs Dinner” in New York City. Very unique! Too bad the best cuisine where I live can be found at Quiznos!

This is a nifty little reminder on how to build up your volunteer corps. Good to keep on hand.

And while our financial goals may be miles and miles apart, our methods aren’t. Of course, someone charged with raising a million dollars for a hospital probably won’t be selling the World’s Finest Chocolate, but they do, just like us, work on developing relationships with our potential donors.

The way they go about building these relationships is what is so fascinating to me. Below, I have provided links to two very large campaigns now ongoing in the United States: the $16.5 million drive for the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota and the $1.25 billion capital campaign for the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Enjoy and learn!

Crazy Horse Monument

Crazy Horse Memorial to launch fund-raiser
Billionaire donates $5 million to Crazy Horse Memorial

Cleveland Clinic

Carol L. Moss Appointed Chairman, Institutional Relations and Development
Giving to Cleveland Clinic

To get the ball rolling, here are three interesting articles I have come across recently about this kind of fundraising event. I hope you enjoy these links, as well as the upcoming installments of this series.

Thanks!

First of all, I discovered a useful article entitled “Great Golf Gift Ideas for This Year’s Golf Tournament” over at the About.com page called “Rob’s Event Planning Blog”.

If you’ve ever participated in a golf outing before, this article might make you laugh. There are a few PG-13 remarks in the text, but it is funny if you’ve been through the experience. The name of the blog is “Grateful Blue” and the title of the post is “Golf Outings for Dummies”.

This last article talks about an alternative to the traditional golf outing called the “Downtown Petoskey/Bay Harbor Shopping Scramble”. While there is no actual golf involved, the rules and the concepts are taken directly from this fundraising approach. Ingenious idea. There are two links to this idea. Check them both out for a complete picture.

From the Petoskey Chamber of Commerce Site

From the Northern Express

Summer Learning Programs
This is an excellent audio interview from NPR about summer learning programs that help children retain what they’ve learned over the summer. I was surprised to hear how much information children can actually lose while they are out of an academic environment.

Family Traditions
Here is a neat article about how to start a family tradition, by the folks over at the Not Quite Crunchy Parent blog, which I’ve just started checking out. I really like their style and content.

Summer Reading Programs
Summer reading programs are available at almost every library. The Vermont public school librarians have published an outstanding list for students in grades K through 12. Check it out.

Educational Software Recommendation
Just recently, I purchased an educational software program for my kids. It’s called Jump Start World: First Grade. I promise, this is not a paid review for the product, but I was blown away by how much my kids instantly loved it and how much they were learning. The really cool part is that when you register the product, you can sign up (and pay $8 per month) to get downloadable add-ons to the game. The company monitors your child’s progress and when it sees that a certain set of concepts is mastered, it automatically updates the game with new learning adventures. The Houston Chronicle wrote a great review of the product here. I think my kids will be in great shape for the fall by keeping up with their Jump Start World programs.

Minor League Baseball Games
One of the things we will be doing a few times this summer is attending Minor League Baseball games for our local team, the Traverse City Beach Bums. We’ve never gone to a minor league game before, but I’ve heard wonderful things about how family friendly they are. Minor league stadiums are much smaller than ballparks in the majors, so you get better seats and the prices are lower. Our team has fireworks every Friday evening of a home game, and there are lots of fun contests.

In fact, I heard about a 60 year-old woman at a Grand Prairie (Texas) AirHogs game who won a free funeral service for herself!  Yikes!  She has 30 years to cash in on it. 

Also, if you are interested, here’s a great article about the fun that can be found at minor league games.

Disc Golf
I recently learned that a local ski resort, just 10 miles from my house, has a very cool Disc Golf course that’s open to the public during the summer. The 18 hole course is situated on top of the mountains, and is very beautiful, I hear.. It’s free to play, but you can rent the special disc golf Frisbees and if you want the chair lift to take you up, it costs a few bucks. But if you buy the discs and are willing to hike, it’s a very economical family activity that we will be doing a lot of this summer.

If you are interested in learning more about how to play a golf-style game with Frisbees, check out this link. It has a directory of disc golf courses all over the United States.

Geocaching
I am also considering purchasing a portable GPS unit this summer, so my boys and I can go geocaching. This is basically like treasure hunting with a one of those global positioning satellite devices. I checked out the main geocaching website this morning, and they listed that as of this day, there are 591,790 active caches worldwide. In just the last seven days, there have been 412,438 new logs written by 57,696 account holders. The entire page is very useful and easy to read. Check it out.

Renaissance Festival
For a great mix of both recreational and educational fun, I will be taking my boys to at least a couple of renaissance festivals this summer. In fact, the first one we’re going to is tomorrow (June 7) in Charlevoix, Michigan. Believe it or not, there is an actual castle there, so it should be very cool. There are jousting tournaments, Celtic musical groups, jugglers, and all sorts of old-fashioned entertainment.

To get my boys excited about going, I found that the Texas Renaissance Festival has a great promotional video on their website, which you can see here. Already, my boys have become very intrigued by the history they’re going to encounter live.

As you can see, I’ll be trying to squeeze in a lot this summer. Please write us if you have any interesting summer vacation ideas that you’ve found to be of great value to your kids. I’d love to share them with our readers.

My wife and I did not push him to do this, he just saw me doing it regularly, and he asked if he could try. My wife is a web designer and programmer, so it was pretty natural to set him up.

As of right now, he doesn’t post regularly, but I’m guessing that when we start homeschooling in earnest, he’ll get back into it with gusto.

That got me thinking about the topic of children blogging. Right off the top of my head, I thought of all sorts of positive benefits, but then all the concerns about online safety started creeping into my thoughts.

I did some digging around, and here is some good information I found. I think it’s generally optimistic about the growing trend of kids having blogs, but there are some very strong messages of safety, as well.

I know many of the people who read Top School Fundraisers are teachers and parents. I’d love to hear about any experiences you have with kids writing blogs in schools or at home. Please share!

Here’s what I found:

About.com
Should You Let Your Child Blog?

Blog Connection
Kids & Blogs

A to Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling
Blogs and Kids – Staying Safe and Having Fun

Silicon Valley Moms Blog
Classroom blog teaching kids about writing and technology

blogcatalog
Should children be required to blog in grammar school?

Homeschool Blogger
Children Blogging

Microsoft
12 safety tips on blogging for parents and kids

Parents’ Universal Resource Experts
Teens and Internet Safey

I hope you enjoy!

First up, check out this fun video of Melissa over at USA Fundraising showing us all how to make the world’s best fundraising cookies. It’s definitely worth a look.

I also want to call attention to the great news that Marc Pitman’s (aka The Fundraising Coach) new book “Ask Without Fear” has just been listed for sale at Amazon. Take a peek, here.

Over at AllTop, I discovered a great blog called The Principal’s Page, written by a very funny school principal. Check out this article called “What’s a Twitter, and Should I Be Playing with it?” which is about learning how to cope with all these new Internet technologies without losing your mind. Here’s a quote from the post: “As I finish this blog, my wife is Twittering and my daughter is Skyping her grandmother. I am so confused. And my head hurts.”

Just recently, we here at Top School Fundraisers wrapped up our blog contest that had the theme of “My Favorite Teacher”. It’s fitting then, that I just came across an entire blog devoted to the subject. It’s called the Teacher Appreciation Blog, and it’s published in the UK. It’s a terrific site with some great articles. Check it out!

I have also recently become aware of a great blog for dads, called The Rebel Dad. Since I left my job as a school principal, I have joined the ranks of both the telecommuting and the stay-at-home dads. Sites like The Rebel Dad help me keep my sanity!

Even though I’m not a mom, we have a lot of moms who read this site, and I’ve found a lot of great information from a collection of mother-related blogs. There’s a really funny article called the Grandparent’s Gift Guide over at the Inside Motherhood blog. Give it a read and have a laugh.

If you have a blog you would like to share with me, I would love to take a look. Please let me know what you’re up to. Thanks!

Gail McCarthy of the Gloucester Daily Times reports on a very creative mix of fundraising and drama at a local school auction that resulted in a tidy profit.

Jason Claffey of Foster’s Daily Democrat posted an article about a school fundraiser that brought back the music and styles of the late, great 1980s. Maybe I’m feeling nostalgic about my 20th High School Reunion coming up this summer, but this sounds really good to me!

Erin over at USA Fundraising helps us remember Earth Day this year with a number of great eco-sensitive fundraising ideas.

Joy Underhill of PTO Today has a terrific article called “Teacher Appreciation Done Right”. Check it out!

Here are a few links to articles that tackle the issue of school spirit from a number of different angles.  Enjoy!

The website My Clay Sun, has a fun article about building school spirit in a school-wide dodge ball tournament.

From the Education World web site, here is a great collection of ideas from principals on how to use year-long themes to boost school spirit.

The blog Cheer4Life, posts a number of school spirit week activity ideas. From a young person’s perspective. Totally.

Here is an interesting article by Chris Ellis posted on the Business Ideas blog about the importance of branding your school.

Here is a sarcastic view of school spirit from the perspective of a student on his blog. Good for a quick laugh. The title of the post is “You Are Now Required to Show School Spirit”.

This is another list of school spirit activity ideas. This one is from the Teens page of Lovetoknow.com

From Christy Forhan at the PTO Today website, here is a terrific, in-depth article on building school spirit.

In Canton, Illinois, students have organized a Math-A-Thon as fundraiser for a hospital. From the Canton Daily Ledger.

Each year, hundreds of Christians gather at the U.S. Capitol to undertake a 90 hour continuous Bible Reading Marathon. This year the event happens from Sunday, April 27 through May 1, 2008. Check out the web site for more info.

In Houghton, Michigan, the Mining Gazette reports that the Bay Cliff Health Camp sponsored its second annual Stand-a-thon.

Found at the Online Athens website: The University of Georgia Rec Club will host a “Kartwheels for Kids” cartwheel-a-thon Saturday to raise money for the Interplast Foundation, which provides free surgical care for children in developing countries.

UDaily, the student newspaper for the University of Delaware, has an article about the third annual Erg-a-thon, which raised $8,000.

And in Olympia, Washington, an elementary school is hosting a Moustache-A-Thon. It’s true, I couldn’t make something like that up!) Read more in The Olympian.