Wanted: Fundraising Ideas for Elementary School Teachers

[Cheetahwoman7]

Hi everyone,

I know that with all the resourceful brains we have on this site that some of you will be able to help me out.

This year I teach 4th grade in basically an economically disadvantaged area of my city. Most of the parents are farm workers who are unable to help fund any fieldtrips or special programs for our school. As teachers, we are given $200 a YEAR for fieldtrips! Considering the District busses now charge us $7.50 a MILE, $200 won't take us very far. Since we study state government in 4th grade, I'd like to take my students to Sacramento and to tour the State Capital building. The cost of the trip will be about $1,500.

That being said, I've always fundraised money for any trips that would benefit my students. It used to be that we could sell things like lollipops, nachos, popcorn, but now we have been told we're no longer able to do that because of the State funded 5-A-Day Program (focusing on kids eating ONLY healthy things like fruits and veggies). I'm not against teaching kids to eat right, just wish they would give a bit of a break on a once a week treat. Also, anything that competes with something the school already uses to make money, i.e. selling pencils and erasers, we can't duplicate.

What I'm looking for are some options. Have any of you done fundraisers that were successful? Do you have any ideas that I can use to include my students in the process? I've always involved my students and have used the "businesses" we have started as learning/teaching opportunities. It's one of the reasons that my students do so well on the State tests in mathmatical word problems. *smile*

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

CJ

[PrincessPerky]

I saw one where they 'filled' a card or book of quarters. or dimes...it was straight up asking for cash, no return of gifts at all.

Another idea is healthy snacks..can you sell food if it is healthy? One small school I worked at made lunch a couple times a month, the kids did the work, though..not to sure that is possible at all in a public school....

Can they make something? a craft, jewelry or decorations, simple but 'fancy looking'?

[sweeps]

How about coupon booklets. Go around to local merchants asking if they'll provide a coupon for the booklet. Then sell the booklets for $20 or so.

[tinapbeana]

suppose it's too cold for a car wash....

hey, depending on where you live, you could have a walk-a-thon for your class. like they do for charity, only folks in the area sponsor kids to walk say 2 miles at X $ per mile (or X cents per step).

oooooh, how big is your class? you could go to a discount store & get them pedometers (i've seen them a buck each in dollar tree), and have them get sponsors at something like a penny a step. actually, that's $100 for 10000 steps (the daily goal for an adult), so maybe $1 per thousand steps would be better. then the kids wear the pedometers for say a week, it keeps track of their steps, you keep the official record, then they go collect money.

seems like it would work great w/ the newer healthy eating regime.

let's see, $1 per thousand steps, 25 people sign up per kid, 5k steps per day, 5 school days per week... that's 25k steps in a week, costing each signer 25$, x 25 folks = $625 brought in per kid! for a class of 20 that's over 12 grand!!! maybe you should ask for a quarter per 1k of steps (which would still be over 3 grand...)

[JanH]

Here a local restaurant (usually a pizza place) sponsors a night for a school organization. Part of the proceeds for that night go to the organization. I've also heard of a local restaurant that doesn't open for breakfast do a breakfast on a weekend with their own cooks, but parents serving the guests. The proceeds go to the kids. I'll ask my DIL who has some great ideas for fundraisers cos she is a band director and they have to have money for band trips. In our school days, the school's parents cooked a pancake breakfast or a spaghetti supper at the school. My DS's band had a band garage sale at the school on a saturday with everyone donating stuff to sell. And a fish fry on the same day.

[ShoppingInsider]

Our church is now doing this. You can ask people to bring in old cell phones, or used inkjet cartridges, and some companies will pay you for them. If your kids don't have them at home, you can ask local businesses to set up drop boxes to collect them. (A few of the cell phone recyclers even have free boxes they'll give you.)

It's a public service (recycling) as well as a fundraiser. Sometimes you can even ask cell phone DEALERS to give you their old phones and they'll do so.

Doubt you'll make a lot of money FAST, unless there a big concerted push to get businesses to help, but it's a steady trickle of income.

[Cheetahwoman7]

Thanks for the help everyone!

Princess Perky: I like your idea of selling healthy snacks and wish I could. Another 4th grade teacher has beaten me to the punch on that one. I don't want to step on her toes as she started doing the same thing last year to raise money. I've seen those coin holders. Maybe it's time to look at them again.

Sweepsplayer: I looked into those coupon books last night after reading your post. I'll have to wait and see what information they send me.

Tinapbeana: Oh how I wish I could make that $12,000 in a week...hehehehehe

ShoppingInsider: I've heard of those porgrams for cell phones and ink cartridges. I'm looking into that aspect as well. Thank you.

In the meantime, I went and bought 150 cool looking Halloween pencils with huge eraser toppers with various shapes and pictures on them. The cost was .35 each and my students are going to sell them for $1. We had a classroom team meeting this morning. *smile* I talked to them about the fieldtrip, it's costs and what we might do to make the money. Afterwards, I showed them the pencils and asked for their imput. They were the ones that decided on the price. We discussed how they could go about selling them and how they were responsible for anything they took out of the classroom to sell.

My students were sooo thrilled!!!! They're excited about the fieldtrip as well as the making money aspect. I'll let you all know tomorrow how they did with their sales. Each student who wanted to got to select five pencils to sell. (There were about 10 different styles.) My fingers are crossed that they do really well. If they do, I'll buy more pencils for them to sell over the weekend.

After the pencils are gone, I'll be looking into more "holiday" type fundraisers. Any ideas???

Thanks again for all the help so far,
CJ

[tinapbeana]

get parents to donate supplies and make tree ornaments to sell starting after thanksgiving...

do your own "Buck a Cup" for parents bringing their kids to school in the mornings there's a high profit margin in coffee, it just takes a lot of cups to see it!.

have parents donate items and have a class yardsale. or a couple! along those lines, you could try to eBay a couple of items... have the kids help with planning & keeping the books, makes for a great financial intro...

any handy parents willing to volunteer? have a handyman auction. or an auction in general: a handyman, a mechanic, knitting lessons, cooking lessons, DIY lessons.

[kealina]

if you could get the parents involved maybe you could do a small food event or party? and either charge admission or charge per plate as a fundraiser? or at least sell food at the class yardsale/craft fair?
i remember when i was in 6th grade our school had a big fundraiser where they had one of those sales and there was an area for food... my mom donated a huge tray (150+, probably at least 200) of her delicious homemade eggrolls aka lumpia and sold them for $2 each... i remember it clearly because they were a huge hit, people kept coming back and buying 2/3/4 or 5 more, and she sold out in about an hour...she raised a couple hundred dollars right there... my mom was pretty proud and flattered i think... so if you have any great cooks food might be something to try..

also, are there any local places that offer fundraising opportunities?... here in hawaii there is a place called Zippy's where they sell a particular chili which happens to be an island favorite. they have a program where groups that are fundraising can approach them and sell tickets for their chili. the groups make a little profit for every ticket they sell and those that buy the tickets have until a certain date (usually a month or two) to redeem them for the chili...they are already well-known and loved and selling the tickets is usually a breeze. most people will buy at least one if not more. you might want to check around locally and see if that is possible with a popular local vendor?

also, a holiday idea that the kids can probably do is put together calenders or a cute little kids recipe book or something similar... for the calender you could maybe include artwork from all of the kids or something like that... something parents and grandparents might want to buy?...

i'll try to keep thinking but that's all i have off the top of my head...

[LuxLiving]

Get with some local restaraunts and have a Restaraunt Crawl - sell tickets. Drinks in one place, appetizer at another, salad at another, entree' at yet another and dessert someplace else. Each restaraunt kicks in/donates part of the proceeds.

Also there is some ??flower bulb place ?? that has a fundraising program already in place.
Kids sell the flower bulb pre-orders.

[Cheetahwoman7]

Thank you tinapbena, kealina, and LuxLiving for your additional suggestions. I'll be looking into all of them within the next few weeks.

I'd like to catch everyone up on what's happened so far. Many of my students must be natural salespeople. They brought in $59 overnight! That's enough to pay for the cost of the pencils. Everything else after this will be pure profit!

I explained to my kids the formula for calculating profit and explained what profit means. Seems they didn't understand how they could sell $59 worth of stuff but only have a profit of $5. Then I explained how once the bills are paid, everything else is profit that will go towards the fieldtrip. They were then allowed to pick more pencils to sell over the weekend. With their good salesmanship, we should make a profit of about $100 by Halloween.

I did go to buy more pencils, since they were selling so well. Seems the store put them on half price the day after I bought ours and now there's none left. Oh well, it's been a great first experience for my kids. We even practiced a few money word problems based on our sales.

Thanks again, everyone. I'll keep y'all informed!

CJ

[tabbycat31]

How about seeing if you could get class volunteers together over a weekend in December and see if you could do a holiday gift wrapping event? I used to work in a mall,a nd there were tables in common space offering gift wrapping services.

[JanH]

Now that gift wrapping idea is a real interesting one. You know how many guys hate to wrap gifts?
I know most of our males do.

[tabbycat31]

Back when I had time, I did fundraising for the local SPCA (I can't wtih a FT job and class right now). That was one of our biggest cash cows. However I am not sure if elementary school kids are very skilled at gift wrapping. A crash course may be needed.

[nanamom]

We used to have a jog- a-thon every year. Any kind of a- thin would work. How about a read-a-thon or a math-a-thon or a ...you get the idea. One of the fund raisers i wish they has around here is a rabies clinic. Get a local vet to donate time and skill then charge to get the animals vacinated. As long as you cover the price of the med, most vets like the publicity. I always liked getting the stupid shot cheaper and in a more convenient place. My dog didn't balk at going to the mall but the vet's office made him drag his feet. We also used penny jars as a contest, boys jar vs the girls jar, who ever brought in the most in a month period had a no homework week or what ever you think of.

[BCHGRL]

Ask local fire departments if they can host a boot drive. On Saturday mornings, the firefighters stand at intersections in traffic and walk around holding out their boots for donations. Either one holds a sign with the charity name or they just make a flyer and tape it to their boot. After Katrina, it seemed that every weekend there was a boot drive.

[Cheetahwoman7]

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd update our first fundraising activity. I bought Halloween pencils from Big Lots for my students to sell. Seems they were quite popular. I have found out I have a few natural salespersons (sales people?) in my class.

So far, we've made a profit of $149.xx with about $20 still out that needs to be brought to school. I'd say that's not bad for their first time!!!

I did talk to the other teacher who's going on the fieldtrip to Sacramento and told her that I'd like to talk to my class about taking several smaller trips to closer locals and saving some $$ to try to fund a trip to Washington, D.C. next year when we move up to 5th grade with these same students.

I have conferences all next week. I might bring it up to some of the parents and see what sort of reaction I get. *fingers crossed* that the sales keep going. I need to find a good source for Thanksgiving and Christmas pencils with wild looking eraser toppers (like our Halloween pencils had). I was thinking of Oriental Trading Company, but their shipping is pretty high, which cuts into the profit margin.

Thank you for all of the wonderful suggestions. I'm going to contact a local pizza place and find out more about their fundraisers for schools. I'd like to know if the entire school has to participate or can one "club or organization" (aka 4th grade) do the work and reap the benefits.

I'll let you know what happens next.

CJ