Ideas to Promote Your Next Fundraiser

• Give all or a portion of the proceeds from your next fundraiser to the classrooms. Allow each classroom to keep what they earn. (Or distribute excess funds earned over and above the original goal to individual classrooms.) Offer students the opportunity to decide (among a few predetermined options) on how the money is spent.

• Offer a teacher and/or classroom incentive for any class that achieves 100% participation in a school-wide fundraising drive.

• Sponsor a contest among teachers who personally sell items to their family and friends. For example, three top-selling teachers might be allowed to "shop" off the fundraising brochure.

• Tap into the local talent of parents and teachers to donate their time as prizes to top-selling families and faculty. Golf or guitar lessons, income tax preparation, baked goods or a home-cooked meal are nice ways to say "thank-you." Or say thank you to the entire student body and extended family with a gourmet breakfast before school.

• Before launching your next fundraiser, brief teachers (no more than 15 minutes) in conjunction with a faculty meeting. Bring food and consider offering door prizes.

• Take full advantage of your school's resources - school radio, homework hotline, web site - to promote your fundraising drive.

• Include with your letter to parents tips on how to fundraise unobtrusively in the workplace: avoid office e-mails; post a sign-up in a central break room with a sign that says "Don't feel obliged, but feel free¹" leave the children at home but allow them to write an office "thank you."

• Offer parents who are weary of tapping family and friends new ideas for fundraising OUTSIDE the workplace and home, such as adult sports leagues, church, social and civic clubs.

• Always promote - first and foremost - the goal of your fundraising drive. Parents and teachers respond better if they know how the money is going to be spent. Likewise, fundraising volunteers should be encouraged to promote the goal to their family, friends and co-workers.

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This article is from the March 2000 issue of the Fundraising Edge, an online publication of the Association of Fund Raisers and Direct Sellers and is reprinted with permission. Visit their web site at http://www.afrds.org/ for more information and a look at the complete issues of the Fundraising Edge.