fundraising ideas

Every not for profit organisation, whether it be a charity, school, church or club, needs a fundraising strategy to raise funds.
These days there are many good causes around to fight for peoples money as well as national lotteries. So having the right fundraising ideas is vital. The following are ideas that people have successfully used.

Auctions

An auction every two years is by far the biggest money spinner in our children’s primary school.  The PTA made as much from this one event than all the others put together.  A  professional auctioneer donates an evening of his time.  Families, work places and local businesses donate items for auction.  Everything from meals in local restaurants to cosmetic sets to signed copies of books to football memorabilia to family holidays in private villas. 
A child is given the opportunity to be head teacher for a day for example.  They work-shadow the head and visit classes, get treated to lunch etc.  This went for 800.00.  There is much competition amongst the children to get this item.  A book of auction items is published the week before the event. It is managed on the night by parents who act as runners trying to keep up with the auctioneer.  Everyone attends on the night with cash and cheque books, all payments are made on the night.  Best of all, this can be done in addition to the family contributions!

We also opperate an annual fund which parents contribute to - 40.00 per year.  This is waived in cases of hardship. From Annie Garfoot

Auction of Promises

We raised over £3000 at an Auction of Promises with all kinds of promises from free babysitting to CDs donated by the local radio station.  How it worked was that with about 60 parents, we tapped into their companies and suppliers to get some fantastic prizes to auction…including a weeks holiday on a Canal boat. From Frederika Johns

Sponsored Contests

Another group I work with is the local school…they only have 32 pupils but raised £3k to refurbish their loos with a sponsored art contest.  All the local businesses were asked to donate £10 to sponsor one of the kids work.

They then display the art all over the area in shop windows, house windows anywhere.  On the day of the contest, visitors etc buy a card listing all the art, and for each piece of art they find they get a signature from the sponsor.  Those who get all the signatures are put in a prize draw…you guessed it, prizes also donated by local businesses.  It worked so well the first year, they did it again this year to purchase some more sports equipment.  Also, the kids love being part of it.
From Frederika Johns

Selling Repairs

Another thing we did was to ’sell’ a metre of footpath repair…this cost £50 per metre and you get a certificate with a grid reference so you can go stand on your metre…our guests did this too.  But the best was our in
memorandum programme where you could buy metres of footpath repair and put a photo, poem whatever in our In Memorandum book…some of the cheques we got were in the thousands!!!!  Also, stopped us from having park benches everywhere that need constant maintenance.
From Frederika Johns

Sponsored Activities

An annual, school-wide walkathon, done by the students.  We live in San Francisco, so it takes place on a morning in Golden Gate Park.  Each   student is expected to get pledges totalling at least $200.  This year they exceeded last year’s total, and the amount was about $163,000.  It also gives the kids a feeling of contribution on the part of their own efforts.
From Caitlin Morgan