Fun Fundraising Ideas
Friday, April 15th, 2011Through the decades, I’ve helped with numerous fundraising efforts from raising money for the school prom to treasury building for our Key Club and alumni association. I also worked several summers helping raising funds for a local Lions Club. So, to more completely document my life experience in my journal, I wanted to list all the fun fundraising activities in which I either helped or guided. These experiences have become fond memories for me, and I’d encourage any who’s never participated in a fundraising activity before, to give it a try. Here’s a complete list of my fundraising efforts over the past thirty-five years.
- Christmas tree selling. 1976 through 1979. I heartily enjoyed this Lions Club fundraising activity, working out in the cold November and December air. Lots of lifting, stacking, cutting, and showing of the trees to customers. We’d receive our first truckload of trees the weekend after Thanksgiving, and for the next three or so weekends, another load would arrive each Saturday and each Sunday. We’d unbind, trim, price, and stack the new arrivals between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Then, long about the 9th of December, we’d open for selling.
- Car wash. 1977. Works great in a boarding school environment. We asked all of the staff if we could wash their cars to raise money for the prom. They readily agreed, and we commissioned some of the maintenance staff to drive each car to us in the parking area between the home mechanics and electronic shops. All the kids in our class helped out and we raised close to two hundred dollars for the prom. That was great money in 1977.
- Candy bar selling. 1978-1979. For subsequent proms and other class organizational activities, we sold candy bars to build our class treasury. This brought in several hundred dollars and much of the thanks for the high success of this effort goes to some former students, who by then had gone off to college. So they took the bars with them and sold them on campus. College students make great repeat customers.
- Fruit cake selling. 1978-1979. I never cared for fruitcake until we sold Claxton fruit cakes in order to generate money for our senior class activities in high school. Some people laughed, who had bought candy bars from us the year before. But these cakes were really quite tasty, and we made $600 for our efforts; enough to fund the senior prom and a day out at a local amusement park.
- Hoagie selling. 1986. About the only drawback of this type of fundraiser that I encountered, was that it requires many people to plan, make the hoagies, deliver them, as well as to manage the incoming money; especially if you’re going to sell several hundred hoagies as we did. We delivered the hoagies to local customers as well, which required several people willing to drive around Pittsburgh. But man were those hoagies good. I remember the bread truck delivering the fresh-baked rolls at 5:00 AM. You could smell that wonderful bread throughout the entire main building of our school.
- Lottery ticket selling. 2004-2009. We ran several Pennsylvania lottery ticket fundraisers for our school alumni association. This effort produced a nice return on investment of $1250 each time we did it. It’s great as long as you have lots of people around who are willing to buy the tickets. In our case, we nearly always sold all tickets.
- Summer weekend bingo. 2005-2009. I joined a nearby Lions Club in 2005 and promptly went to work on their traditional summertime bingo fundraiser at a local amusement park. Each Saturday and Sunday starting Memorial Day weekend and going through Labor Day weekend, we’d head to the park and run bingo games from 2:00 PM until 8:00 PM typically. We netted roughly $15,000 per summer. That gave us enough cash so that we did not have to run any other fundraisers through the year. Bingo works well if you’ve got a nice facility in which to play, and you have lots of folks who will come that love playing bingo.
- Basket bingo. 2008. A local Lions Club ran one of these where they gave away many Longaberger baskets full of household items, either supplied by or manufactured by local companies. In one evening, we raised $6800 for a nearby camp for the blind and disabled. Probably the planning for this event took way more effort than the actual bingo party. Plus, it worked out so well because lots of people in this area love playing bingo.
Your mileage may vary for each of these money making ideas depending on your area and customer base. But in my locale anyhow, these all worked very well. So best of luck to you in whatever fundraising activity you’re contemplating. Try one of these. With a little effort, you’ll be able to make them work for you as well. Take care.
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Maybe next year.
