Fundraising for school organization

FarmgrrlRN · Feb 26, 2004

What kind of fundraising do y'all do in your school organizations? We are struggling to raise money and are out of ideas.
Thanks for you help.

Hey there,

So far, all we have done is raffles for dates. We haven't made HUGE amounts of money but not too bad for a bunch of poor nsg students ($380 & 292). Each was a $50 gift certificate and 2 movies tickets. Our last one was for Valentine's Day and we gave the winner a 1 lb box of chocolates so she would have present for her hubby for the big date!

manna, BSN, RN · Feb 26, 2004

Just let me say, I hate hate hate hate fundraising. Hate it. I'm not a salesperson by nature at all.

Okay, I know that was off the topic of the thread.

Raffles, silent auctions, dinners, selling Christmas ornaments, Christmas tree decorating contest (although both of those are holiday related....), campus "olympics," all come to mind lately.

J. B. · Feb 26, 2004

might be construded as promoting something if discussed her however. I dont want to break an rules here.

PM me if want to review the idea and its potential functionality.

John Bosco

AKA Terry Mason

AmyLiz · Feb 26, 2004

Sometimes pizza places have fundraising. I think I saw a sign in front of a Dominos Pizza that said that they have fundraising for schools & groups. That might be a neat deal...considering how much pizza students consume!

Other than that, I've seen raffles mostly...and those Entertainment Book sales.

MaggieJo · Feb 26, 2004

We finally decided to just ask everyone for ten dollars. This idea was given because some of us are sick of being guilted for not being able to help with the fundraisers. (I'm a single mom) Anyway the idea was loved by the rest of my class. Whether or not it works depends on how many students are in your class. We have 70, and I think about 60 have paid 10 dollars. Several of the others are still promising they will pay, but they have to wait until payday, etc. Anyway we have much more money than we would have ever gotten doing fundraisers. I personally think it's a great idea. Supposedly my class will have the biggest pinning ceremony that any class at my school has ever had. Anyway, I think it's an idea that's really worth suggesting to your class.

-Maggie

FarmgrrlRN · Feb 27, 2004

Eek! We not only have fundraisers throughout the 2 years but we also have class dues of $60/student. Any money left over at the end is usually returned as a gift certificate. I am the class treasurer so I'm always left trying to guilt my classmates into helping sell tickets. Not a fun part of my duties for sure.

RNinProgress · Feb 28, 2004

Thanks for the messages! If anyone has any other ideas, I would love to hear them. Thanks again!

shape0fmyheart · Feb 28, 2004

My class is selling daffodils for Cancer Awareness, and there's also a pretzel factory (?) or something around here that does fundraising and EVERYONE at school loves them, good way to make money.

fiestynurse · Feb 28, 2004

My oldest went to Catholic School through the 5th grade, so I have a lot of fundraising experience. We did a Jog-a-thon, used book sale, penny drive, weekly bake sales (always had a bake sale on back to school night), ice cream socials and strawberry shortcake socials, St. Patrick's Day Dinner, and School Carnival. Our biggest money maker was the yearly Auction and Dinner. Parents and others donate items for the auction. We usually had a theme and the dinner would be very elegant and nice. We had a silent auction and a live auction. It was a lot of fun!

Parents in my area do not like any fundfaisers where the kids have to go door to door selling anything. It is too unsafe for the kids! Parents just aren't that crazy about assisting their kids with this activity.

Also, the school saved money by encouraging parent volunteering. Every class had a parent as a teacher assistant. Parents ran the afterschool daycare program, which charged a small fee. Since there were so many cuts in the art and music programs, parents volunteered a lot of time in this area. On the weekends parents would assist with painting and school repairs. Or planting flowers and trees on school grounds. I worked evenings as a nurse, so I did recess duty every day. They liked the fact that I was a nurse because I could handle all the playground injuries. It saved the school from having to pay someone to do it and the teachers got the uninterrupted lunch that they all needed. I got to spend quality time with my daughter and her friends. The kids got a kick out of seeing me go down the slide! My daughter still has fond memories of her playground mom.

A local woman, retired teacher, just donated $400,000 to the school district. I would like to see more of this type of thing. So much money gets donated to the Universities and Colleges. I don't understand why more people don't leave more money to their local Elementary school?

My favorite bumper sticker:

"I would like to see the day when our schools have all the money they need and the Airforce has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"

MryRose · Feb 28, 2004

An idea a friends church did was selling "starbuck" bucks.... apparently Starbucks (in our area anyway) has a program that allows selling bucks for "startbucks" and a portion of the money generated goes to the organization. It's great because so many folks I know already are going to Starbucks for coffee anyway and so it actually "costs" the giver nothing to help out.

Okay..... now I have a question. Why are you raising money in Nursing School??? What is this for? Is it a specific Organization or do all Nursing Classes do this? This is the first I have heard of this.

Good Luck on your Fundraising!

Hugs!

MaryRose

NicuNsg · Feb 28, 2004

We sold class shirts for 20 dollars each, sold hot cocoa and coffee..and doughnuts before class and lab and during breaks. We also did a career fair for interested RN canidates and sold hotdogs, chips, sodas and had a bake sale. We did it in the health sciences center so we actually got business from administration and the other dept.