nursing student organization fundraising ideas

Published

Hello!

I am in charge of coming up with fundraiser ideas for our nursing student organization. I came up with quite a few before hitting a road block, so I was wondering if any of you have any ideas, tips, or suggestions.

Thanks!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Nursing Ed, Ob/GYN, AD, LTC, Rehab.

I know one of the quaters at my school started selling t-shirts and sweaters with the school of nursing logo on it. They did pretty well.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

We sold hooded sweatshirts with Student Nurse Association on it & also tote bags with the top ten reasons to be a nurse.

Dixie

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in SRNA.

Some of the things we do:

Found a local company that did t-shirts and hoodies with our nursing school logo on them to sell to classmates and their family members. I forget the numbers, but we made either $6 or $8 per shirt selling them at $12 / t-shirt.

Yard sale - Who does not have stuff to sell? We asked students to donate items to be sold in a yard sale to go towards our student association and it made over $500 with only 9 people donating things. We plan on doing a much larger one this summer.

Restaurants! There are many that will help you with your fundraisers. We've done Applebee's, Baja Fresh, Jamba Juice so far. Basically, they have programs in place for this in which they provide a date and you distribute flyers which must be turned in when making a food purchase, and they donate a % of the sale to your organization.

Donations: Solicit donations! We went to the NSNA convention a few months ago and on my university's website, you can donate online with a major credit card and designate that the funds go to a specific student club. Local businesses sponsored some people in full. Their donations may be tax deductible...businesses and individuals love their deductions!

Ask local businesses to donate items or services for a raffle. We sold raffle tickets to students all around campus for $2 each for a chance to win a day for 2 to some fancy local spa, a $50 gift card for BestBuy, and a few other things...I think one thing was a free kayak or bike rental down at the river...whatever you can get!

We've kicked around the idea of a 50/50 raffle, where you sell tickets for a certain amount of time and draw one grand prize winner who wins 50% of the money collected from raffle sales, but we prefer the type where we get to keep all the money and give away donated prizes...lol

We've also done bake sales (just get people to donate items and a place to set up shop) and car washes (gas stations around here seem to LOVE this...bring LOTS of towels).

Good luck!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Cardiac/ED.

Buy a nice littman cardiology scope and sell raffle tickets...the catch for the buyer is that you will only sell only a limited number of tickets...for example

$150.00 scope

$5.00 ticket

50 tickets

$100.00 profit!

This works really well if you have trouble getting item donations and its easy money.

The key is to keep the number of tickets low so that people feel that they have a better than average shot at the prize.

Good luck P2

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Peds HH, LTC.

chinese auction w/bake sale. Ask each student to make a theme basket, and you can usually go around to businesses for gift certificate donations.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Neonatal ICU (Cardiothoracic).

We had copper and stainless steel *quality* coffee mugs embossed with our logo.... those sold for $20, we also did canvas messenger bags with the logo....Also have done bake sales, penny drives, etc...

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in NICU.

I've seen those sleeveless fleece jackets with a nursing logo on it--lots of nurses where I work wear them from their school. Very cute.

You could sell nursing items--hemostats, scissors, lanyards--our school had great success with that one. If you bought them all, you got a discount. Handy for clinicals.

Get together a book of hints on how to do well in nursing school--add normal lab values, nursing dx, that kind of thing and sell it as a clinical resource. That would be cheap to make and I'd have bought one.

We did a raffle with a lot of cool (donated by local businesses and hospital-logo stuff) gifts. Everyone was guaranteed something for their $5.00, but you didn't know what what it would be. Everything from a couple of pens to gift certificates. The fact that each person would walk out with something was a BIG draw. They did this at a nursing fair we all had to attend--captive audiences are always good :).

A few local hospital, nursing homes, home health care agencies, etc. donated just with being asked. Someone made a display with their logos and this was set up at that aforementioned nursing fair and a mention that they had donated to the cause. It's amazing how many local businesses are willing to donate something with just being asked.

Hope these help.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in orthopaedics.

we did candy bars. it may sound lame but the profit is good and they will sell. who doesn't like candy?

we also sold pizza hut cards. the card was $12 this entiled the purchaser to 12 free pizzas. it worked out well. for every card we sold we got half.

good luck!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

Here is an off-the-wall idea that I always thought might work. Since the students have to contribute their time for the fundraising activity, why not "hire yourselves out" for odd jobs and give the money earned to the organization? There may be lots of faculty members and local nurses who would like to hire a nursing student for 2 hours some weekend to do household chores, or cleaning, or babysitting, or run errands, etc. and pay top dollar for the service because it was going to a good cause. Personally, I'd be happy to give some nursing student $50 to spend 2 hours helping me clean my closets and take the stuff to the local thrift shop for me. If I could get 2 student to spend 3 hours some day to help me really do the job right, I would gladly pay $100. That's 2 students, 3 hours, $100. Multiply that by the number of student who would be willing to donate a few hours of their time and you could earn a lot of money if you marketed it right.

I also like the idea of having a yard sale. My condo building did that to raise money to redecorate the bathrooms in the lobby. Everybody pitched in a few items and raised over $1000. If a local nursing student were to ask me for a donation, I would be happy to donate a few things.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Pediatrics.

on busy days @ school, our student council did a pizza sale with a local cheap pizza place... each slice if i remember was like $1, sodas were $0.50 and bottles of water were $1. (Don't even know how i remember this stuff) and so that when students from just about all semesters had a break they could get a slice of pizza... plus it was advertised a few days prior so people knew to bring a few dollars.

they did t-shirt and tote bags (like the land's end totes), and during the winter the council all made soup and sold cups and bowls of soup with crackers for a fee and sold drinks (so there was vegetable, chili, chicken noodle, some other things that were really good and all homemade)

the current student council did a raffle for a parking tag for the year (we had to pay $120 to park annually at my school) so that i believe had some positive feedback.

good luck!!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in LTC , SDC and MDS certified (3.0).

Home Interiors does fund raising selling their candles. Donations from local businesses work great for raffel. Once my daughters pageant group stood at a traffic circle with buckets to raise $$ for relay for life. Have a sign up what the donation is for.(You may even want to wear your uniforms.) make up stickers to give to the people that donate" I support so and so"" Don't forget the doctors offices!!!! Home made quilts bring in great donation $$for a raffel.

Good Luck let us know what you decide

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion