My daughter is in 8th grade this year and I was approached by her class adviser to help this year with fundraisers for their year-end celebration. Any ideas out there for fundraisers for the kids besides the typical bake sale - car wash etc. ideas? Thanks!

How about some babysitting services. You can have a class to train the students and then find some events that need childcare and let the students run the day care.

Any event that includes a really good raffle. For this one you display the item with a plastic sand bucket in front of it. People have to buy tickets and put it into the buckets they want to have a chance to win. Instead of buying say, five tickets for a chance at 10 items, they have to buy 10. My dil says that last year at the gran's school, the Wii had double the value of the item's worth of tickets in the bucket. And I believe it was donated at that. Lots of businesses will donate to school functions for the tax write-off.

Not sure what climate you are in, but around here it is getting close to fall. So there is a lot of yard work, (leaves, old flowers to pull, weeds to pull, sticks in the yard, etc) and you rent the kids for project.

Some do house work, some paint fences.

Our PTO does a "basket" fundraiser. . .in our case, each class or grade level puts together a basket of goodies (donated by parents or businesses if asked by parents) based on a theme of their choosing. Then you buy raffle tickets to win the basket. The proceeds go to the class(es) to help buy additional supplies, etc.

Some off these baskets are amazing. One year I won a "basket" with a gardening theme. Instead of the items going in a basket, they were in this great garden cart. It was full of flower pots, gardening magazines, gloves, tools, etc. I got a lot for that $1 ticket.

A popular basket in the past couple of years has been "gift cards." Sometimes there is a theme--like restaurants--but not always. I know that these get many times the value of the gift cards in tickets trying to win them.

Does your school typically have a fall festival? You could structure fund raising out of that - plan the raffle to be given away during the festival, auction cakes, play games - but sell tickets to the games, etc....

Another good one that works well for our HS is selling Christmas wreaths - there is a company that does this - kids have to get out and sell and then deliver the wreaths when they arrive.

They could also sponsor a neighborhood movie night at the school and show family friendly films - only expenses would be snacks and those could be donated by families in the school. Tickets would be less than the movie theatre and food would be free sono much expense there.

How about thsi twist on a bake sale....

Have a baked goods contest! Charge an entry fee for thsoe who want to compete and then charge people to be tasters and judge. Coudl charge $10 entry fee and $10 to taste/judge the contestants.

You could also do a 50/50 raffle, where the winner gets half of the total ticket sales. Those usually go over big around here and people generally donate back at least a portion (if not all) the prize winnings.

You could also offer a "date night" for parents by setting up an evening event where they could drop the kids off for a fee and your students would entertain them for the evening. You could have different stations and run it sort of like a fun fair.

Kitten's post in the flamingo thread in the cooler reminded me of this....

I can't remember if it was a school group or a church group but it doesn't matter. You could nominate a friend or relative and the group would "flock" the nominees yard with pink plastic flamingos. The homeowner then had to pay the group to remove the flamingos or you paid to have your friend's yard flocked, I can't remember for sure but it would work either way. It was pretty funny and I think a lot of people had fun with it! It went on for quite a while so I think they raised a lot of money.

Along with the raffle idea, if you got people to donate goods or services, you could have an auction.

Or, one of our local theater groups did a fun-fair and sold tickets to play festival games (ring toss, balloon darts, cake walk, etc). They had a face-paint artist and a fortune-teller, and small prizes if you won the games.

Oh my goodness - they had a toilet they did that with around here - you got up one morning with a toilet in your front yard - and it was an old toilet. Believe me - people paid to get rid of it!

LOL waldensouth, one of the realtors in town did that for a Relay for Life fundraiser. They painted the toilet pink!!! Didn't take long for the bank to cough up the money to have that removed I can tell you!

I love the idea! I might have to try it for a Relay fundraiser!

Although "sales" are typical, I've seen good success records with cookie dough sales and cheesecakes. The cheesecakes were a little pricey, so I personally thought they wouldn't go over well. I was wrong.

Around here the candy sales are very good. After all, who can say no to a kid or chocolate???

If there's a men's (or co-ed, or women's) softball league, put on a tournament at the local rec park. There will be tournaments here through late October for different fundraisers. They always do a $150/per team entry fee. My hubby has played in tourneys with as many as 15 teams!

Pie in the face contest.

Here's one you can run all year. Place jars with the teachers names on it. Then for a dollar, a kid can put his name in the jar (as much as he/she wants). Then at the end of the year, you draw a name out of the jar. That lucky kid gets to put a pie in the face of the teacher or Principle, or cafeteria worker, etc.

Football games are great locations for auctioning off trips, etc. I have even seen used cars auctioned. One "trip" was a weekend in town where the hotel donated a night's stay, a movie theater donated two tickets and they had two meals donated from two different restaurants. Made the group a good return.

One good fundraiser my nieces have been involved with was a dog wash - they had people lined up around the block to participate. The kids provided the free labor and had some big tubs filled with warm water and dog shampoo and garden hoses and hair dryers and brushes and combs and did their best with bathing the dogs. Everyone loved it and they made a TON of money and there were plenty of laughs and photo ops, to boot! I think they charged $10 or $12 per dog and people gladly paid it. Groomers charge way more around here.

Another one was a "pay to get out of jail" fundraiser where popular teachers, coaches, parents were "arrested" by actual uniformed officers and Officer Friendly (the school police liason) and put into a locked "jail" cell set up outdoors where people could see them and given cell phones to call up and get enough donations to "bail out of jail". Some of the teachers were "arrested" 3 or 4 times during the day (the person nominating the teacher/parent/coach for arrest had to make a donation, too) and raised hundreds in donations to get out. The kids thought it was a blast. The police and fire departments enjoyed being involved, and they used the day to give kids little mini lessons on fire safety, how to evacuate school or home, not playing with matches, DARE program lessons (stay off of drugs), what to do if you need a police officer/dialing 911, had the K9 units come out and let the kids climb into the police cars and up on the fire trucks, etc. This would obviously require a lot more planning and coordinating with the public services, but they raised a lot of funds.

Wow, lots of great ideas - thanks everyone! Some of them sound really fun and definitely worth a try.

I personally can't stand how many fundraisers schools do every year, seems like one goes just about every month. Candy, magazines, books, wrapping paper, cookies, pizza, steaks, popcorn, cookie dough...sheesh, just tell me how much money I need to give to not have to participate in any of these!

Unfortunately, most people don't have the "pony up with more money" option. Some of these would concern me, though. I would never want my kid rented to do house cleaning for a stranger. Nope, not gonna happen. Just too many crazies out there.

BrendaC,

In the case of our school, (Very small private school of 350) the kids do not go Un chaperoned to do these "rent a kid" projects.

Some schools and church groups in our area do the house cleaning and yard work "auction" for free labor thing, and it is always 2 adult volunteer chaperones (who have had background checks done and/or Veritas training) with 4 kids working in each house/yard/park. With older kids (8th grade and up) it might be 2 adults and 2 kids (they are more productive). Never, never alone!

I'm impressed that you would have that many adult volunteers. Good parental involvement. Not usually the case in the projects I've worked on. Oh, they'll talk big. It is the showing up that seems to be the problem.

Bagging groceries for tips goes over well here, too. The band usually does that every year.

Good one, Butter. They used to do that with various groups in the small town in Georgia I just left.

the only thing I would say is to NOT do the "Jail". It sounds good in theory, but I know around here people got really mad when coworkers called them asking for money without prior knowledge of what was going on.

I could use some ideas as well! My sister is trying to raise money to go to Europe with girl scouts, but they aren't allowed to do raffles, and things like chili suppers and car washes are hard to do with only one girl. Any thoughts? ps- she's babysitting a little bit, but hates it.

Loralie - does she play a musical instrument or sport or know how to do a craft (cross stitch, crochet, scrapbooking, photography), or know how to bake or cook a simple recipe? Maybe she could give lessons to younger children to teach them what she knows in order to raise money. Does she want to help tutor another younger child in a subject she's good at in school? Maybe there's a local Mary Kay or Avon cosmetics saleswoman who would pay her to help them put address labels on catalogs for mailing or stuff bags with people's orders from her inventory. Maybe there's a local realtor who would pay her to pass out flyers door to door - my mom used to pay local kids to put real estate listing flyers on everyone's front doorknob with a rubber band. Maybe she could get a small paper route and an adult could drive her in the car to deliver papers before or after school and she could put all her earnings and tips toward her Europe trip. Maybe there's a local veterinarian or boarding kennel or animal shelter that would pay her a couple dollars an hour to walk the dogs and play with the cats. She might like those types of things better than babysitting.