Get Everyone Involved in Your School Fundraiser

For your school fundraiser to be a success, you want everyone to participate. That includes teachers, administrators, principals, students, parents and even the community.

You've got to build anticipation and excitement around your fundraiser. But, how do you do that? With motivation! And, motivating parents is the key to getting everyone excited, and the fastest way to having a better school fundraiser.

Follow these tips and you will have more success and have to do less fundraising.
Inform
In order for parents to participate, they have to know why the fundraiser is a necessity for the school. Before anyone can help solve a problem they must know what the problem is. Let parents know why the fundraiser is important to their school. Hold a meeting and address the budgetary needs of the school for the year and clearly explain how the money raised from the fundraiser will go towards helping meet those needs. Send out informative emails detailing the areas in school that the official budget won't cover. Show videos explaining the need for the school fundraiser. Whatever you do, make sure to emphasize the necessity for the fundraiser. Parents need to know that their money is being used for essential educational needs.

Encourage
For the fundraiser to be as successful as possible, you need to encourage everyone to participate. And, I don't mean just at the beginning of the fundraiser. You need to keep encouraging participation throughout the entire fundraising process. Teachers, parents and administrators need to all lend a hand in making the fundraiser a success. Encourage teachers to do daily announcements to keep their students informed about the fundraiser. Ask principals to send emails to parents asking for support. A principal's email list can generate thousands of dollars in a matter of minutes.Ask teachers and administrators to use promotions to get the kids excited. For example, daily rewards to students who are on top of their fundraising efforts. Also, reach out to parents and encourage them to register online with the fundraiser and send emails to family and friends asking for support. A few emails to out-of-town relatives can generate a lot more money for your school. Teaming up will take your fundraiser over the top!

Incentivize
Everyone loves prizes.No matter how big or small, kids love walking away from something with a concrete item. Offer one big grand prize that every child will want to get. Then, make all the prizes great. If there is more than just one prize that interests them, they will try to keep selling to reach the desired items. Use a variety of long and short term incentives. Offer an ice cream party, limo ride, or extra recess time to the class or grade level that sells the most. Hold daily raffle drawings. Use principal incentives. If the school meets their fundraising goal, the principal can get duct taped to a wall, have to spend the day on the roof or as a student. Incentives don't have to just be for the kids either. You can have teacher and administrator incentives as well. Offer gift certificates to teachers whose classrooms meet their goals, or limo rides to the administrators if their school meets its goal. It's also important to offer family incentives. Have great prizes like a family night out, or tickets to a local amusement or water park for families that go above and beyond and really get into the fundraiser. Just remember, great incentives will always keep everyone motivated!

Value is Key to a Successful Fundraiser

Schools today are relying on fundraising more than ever to fund new equipment, field trips, learning programs and even some teachers' salaries. It's important to realize that fundraising has become a neccesity for most schools across the nation. However, schools should not fall into the trap of having multiple fundraisers throughout the school year. That is both ineffective and unnecessarily time consuming. All a school needs is one hard-hitting, successful fundraiser to raise all of the needed funds for the entire year.

Offering value will create fundraising success.

No matter what type of fundraiser your school decides to hold this year, make sure it's valueable. The last thing you want to do is offer a product that is cheaply made at an extremely high price. Your supporters won't trust you, which means they will not participate in the fundraiser. The same goes for an event, if you are charging high ticket prices to an event that doesn't offer a whole lot, people will not show up. Offering value is important because it creates trust between you and the supporters of your fundraiser. Valuable products and services will also be received well in the community, and that will lead to more money for your school.

The same goes for offering products and events at prices that are too low. You will not make any money if items are priced lower than their value. It's important to hold a fundraiser with products, companies and/or events that you believe in and really feel are a great value and resource to your community.

Bottom line-- if something doesn't seem like a good deal to you, don't offer it. Nobody wants to feel ripped off when they are giving their money to support a school.