At our local public school, P.S. 87, fundraising has become a way of life. Our school has been reclaimed from a neglected school with a dwindling population to a buzzing, overstuffed, multi-cultural center for learning. To add to the dedication of the administration and teaching staff, our parents association raises over $200,000 each year. With this money we provide services not provided by the city, like books for the library, a computer lab and art instruction…essentials for most schools. The trick is raising all this money with a volunteer staff and a shoe-string expense budget. Our biggest secret is to use fun activities to raise money. Here are my four favorite ways to raise money for your school.

1) Wrapping Paper Drive

Every year we sell holiday wrapping paper and other giftie items through our parents association. Our best sales have been through catalogs from Reader’s Digest or Sally Foster.

How Does It Work?

The company you pick to work with will supply you with all the materials you’ll need except people power. You distribute catalogs to all the parents. They return orders on the order forms provided, plus payment to the teachers. You will need some volunteers to help distribute the catalogs to the classrooms and to gather the orders from the teachers.

We place our orders in early October and the paper arrives just before Thanksgiving. You will need some volunteers to help distribute the boxes of wrap and other products to the classrooms. We keep our boxes in a small gymnasium and have parents pick it up from there.

What makes it fun?

I enjoy this sale because I get something I really need and it isn’t candy. The paper is expensive, but it’s very high quality, really pretty and can’t be found in stores. I love going through the catalog and taking my time. I take the catalog to people in our apartment building who are more than happy to buy, especially the parents with toddlers and infants. I guess they see themselves in the future in me. When my kids have graduated from all this, I’ll buy from their kids. Most people can find at least one role of wrap or bag of cards that they can use. I NEVER let my children take the catalog around to sell paper unaccompanied by an adult.

Special Twists

To boost sales, we have competitions between classes. The top class gets a pizza and ice cream party after the sale is over. We also award a special prize to the top three sellers in the school. Also, the wrapping paper companies have small prizes that encourage the kids to push on and the prizes get better the more you sell.

How Much Can You Raise?

We have over 900 kids so we usually make from $15,000 to $17,000.

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2) Halloween Fun House

This event was one of the most fun events we had last year. Halloween was on a Friday night, making it so convenient. We kept our kids off the street while still celebrating. The kids and adults came in costume. Our fun house consisted of: a disk jockey playing dance music in the gym, ice cream make-your-own sundae or soda included in the price of admission, a bake sale with more cupcakes than I’ve ever seen, face painting booths and the piece de resistance: the best Halloween Haunted House. Several very talented parents, including a lighting designer created the haunted house in the stairwell of the school. With lots of dry ice, spooky noises, weird lighting and parents and older siblings dressed up and popping out to scare kids, the haunted house became a real fun house. We charged a dollar for each child to go into the haunted house, and the line seemed never to dissipate.

How Does It Work?

You will need someone to chair the event and then people to be responsible for:

1) Food (bought, like ice cream and supplies and soda, and donated, like baked goods)

2) Haunted house crew

3) Face painting volunteers and supplies’

4) Music committee to arrange for DJ

5) Treasurer and crew to get and sell tickets. Don’t have cash – use tickets for everything. It’s much easier and much safer to have only a few people handle the money.

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What makes it fun?

Everything made it fun. The parents in costumes, the eerie haunted house, the great music and dancing, the delicious, inventive, and artistic cupcakes. This was Halloween fun the way it used to be.

Special Twists

Our state-of-the-art haunted house and fine DJ really made the event spin. Root out your most artistic parents for the haunted house committee and let them go all out.

How Much Can You Raise?

We decided to go a little extra and charged people $5.00 as an entry fee. This more than covered the soda, ice cream sundae and the DJ. We raised over $8,000 in one night! This was spectacular because this event replaced the old, standard harvest festival that was always a lot of work for many people and just limped in with $2,500

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