Help! Advice for Fundraisers: A Christian School Story

[KennethandTiffany]

Help! Does anyone have any advice for fundraisers?! I have one going with a local christian school (85 kids). One of the moms did a show for me and wanted to do a fundraiser. Apparently the school is only allowed 2 fundraisers a year, so they told this mom to handle it and just donate the money to the school. I sent a letter out 1 week before it started telling them about it, then I sent out a packet with another letter, a catalog and several order forms. After a week and a half, I sent home another letter reminding everyone that it was almost over and recapping the previous info I had sent out. Our three weeks were up yesterday and only 3 kids turned in orders! There were about 15 orders, plus 5 orders had been placed through our website. The mom feels awful, and she said that she will bring it up at the PTA meeting on monday in case anyone forgot to turn them in. I guess since it was a parent sponsored fundraiser and not a school one then maybe there wasn't enough hype about it. Does anyone have any suggestions? It will still be over $1000, so they will get $150+ for the school, I just thought that with 85 students and the parents being very involved with the school, that we would have seen a MUCH larger total. They said if it went well then they would do it again next year, but I don't know if it's worth it if they aren't promoting it at all! The materials alone cost me well over $50, although I will be making at least $150 in profit. I don't know!!! I guess I was just expecting it to be much better, and now I am kinda let down!

 

[DebbieJ]

With fundraisers with kids, you have to offer some sort of sales incentives.

I'm doing one for a church youth group. I'm talking with the youth pastor about some options--like a $50 gc for the top sales and a $10 gc for all kids with sales over $250.

Another director in our area did this with a high school sports team and they sold $9k worth of PC!

 

[KennethandTiffany]

We did offer an incentive to the top seller and the kid with the most orders. We also offered a pizza party to the class with the highest sales, although I am not sure about that now. I picked up the orders turned in so far and only 7 kids total collected orders, out of 85. I will still be doing something for the kids with the most orders and highest dollar amount, but I am not sure about the pizza. I will be in the hole if I do that, but I did say that I would. I just don't think it's fair to award the whole class when only one child in the class collected orders. Any input on how to handle that? I guess next time I need to put a minimum sales amount for the class to win. But, the fundraiser is at $1200 right now, on a positive note! I had hoped for more, because I really wanted the school to be impressed with the results. Maybe they still will be, seeing that with only 7 kids participating, they still made almost $200. Imagine if 40 kids had participated! Oh well, hopefully there will be a few more orders on monday!

 

[ange13]

I had pretty much the same thing happen to me in January. 70 families at a daycare center. Only 10 turned in orders!! It was over $1000, but then I donated 10% of my commission, next time I'm only offering 5%!!! I offered a gift to highest seller over $300, no one turned that in (thank goodness) because I would've been even more in the hole. However, they want to do another one possibly in Oct, before the holidays, they do about 5-6 fundraisers a year. I got one booking and a possible recruit, so all is not lost, and it wasn't much work for me.

ange

 

[KennethandTiffany]

Not so bad!Well, my fundraiser ended up being over 1700 and I booked a show! Not as bad as I thought!

 

[DebbieJ]

Congrats! That's so great!