Yesterday I posted about a Guys Night Out football event. It reminded me of the traditional football tailgate event. Why not make a football tailgate party into a fundraiser? Your football booster club could host a tailgate style event before your high school football game. It could be a family friendly picnic instead of the “guys only.”

You’d raise funds by selling food, drinks and spirit items. Maybe even a special tailgate party t-shirt. You could provide entertainment such as a band. How about a special performance by the cheerleading squad. I’m sure you could think of lots of fun special things to add to your party.

Does your team have a “grudge match” each year? That would be a great one to host your tailgate party. Parents night or the last game of the season are also good days to host football tailgate party fundraiser.

Your high school football fans love to come out and support the team. They’ve also got to eat! So why not have a tailgate party to give them the chance to do both!

The McJunkin Corporation recently hosted a “Guys Night Out” fundraiser that included a picnic style buffet. The Charleston Gazette caught this fundraising event in action:

The event, which provided food, drinks and cigars to men watching the West Virginia-Maryland football game, raised money for the YWCA Sojourner’s Shelter for Homeless Women and Families.

This looks like it turned out to be a great football fundraiser. (There’s even a photo on the newspaper website.) Your booster club or other group could plan a similar event for the guys who love football. Show the game on big screen TVs or projection. Then you could show a college or professional game. Whatever football team is most popular in your area and would draw the biggest crowd is the one to feature.

Go on, let the guys have the night out to kick back and watch their favorite football team. They could help you raise funds for your group at the same time.

Dances are popular with junior high and high schools, but they often take lots of planning and good organization to make them successful. A 1950’s dance is a very traditional theme, back when good ol’ rock n’ roll was just getting started.

Here are five success tips to make sure your 1950’s dance will rock!

1. Get Everyone Involved

A dance will not be successful unless those you hope to attend are interested in it, no matter what the theme is. Talk with your students and see how interested they are in having this dance with this them. Then make up your planning committee with people who were most vocal.

Be sure the students on your committee are not already overly committed with extra cirricular actifities or are having academic issues, so you know they have the time and ability to work on planning. Committee leaders can make up a list of small volunteer jobs or things that other students can do or things to bring. This way many people can be involved in making the dance successful, even they don’t have a lot of time to help ahead of time.

2. Set a Date

Finding the perfect date for your 1950’s theme dance can be found best by talking with students and teachers. Check your school and local community calendars to make sure there are no conflicts. Don’t plan the dance around holidays or school vacations or it may hurt attendance. Finally find your location. Many school dances are held in the gym or multi purpose school commons.

3. Fun Decorations

The magic of a 1950’s theme dance is found in the decorations and also in how students dress for the dance. You can buy some decorations, but you can also make some as well. Simply decorating with records (remember those?) around the gym will remind people of the 1950’s. Or you can draw records on poster board and write the names of popular 1950’s songs like Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis on them. Balloons can be great to decorate with. Traditional 1950’s party colors tend to be: pink, white, silver and black.

4. Encourage costumes

A 1950’s theme dance just isn’t as much fun if people don’t dress up! Students and supervising teachers should be invited to dress in nostalgic clothing for this dance. Kids may need some help coming up with costumes. On your promotional flyer include with photos or images of traditional “sock hop” 1950’s teenagers. Adding a costume contest with prizes will encourage a lot more people to dress up. Just be sure to advertise that you’ll be having a costume contest and what the prizes are!

5. Music

This is the most important part of your 1950’s dance! Find someone who has a lot of 1950’s music, or survey a number of people to get a wide variety of music. To make your dance even more entertaining, see if you can find little facts about each singer/entertainer for the D.J. to say as each song is played. Maybe you can even have a performance by a band that plays ‘50s rock n roll or an Elvis tribute artist!

When planning a 1950’s theme dance be sure that you have the most important things covered, a great location, great music and a fun atmosphere. Then you are likely to have a fun dance everyone will remember for years to come!

Is your school looking for a fundraiser to help stock the library shelves?  The Read-a-Thon fundraiser is a great match for elementary and junior high schools who are raising funds for thier school library. Maybe you need to purchase new computers, books or other learning materials.  If so this fundraiser is still a great match for your fundraising needs.

Creating a school Read-a-Thon is fairly simple, you begin by creating forms that students can bring to family, friends and neighbors to ask for sponsors. Students can ask to be sponsored per book, or for a flat donation (children may be a bit more encouraged to read even more if donations are for “per book”). Distribute the forms to each classroom and explain how the Read-a-Thon will work.

Run the Read-a-Thon for a predetermined amount of time, such as two weeks, one month or up to six weeks.  Some Read-a-Thons that are based from public libraries last the entire summer.

The librarian can take an active part in this fundraiser. Ask the librarian suggest great books to each grade and class. Some students may be strong readers, and may already have an idea of what they like to read. Other students may be eager to compete, but may not be as confident about book selection. These students will appreciate having the librarian visit each classroom to talk a bit about good books for them to read, handing out a suggested reading list and answering their questions about ways to find great books. The Read-a-Thon will hopefully inspire some students to be stronger readers, and leave them with a love of reading at the end of the program.

Encourage students to obtain sponsorship from their family and friends. Parents may also bring the sponsorship sheet into their workplace, which could add up to additional sponsors. Creating a flyer with ideas for where they can raise funds could be very helpful to many, especially those that are a bit shy about asking people. Giving parents and students tips on where they can find sponsors could help them raise even more money. The more people the students and parents ask mean more potential funds for your school.

Students will love to be awarded prizes for their participation in the Read-a-Thon. So make up a list of prizes that will be awarded for each level of number of books that they read.  At one school Read-a-Thon, for every ten dollars the student raised, they earned a dollar to spend at the upcoming Scholastic book fair. Adding in a Scholastic book fair, or other well-known book fair to your Read-a-Thon can be a great idea.

Having the Principal read the students’ names, grade and classes that are in the lead over the intercom would also be a great prize every week for the students to look forward to.

A school Read-a-Thon will getstudents to read more books than they might have otherwise.  It’s a great way to promote reading and raise some funds for your library or school at the same time!

Here’s a great way to kickoff your high school football season…

Allen High School in Allen, Texas is having its annual Kick-off Picnic this Friday evening. The football team, cheerleaders and marching band drum line will be there. Plus there will be a live DJ.

Sure it’s a great way to celebrate the start of the season and by August kids are dying for something to do anyway! It’s also a great way to start fundraising.

Allen prices this event very reasonably at $3.50 per person or $15.00 per family. Like most events, funds are not raised primarily from ticket sales. It’s all the other little stuff like raffles, silent auctions, and sales. Yes, this is a great event to sell spirit items. According to  Pegasus News:

Patrons will have a chance to order Allen Eagles spirit wear, yard signs and decals. Join or get information on the Allen Eagle Touchdown Club at the picnic as well.

Many football booster clubs, cheerleaders and other sports teams sell spirit items as a fundraiser. Parents, students and other sports fans love these items anyway, so it’s a great item to sell. If your football booster club is doing other fundraisers such as catalog sales, discount cards, or other direct sale items have them on hand at an event like this!

Thanks to Danielle for posting the list of restaurant fundraisers last Friday. There are so many places that will help schools and other groups with fundraisers.

Each restaurant chain has its own rules about how the fundraiser works. Sometimes you have to recruit a minimum number of people to the restaurant. At the Sonic most of the time the volunteers just work for tips from drive-in customers. Of course there might be some differences at each location because of franchises.

Sometimes groups don’t make much at these kind of fundraisers though. Less than $100… is that really worth it? So I’m not always real excited when I hear that a group is doing one of these. I take the trouble to go and they just get pennies. Can’t I just send a check?

Well I started to get more positive about restaurant nights when I saw this news article. A high school band in Michigan holds their restaurant fundraiser at Big Boy. They get a healthy 10% of sales… but the great part is that they raise more by doing other fundraisers like a raffle:

The South Lyon East Band Boosters are holding a fundraiser at Big Boy’s on Aug. 13 from 5 to 9 p.m. Ten percent of all sales will go to the boosters and they will be holding a 50/50 raffle, as well. Students will be hostessing, waiting tables, making ice cream sundaes and cleaning up, Hogan said.

In addition, unused cell phones can be dropped off at Yakkity Yak and all profits will be donated to South Lyon East Band Boosters.

Now that is a good idea! Extend the fundraiser with…um, more fundraisers! I really like the raffle and recycle collection too.

Of course each restaurant will have their own rules, some might not want groups to do raffles, etc… but it never hurts to ask.

Everyone loves cookies, cakes and pies right? So many school groups see the school bake sale as an easy fundraiser. Actually, while it may sound like a good idea to have a bake sale, I believe it’s actually one of the worst. Find out why…

5 Reasons NOT to Have a School Bake Sale

1. Potential Funds Raised - Bake sale items are typically priced quite low. After all, you can only charge so much for a little zippy bag of cookies. Prices generally range from 50 cents to $10 for a cake. So let’s do the math, how many baked goods does your school group have to make in order to raise the money it needs?

Unless you only need to raise $100 or less your group is never going to reach it’s goal with a bake sale. Why would you spend so much effort on something that produces so little results?

2. Too Much Work - Anyone who’s ever baked items for a sale (and I have) knows how much work it is. Even if you like to cook you spend all afternoon in the kitchen making cookies and cupcakes. At best your hard work will fetch the organization $10-20. Was it really worth it?

3. Perishable Foods – Baked goods need to be sold the day of the sale. If bad weather, a low crowd or something else gets in the way of the school bake sale, you can’t save them for later. What usually ends up happening is that bake sale workers buy each other’s desserts.

4. Too Many Fundraisers – One of the complaints that many parents have is that schools do too many fundraisers. Because bake sales generate such a low amount of income for the group, it becomes just one more fundraiser people are asked to participate in. After awhile even people who support your group will get tired of being asked. Don’t nickel and dime people to death.

5. Divides Your Efforts – Because your school group is spending time on the bake sale, it is taking time away from fundraisers that could be more profitable. Why not focus all of your efforts on fewer fundraisers that will produce much more results?

Instead of wasting time with a school bake sale, find a fundraiser that is the best match for your group. An effective fundraiser is appealing to a wide majority of your supporters, brings in the most amount of money compared to the effort and doesn’t cost more than is appropriate.

There are a variety of great school fundraising ideas…bake sales are just not one of them!

The great games of golf and the football make for a great match for the University of Hawaii booster club.

The official football booster club for the University of Hawaii football team is called Na Koa, which translates to “The Warrior.” They put on several fundraisers but one of their most popular is the golf tournament.

Even the head football coach June Jones and athletic director Herman Frazier played golf in the most recent event on July 20th. There were many football players, parents and alumni in attendance. There were some great prizes too. A Harley Davidson motorcycle prize was up for grabs if someone was lucky enough to make a hole-in-one on the 13th hole. Plus there were autographed football jerseys, helmets and football tickets, too.

Even though co-founder of the booster club, Ben Yee, was at the latest tournament he didn’t play golf. The online newspaper The Garden Island quoted Yee as saying: “I’ve seen Na Koa evolve from raising $26,000 the first year to raising half a million dollars.”

Of course those funds didn’t come from just the one golf tournament! Actually, the golf tournaments are so popular that the booster club has three of them - one on Kaua‘i, O‘ahu and another on the Big Island. Plus they have other fundraisers throughout the year.

So does golf and football go together? It certainly does for this booster club.

A great way to bring in some needed funds with little effort is by hosting a ‘restaurant fundraiser night’ at local chain restaurants in your town.

Many restaurants will give a percentage of the profits from a specific evening, while others may give $1 from certain entrees ordered. The key to this event is that your group will do the promotion of the event at the restaurant on an off-night, which brings in more paying clients to the restaurant on a night when they normally would not eat out. It’s a win-win situation for both the group and the restaurant.

Here’s an updated list of restaurants that typically host restaurant fundraising nights. As with any franchise, it would be up to the local owners and managers. My son’s Kindergarten school gave us a listing of restaurant nights for the entire year, so in some areas, these nights are highly sought after and should be scheduled well in advance.

ALSO- hosting a special event at a local ‘mom n pop’ restaurant or other independent or locally owned restaurant/ pub is another great idea! Don’t get discouraged if you live in a small town or have no chain restaurants. The local restaurants may want to push business for a random Tuesday night to bring more people into the restaurant.

Outback Steakhouse
Sweet Tomatoes
Jersey Mike’s (15%)
Burger King
KFC
Rio Bravo
Fuddruckers
Ruby’s
Chik-Fil-A
Sonic
Dairy Queen (DQ dollars)
CiCi’s Pizza
Black-Eyed Pea
Tortuga’s
Ponderosa
Big Boy
Pizzeria Uno
Friendly’s
Zany Brainy
TRU
Pizza Hut
O’Charley’s
Brusters Ice Cream
Boston Market
Fazoli’s
Applebee’s (pancake breakfast)
Chili’s
Subway
Baja Fresh
Loco’s Deli
Chipotle
Taco Cabana
Panera Bread (Dough for Dough, coupon slips)
Papa Murphy’s
Wendy’s

About the Author: Danielle Hamilton is the editor of HumaneFundraising.com and moderator of a Yahoo group dedicated to helping animal rescue groups raise money for animals.

An ice cream social is a fun way to raise money for your school or sports team and build community spirit at the same time. Volunteers donate  homemade or store bought ice cream for this event.  Each year the youth group at church does this ice cream social fundraiser  during intermission at its summer musical program and it’s always a hit.

Approximately 4-5 tables are set up with 2 or 3 kinds of ice cream at each table and volunteers at each table to serve. The homemade is usually the most popular, but there’s also store bought too. Small styrofoam coffee cups are used to serve one scoop of ice cream each. A donation jar is placed at each table, so people can leave whatever donation they feel like. Many people come back for more than one scoop and add donations when they do.

There are many places that an ice cream booth would be successful:

• School play or musical performance (at intermission or after the show)
• Fall festival or school fair
• Chamber of Commerce Mixer
• Social event after a regular organization meeting
• At a sports game
• After a school pep rally

Variations:

1. Charge $1 per scoop instead of donation basis
2. Charge a flat fee for entry, usually $3-5, and serve smaller portions of ice cream. Give people who paid a wrist band or necklace to show booth volunteers that they have paid.

It works best to have this fundraiser during an already planned event, where people are already gathered. Many people love ice cream so this can be a great fundraiser.