It seems like every other week, the girls are bringing home some sort of fundraising thing from the elementary school. Sometimes it’s for a charity- like when they did the Jump Rope for Heart event awhile back. That one raised money for the American Heart Association. Other times it’s for the school itself, which is usually accompanied by a catalog and an order form where they expect you to go door to door or bring it to work. The problem with school fundraising like that is, we live on the Marine Corps Base and all of our neighbors have elementary aged children selling the same thing. Plus, if Aaron brings it to work, the few single guys who don’t have kids participating aren’t interested in knickknacks and wrapping paper.
Recently, the school put on a bake sale. I think that was a pretty good idea, but they held it at the school itself. I know I don’t send extra money in with my elementary schoolers, so I don’t know if it was the best venue to earn money. Perhaps a better idea would have been to sell baked goods in front of the barracks. I’m sure those guys would have LOVED to have some homemade sweets! I know they’d do just about anything for a home cooked meal- once when we moved, we offered lasagna, salad and beer to anyone willing to help and had a great turnout.
But that still requires parental participation, and with many families, there just isn’t the time to be baking. What schools really need to do is to find some super easy fundraising ideas, ways to earn the money needed without major effort on the part of the parents and students. I think the best way to do that is to make sure you’re selling products or services at a reasonable price that the majority of people would be interested in. I know some successful ones that I’ve seen previously have included things like coupon and discount books for your local areas and the one where they do the ready to bake cookie dough. Who doesn’t like deals and raw cookie dough?
I think I’ll mention this stuff next year… I’ve even found a site that looks promising, full of info about cookie dough fundraising made easy. Too bad we’re already in the last weeks of school!
What things have your kids done to raise money for their schools? Which were the most successful?
