All School Fundraisers Deserve Additional Incentives

You are incorporating additional incentives into your school fundraiser, aren’t you? If you are only relying on the regular prize program that your fundraising company is providing to motivate your students then you are probably not doing enough to maximize your sales potential. There are basically two places that your students will see this prize program: 1) at your kickoff presentation and 2) inside their fundraising packet. Once the hype of the kickoff is over, your students have, for the most part, forgotten about these prizes and once the school fundraising packet makes it home only the motivated students will post the prize program flyer on the refrigerator as a reminder.

Assuming that you have bought into the idea of using additional incentives like prize drawing coupons, Student VIP Cards, top seller prizes or grand prize drawings in order to attempt to further boost your sales don’t you want to get the most ‘bang for your buck’? The bottom line is, if you want to maximize potential fundraising sales for your school you are going to have to do more by creatively engaging your sellers throughout the sale. How you motivate them is as important as what you motivate them with. Once your fundraiser is over is not the time to wish that you had more sales. What follows are some creative ways that you can implement your additional incentives into your next fundraiser:

• Wheel your additional prizes into the lunch room on a cart so that students can see the prizes close up. If possible, walk up and down each aisle so that everyone can get close to the prizes
• If your school does video announcements you will want to make sure that your prizes are on display behind the presenter (and don’t forget to get the presenter to announce your prizes)
• Make sure that these prizes are on display in a place where parents can see them as well. Place them in the office where everyone who walks in can see them or place them in a display case that no one will miss
• Don’t forget to make special signs for your prizes if they will be in a display case or on morning video announcements like ‘Top Seller Prize’ or ‘Grand Prize’
• If you are incorporating daily prize drawings don’t forget to have a nicely decorated drawing box placed in a strategic location where everyone can see it. Also it will be important to have a sign above it that says ‘drawing box’. Or better yet, have a parent volunteer hold the box as the students are walking into the school and asking them questions like, “Have you sold enough to turn in your coupon today?” This person should also announce to the students when the drawing will take place that day. Also, if you can convince them to dress up as a special character or in some school-related theme, that adds to the excitement even more
• If you are using daily prize drawings, don’t just announce the winners each day, have them come up and claim their prize in front of everyone. If you don’t have a morning assembly where everyone is together at one time, do it during lunch time. If you do morning announcements on video, don’t be afraid to have the winners come to the video location to claim their prize on camera as everyone else watches. This will show others that you are following though with what you had promised from the beginning while at the same time inspiring them to sell so that they will also have a chance to win for the next drawing
• Get creative by convincing a group of volunteers to make posters advertising your additional incentives and place them around your school for all to see
• Send notices home to parents reminding them about your additional incentives and how the students can win
• Advertise your top seller prize on the school marquee and then, once the fundraiser is over, place the winner’s name up there for everyone to see (Congratulations to ____________, our 2010 fundraiser top seller) 
• If you are incorporating an event like a money wheel or money machine for the top 3 sellers, for example, arrange to have these items at your kickoff. Make sure that the money machine is full or money when you turn it on to show the students. It may be fun to have a teacher or even the principal spin the money wheel or pull money out of the money machine. Make sure that if you are able to arrange to have an adult participate in this at your kickoff that you have them put the money that they ‘win’ in their pocket (you can always retrieve the money once everyone has returned back to their room). Also, don’t use fake money because the students will see right through it and this may come back and hurt you in the end
• Make a big deal out of everything that you do that involves your fundraiser. It may be corny to adults, but not to elementary school students
• Make sure that your daily announcements over the intercom are interesting and creative. Don’t just announce that there is a fundraiser going on and to ‘please get out there and sell’. This information by itself is boring and will not get much of a response from your students because they have heard this so many times before. Instead, insert additional one-line sentences that really engage the students. These one-liners can be short and to the point like, “How many of you have sold enough to win the ___________________?” or “How many of you have already reached our sales goal?” or “Who thinks they are going to be the top seller in the school? Does everyone remember what the top seller prize is?”

Effectively incorporating your additional incentives is going to take some work, but the potential results should make it well worth it.