Why One Big School Fundraiser Kickoff is Best

With so much pressure being placed on schools these days to use every bit of time available for educating students it would make sense to try to eliminate time out of class for a school fundraiser kickoff assembly. Most administrators who are concerned about this will attempt to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ by allowing for the fundraiser to be kicked off during the students P.E. classes. However, what are you giving up if you decide not to have your group all together for your fundraiser kickoff? There are plenty of reasons for having a school-wide fundraising kickoff assembly where all of your students are together at one time:

• By breaking the kickoff down into several groups the energy and enthusiasm that can be created by a large group is often lost. This enthusiasm is contagious so the more you can generate the more it will spread
• If the school fundraising kickoff is broken down into smaller groups, people who really need to be at the kickoff like administrators, staff and teachers are usually involved in other activities and usually end up not attending. The result is these people are uninformed about your fundraiser and therefore become uninvolved. In addition, since these people are the school leaders, they could have played a key role in helping to motivate your students at the kickoff
• By actively involving your administrators and teachers, they can also become excited about the fundraiser and help you keep the students motivated throughout the sale
• With the current emphasis on health and education you are still using up classroom time to have your fundraising kickoff. In this case it happens to be P.E. time
• You are actually using up less classroom time by having everyone together all at once because you can reach more students with your fundraising message in less time
• Your greatest fundraising asset is the unification of all of your students, administrators, teachers and staff coming together as a united group from the beginning to team up in order to accomplish your fundraising goal

One compromise would be to have your fundraising kickoff during morning announcements. This way, you are not using up classroom time and you are still able to reach all of your students at one time.

You don’t have many opportunities to fundraise so by having a school-wide kickoff involving all of your students you’re using a method that has been proven to be the best way to motivate them to raise money for your school.