Why Should You Spend Extra Time Promoting Your School Fundraiser?

Most people are extremely busy these days and one of the last things that they want to have to tend to is their fundraiser. After all, once the kickoff is over you have two weeks that you don’t have to worry about anything until the orders are to be turned in. What an ideal situation? Your students and parents are out selling and raising money for the school and you can focus on other things. Then, once the orders have been mailed off you don’t have to think about your fundraiser again until just before your shipment arrives. You then distribute your students boxes, pay your bill to the fundraising company and you’re done. You got your wish, a low-maintenance school fundraiser that made you some money.

Is it worth putting some additional effort into promoting your fundraiser? To answer that question, perhaps you need to ask yourself another question. Is the possibility of making more money worth a little bit of promotional effort? Are you guaranteed to make more if you spend the extra time needed to promote your sale? The short answer is no but the longer answer is maybe.

Properly promoting your school fundraiser while your sale is going on doesn’t have to take a lot of time while the difference it can make in the amount of money that is brought in can be staggering. Here are some easy to implement ideas that you can incorporate that won’t bust your time budget:

• Have the person who does the announcements talk about your fundraiser every day that your sale is going on. Prepare a different script every day for the announcer. Make sure it is fun, creative and interesting to your students
• Announce the sale on your marquee. Be creative here as well. Also, if you are able to change it periodically people will be more apt to check it out to see what’s new
• Send home reminder notices to your parents. You can use ones similar to those found in our Fundraiser’s Guidebook.
• Post your fundraiser and school fundraising company on your school website. Some fundraising companies have a link feature that allows you to place their logo on your site for people to click on and receive needed information
• Incorporate daily prize drawing coupons into your daily announcements. Every time a student sells 5 items, they can drop their coupon into a drawing box for a chance to win a low-cost or no-cost incentive or privilege. Students love to hear their name announced and others will hear it and be motivated to sell as well
• Every time a student sells 5 items have them ‘high-five’ the principal
• Create and duplicate poster-sized charts that each teacher can post outside their classroom along with each student’s name. Every time a student sells 5 items they can place a star next to their name. Students love to see how they are doing compared to their peers. Another option is to have large poster-sized paper on the wall near the office. As soon as a student reaches the fundraising goal they get to sign their name. At the top of the poster you can say, ‘2010 Fundraiser Wall of Fame’
• Announce your big prizes every day (top seller, grand prize drawing etc.)
• If you are the principal, agree to do something fun, or funny, if the school reaches your fundraising goal – then announce it every day during your sale!

On the other hand, if you have delegated the fundraiser to someone else, like an outside organization you should allow, and encourage them to be creative promoters of your school’s fundraiser as well. After all, how many fundraisers do you want to have to do in order to reach your budget goals? Why not put all of your energy into one strong fundraiser?