Fundraising for schools and education can be made interesting. You have a whole bunch of young enthusiastic kids always ready to support your cause. When it comes to collecting donations for schools, you have a diverse set of donors from parents, teachers, and community members to even the students. And you will have no dearth of good ideas.
But there is an essential task you have to perform before starting the fundraiser campaign. It is to set up a campaign page online. Giving forms on online fundraising platforms make it easy for supporters to donate online. These are hosted on the internet which means they can donate at any time from wherever they are. Incorporate some key features in your online giving form such as-
- Mobile-friendly giving forms
- Fundraising thermometers
- Your school’s logo and colors
- Recurring donation options
- Videos & images of teachers telling about the cause
- A brief description of why you are collecting funds for the school
- Integrate popular payment methods into the form
- Generate a QR code and embed it into the page to allow payment from mobile wallets.
Online donations are easy and take only a few minutes. Setting up a page on a good education fundraising platform is the most hassle-free way of donating and also an easy way of sharing it with friends and family.
Now let’s get to the fundraising ideas for schools and education. Here are some easy and interesting 12 ideas to make your fundraising event successful.
-
Peer-to-peer fundraising
After setting up the page on an online fundraising platform, your next step is to share the link to it with your friends and family. Send them to the parents of your students and to other faculty members. They then share it with their network. In peer-to-peer fundraising, you collect funds from your peers including your team, families, and friends.
-
Scratch card school fundraiser
You might know of scratch cards for gifts. But these scratch cards are for donations. Volunteers approach friends and community members to scratch small circles on the card. These circles may have any numbers as a small donation amount preferably between $1 and $10. The donors can scratch any number of circles depending on how much they are willing to give. You can even set 2 circles or 1 circle as the limit. Distribute these cards to your students and ask them to collect donations from their community. Reward the child with badges or discounts once they complete a card.
-
School merchandise
Students can group together and sell school merchandise like t-shirts, badges, bracelets, caps, notebooks, pens, posters, lunch boxes, and backpacks with the school logo. Selling quality t-shirts with creative graphic design prints or quotes along with the school logo is a good way to raise donations for your school.
-
Matching gifts
Matching donation is a form of corporate giving program in which the employer agrees to match the employees’ donation. Encourage the parents of students to inquire with their companies about the matching gifts program. If the company has such a program in place, the parents can raise donations and ask the employer to match the amount. This will generate double the funds for the school.
-
Discount card fundraiser
Schools meet local businesses and discuss the discounts they can offer. Make a card of all the discounts offered by businesses and sell this to individuals for $10-$50. Individuals can purchase this card with coupons printed on them and redeem it at all the listed stores. The deals offered on these cards should last up to 6 months or a year so that the supporters will have enough time to sell these cards and donors will also have time to redeem them. Even if your supporters sell 100 to 500 cards, you will have collected enough funds for your school.
-
Kiosks at events
Set up booths at the entry or exit gate of popular community events. You can sell school merchandise at these kiosks. Distribute flyers to people at the entry point so that they have enough time to read through the contents and donate while coming out of the event. You can even set up a kiosk at your school’s annual events such as sports games, field days, and dances. You can make the donations easy by displaying the QR code at the kiosk.
- Fundraising raffle
Selling raffle tickets is a great way to collect donations. You can decide on the prizes depending on the budget. You can also give customized t-shirts, mugs, pens, and notebooks with the school’s logo on them as prizes. If you want to raise a considerably large amount keep the prizes fun and exciting. Involve the students and their families including the faculty in the fundraising raffle.
-
Shoe drive
To hold this fundraiser, first find a company that is willing to partner with your school and accept used shoes. Such companies come to the school to collect the shoes and send you a cheque based on the number of shoes collected. Tell your students and their parents to bring all the discarded, gently worn, used shoes to school on a particular day. You can also plan a few drop-off locations around the school for students, parents, and your community members.
-
Walkathon or Runathon
These are pledge fundraisers where donors pledge a certain amount for every lap the sponsee walks or runs within the time limit. The actual funds are then collected after the completion of the campaign. Search for sponsors and encourage students who are good at sports to participate in the walkathon. The students can even get their sponsors for the event. Dance-a-thons are even becoming popular where performers dance non-stop for certain hours to collect funds. The benefit of a danceathon is that you can relay it live on your social media account.
-
Fish tank funds
This is an easy and low-cost fundraiser for your school funds. Place a large fish tank in front of your school hallway. Students and teachers then drop in coins inside the fish tank till it becomes full. There is no time limit to it and you can raise money throughout the year. But empty the tank once a week and remove the coins from it. You can even stick the QR code on the fish tank for people to donate online.
-
Writing letters or cards
Encourage students to write personalized letters to sponsors to collect funds. It can be as simple as students writing letters to their parents urging them to donate. This helps you bring out the creative side of the students. They can even write letters to their families, friends, or neighbors. You can even make a custom postcard with the image of your school, print the QR code and the shareable link of the donation page that you had created on the education fundraising platform. Children should then write in brief about the cause and mail it to their sponsors.
-
Talent Show
Kids have talent in abundance. You can give them a platform to showcase these talents by hosting a talent event. Raise funds for your school by charging an admission fee to the attendees. You can also charge a small fee for participation. From singing, dancing, juggling, to acrobatics, let the students perform to show their talents. Arrange for prizes or a small participation certificate to appreciate the kids. You can even ask for sponsors to arrange for prizes. Set up a small kiosk at the entrance and sell school merchandise or simply collect donations.
We hope you will love some of our fundraising ideas for schools. The first step is to create a campaign page on a trusted online fundraising platform. You can convert one-time donations into recurring donations by sharing the links. Make fundraising fun and exciting for your students. They will learn the joys of giving that will help them to evolve as good human beings in the future.
