Fundraising Ideas Please.

August 29, 2009 5:40 PM

Looking for a fundraiser idea for high school water polo team.

Would prefer it to be sensible and reasonably priced. Do not want to sale cookie dough, wrapping paper, candy, candles, etc, and how much money can you really make doing a car wash when there's one just about every weekend on a couple of different corners, so no car washes or garage sales.

Any unique ideas out there?? Thanks ;-)

posted by Chele66 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 comments total)

In college, my sorority made a killing selling mistletoe with love notes attached, also... rent yourselves out for household chores, mow lawns, pull weeds, haul junk, pancake breakfast, beginner's water polo clinic for kids, krispy kreme donut sale (check their site), sit-up-a-thon or push-up-a-thon, spaghetti feed.
posted by Edubya at 5:47 PM on August 29

Percentage night at a local restaurant. You get x% of sales from everyone who brings in your flier on a specific night.
posted by nestor_makhno at 6:08 PM on August 29

Our high school was fine with teams ordering a couple dozen pizzas at the end of the day and selling them in the hall on the way to the parking lot for a buck a slice. Requires some initial cash, but the profit is fantastic and we never had leftovers.
posted by restless_nomad at 6:14 PM on August 29

I agree with nomad- my high school often had pizza fundraisers. I think they even charged $2 for slices sometimes, and it always sold.
posted by firei at 7:03 PM on August 29

My kid's elementary school holds a Walk-a-Thon every year as our one and only fundraiser. Now, understand that it's the whole school (k-6, just under 800 kids) participating, so it's a grander scale than one team, but our kids raise, on average, $25,000 per year. They get pledges per lap from family, neighbors, and teachers. I'm not sure how you could modify it to make it so that more people than just the team parents would participate. Maybe get local celebrities to join in? Have an obstacle course to make it more interesting for spectators?

You could also do a bid-and-buy, if you can get local businesses to donate items. Then all the money is yours at the end. Our school district's instrumental music association does this every year to raise money. This would work great if you had another team or two participate with you and divide up the gains at the end. Basically you get "baskets" of things (like movies, candy, and microwave popcorn from the video store, for example), gift certificates, or service offers from local businesses. Then you have an evening where you invite the public and you have your stuff on offer, with forms for bids. It's not really an auction, not really a silent auction. You give people a time limit, and they write their bids on the form (you state a minimum bid on the form). At the end of the time limit, you tally everything up, post a list of the winners and they pay you and collect their items.
posted by cooker girl at 8:20 PM on August 29

My old high school swim team does a Pizza Hut buffet thing every couple of months. They send out notices to their Facebook group and old alumni and families come and pay quite a bit more for the food with extra going to the team.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:42 PM on August 29

Set up a chili dog sale near lunch time, with dogs, a big pot of chili, a big pot of that melted cheese goo (which I don't care for, but many do,) and chopped onions, etc. for condiments.

It's pretty easy to keep the cost low, easy to set up and clean up after, low manpower (hand out dogs, let them fix their own condiments,) and it always draws a big crowd. Someone will have to take a couple of hours off before lunch, though, to warm up all that stuff.
posted by ctmf at 9:32 PM on August 29

Do you know anyone with an old junker car that they were getting rid of anyway? You could charge people something to take a swing at it with a sledgehammer.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:49 AM on August 30