Interesting coin donation ideas

June 4, 2012 9:23 PM

Please give me your groovy coin donation ideas.

Our elementary school is about to hold a big celebration and fundraiser. Someone mentioned Spiral Wishing Wells as a fundraising idea. However, they cost $2300 to ship to Canada, so we're not sure whether to bite. (We're okay with ROI over the long term, as we could see using it at other events.)

What other interesting coin donation devices are out there?

Conditions:
We can store it at the school. Ideally, we'd sit it outside the office so people could donate coins all year.
Must be easy to remove coins, although perhaps not constantly requiring us to do so.
Must be secure (although we'd park it outside the school office or have it under supervision at an event).
Preferably already assembled, although we might be able to jerryrig something if it was simple enough.
Fun enough to get people to use it to donate coins.

I'm open to ideas...if you come up with something inexpensive - maybe something made out of PVC pipe - maybe we'd be okay with it being for one-time use.

Thanks.

posted by acoutu to grab bag (4 answers total)

One of these catch-a-coin games might work but doesn't look very easy to empty. At least it would be awkward and messy to steal. Distributor website for a similar product. A DIY version would be to repurpose a tall aquarium and put a few pretty colored glasses at the bottom, with the goal of dropping coins into the glass. This is surprisingly difficult to do underwater, especially if you tint the water with food coloring and even more so if you add a small air stone for bubbles.

A design like this vertical coin track would be relatively easy to make too if any of your parents is handy with wood.
posted by jamaro at 9:56 PM on June 4, 2012

Might not be big enough but: Big Belly Banks has a large version that holds 9,000 quarters. They have a Canadian distributor which doesn't list the large bank on their website but it's worth checking out. (warning, annoying video sounds on both sites)
posted by girlhacker at 10:08 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've seen tip jars set up so one says Biggie and the other Tupac (for example). It makes the tip into a vote of sorts...would this situation work for you? Being at a school, maybe the kids could vote between two songs, with the more $ song being played over the PA at Friday dismissal? It would only require empty water cooler jug-ish containers and signage.
posted by troika at 10:09 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

This isn't a device, as such, but it will make coin donation very fun for the kids.

Have a penny war!
1. Have a jar of coins for each class/grade/team.
2. Pennies/coppers increase the 'points' in your own jar. Silvers and bills/notes decrease points in your opponents' jar. So if someone drops $.25 in the other team's jar, they would have to put in 25 pennies to make up for that loss.
3. Whichever team has the most 'points' at the end of it, wins.

People can get very competitive and it's fun to watch someone drop $10 in the other guys' jar and then they're negative for the rest of the week. The more competitive people get, the more money gets raised, everyone wins.
posted by Gordafarin at 3:09 AM on June 5, 2012 [3 favorites]