As a teacher, counselor, or school administrator, you know it’s often up to you to raise the needed funds for the students at your school. Here at 99Pledges, we’ve seen the pressure this can put on educational professionals and have pulled together a list of fundraising ideas that work in conjunction with our fundraising software to make your job easier.
Our list of more than 45 school fundraising ideas will be broken out into the following groups:
- Our Favorite School Fundraising Idea
- Elementary School Fundraising Ideas (That Work!)
- Creative High School Fundraising Ideas
- Unique School Fundraisers for All Ages
- Easy Fundraising Ideas for School Trips
- Awesome After-School Program Fundraising Ideas
An engaging idea can be just what your school needs to spark momentum and achieve its goals. Let’s get started!
Our Favorite School Fundraising Idea
1. 99Pledges School Fundraisers
Cost: $
Effort:
Fun: ☆☆☆☆☆
Here at 99Pledges, we specialize in pledge fundraisers. Whether a walk-a-thon or a dance-a-thon a read-a-thon or a color run– we’re big fans! fundraiser ideas for high schools
These fundraisers are incredibly effective for school fundraising, and you’ll see a few unique ideas sprinkled throughout this list. The reason we’re such big fans of these fundraisers is simple: they’re easy to set up and they have huge fundraising potential.
Here’s how it works:
1. Your school’s leadership creates an overall pledge fundraising campaign to raise funds for your activities.
2. You create pages for participating students (or teams, in some scenarios) in conjunction with your overall page.
3. Participants share their pages with friends and family leading up to the event, collecting pledged donations.
4. These pledged donations correspond to some challenge participants will complete during your fundraiser (ex: “$1 for every book read” or “$5 for every hour danced).
At the end of the fundraiser, these pledged donations become actual gifts to your organization! With fun activities, healthy competition, and easily collected and managed gifts– pledge fundraising methods are great for educational efforts.
Bonus Tip: Ask for Matching Gifts
Cost: $
Effort:
Fun: ☆☆☆☆☆
This fundraising idea gets parents and supporters of your school involved even after your spell-a-thon or pledge fundraiser is over: ask them to double the impact of their donation through a matching gift!
Matching gift programs are philanthropic endeavors that many companies now include as part of their corporate social responsibility projects: when their employee makes a donation to an eligible organization (most commonly 501c3 organizations and educational institutions), the employer matches the donation to the organization! Unfortunately, employees frequently don’t know about these programs so they can’t take advantage of them.
That’s where you come in! Using a paper newsletter, email campaign, or your social media, let your supporters know about matching gifts and how they might be able to double the impact of their donation or pledge for your cause. Encourage them to look up their employers’ matching gift or corporate philanthropy policies, and then keep them updated on how many donations have been matched during the course of your fundraiser.
Elementary School Fundraising Ideas (That Work!)
2. Spell-a-Thon
Cost: $
Effort:
Fun: ☆☆☆☆☆
A spell-a-thon gives elementary students— who are working each day to develop their reading and writing— a chance to raise funds while displaying what they’re learning at your school. Incorporate pledge fundraising methods in a spelling competition.
You can set this up in one of two ways: a traditional spelling bee model or a more personal spelling challenge. For the second option, choose a set number of difficulty-appropriate words and test students en masse on the words. For both options, pledged donations correspond to the number of words the student spells correctly!
Whichever option you choose, make sure you’re encouraging developing minds rather than creating unnecessary competition! The key point is to celebrate students for what they have learned, rather than discourage them for what they haven’t yet.