In recent years, there has been a serious drop in participation in fundraisers. To turn this trend around for your school, you need to get creative. In this series, we will be talking about things that you can do to increase participation in your fundraiser.
Fundraisers are a family affair. The child brings home the program and talks to a few relatives. Parents also take the fundraiser to work, to church, and to their friends. Many fundraisers offer prizes for the kids, but what about the parents? This idea rewards parents and the whole family for their participation efforts.
Get some volunteers together and ask local businesses for donations. You are looking for door prize type donations, such as free services, free products, and discount offers. Let the businesses know that their donation will go to help with your fundraiser efforts.
After you get the donations, compile a list of the prizes and send it to parents. There are two ways to hand out the prizes. You can either randomly draw winners from every participant, or you can reward families based on how much they raise.
Rewarding families based on effort is a great idea. Once you have the totals, you need to hand out the prizes. You can allow the top earner to pick their prize first, and then go down the list until you run out of prizes. You can do the same thing based on a random drawing, or you can just give out the prizes at random based on the drawing.
To have your prize program make even more impact, include it as part of a post-fundraiser party. Invite all of the participants to the school for pizza or ice cream (see if you can get it donated) and make giving out the prizes part of the festivities. Also hand out awards for things like most enthusiastic, hardest worker, and perhaps some random prizes just for participating. Again, with a little effort you can get all of the prizes donated.
A prize program like this is about more than the prize. To truly increase participation, you need to build community and fun into your fundraising efforts. Work hard at something like this, and you will have an easier time getting families to participate.