Hi, All.

I’m an environmentally-conscious mom and I head the Community Activities Committee for my daughter’s school. To all parents and school administrators: if you’re looking for a fresh, new fundraising idea, think Green Fundraising! We recently held a Green Fundraising Event and it was a huge success!! We raised over $18K for the school. I found that people were so much more willing to participate because we were selling only green products.

There are a few online companies that can help you with your event and where you can buy the eco-products. We used Mother Earth Fundraising to purchase all of our green fundraising products and I’d highly recommend them. Great customer service and their eco-products are all 100% environmentally friendly materials. Plus, their reusable grocery bags were a big
hit. We sold a ton of them.

Here’s their website if you’re curious: http://www.motherearthfundraising.com/

If anyone else has held green fundraisers, I’d love to hear your stories too.

Anyway, hope this helps and stay GREEN!

Lori Lavin
Wilmington, MA

Collect unused gift cards as donations and submit them to DogPawGiftCards.com under their "donate cards" section. You will receive 75% of the revenue off of the sale price.

http:www/dogpawgiftcards.com

My son's boy scout troop did very little and gathered quite a few in a short amount of time and made over $400 for a field trip they had planned. There are no costs involved just foot work!!

Good luck
Kellimom

Another good product fundraiser is the Ready Set Go Kits Fundraising Program. It's super easy, the purchases and ordering is done all online, so no need to worry about delivering orders. Plus, by selling the emergency kits it prepares your group's families for disasters, something everyone needs!
There are more details are here: http://www.readysetgokits.com/Fundraising-14.html

I came across this totally different way to raise money. Its a website http://www.streamthatcause.com. Its brand new and totally different. There are no products to sell and you pay one price to hold a web-a-thon. Its kind of like a walk-a-thon but you get people to pledge per view of a video that the children create. It can actually be a fun and engaging learning experience for everyone involved. I am a fan of theirs on facebook and they are offering it for free until the end of the year. Check it out! Its great because I can see fundraising moving in this direction.

Laurie,

My wife and I just saw the StreamThatCause.com website. That is really awesome! We are going to get with our school about using it. Our kids love the video camera and I think it will be great to let them make a video about recycling or going green or something rather than selling products. I bet this website is going to be the new way kids fundraise. It really gets the kids involved. I give it an A+++. http://www.StreamThatCause.com

I am using this site to do all my online shopping. I shop at Amazon usually and then my kids school make a percentage of sales. Win win for all. Give it a try at www.give2myschool.com

I will tell you a great thing we discovered for our PTO School Carnival was buying pre-made Cotton Candy and Pickles in those plastic pouches. We had less mess than last year and it still carried over for weeks later in the classrooms. The Pickles were healthy so our principal gave us lots of freedom. If you never seen these here is a link to where we bought them http://nationwidecandy.com/candy/items.asp?Tp=&iTpStatus=1&Mc=VANHOLT this place does charge shipping which stinks but if you can reach 500 lbs. the shipping is free and they reduce the price a lot also. 500 lbs really is not that much with this stuff because it is really heavy. We sold every pickle in just one day.
Our Principal gave us free run with this because it falls in the health guidelines.

Thanks for the opportunity to post. Just a thought here is that the fundraisers mentioned exclude the fundraisers responsible for the vast majority of fundraising income - at least for larger groups.

Elementary schools use fall gift and wrap catalogs or cookie dough sales to raise the big bucks.

Middle schools generally use a magazine sale to raise their funds.

Large events such as a-thons, auctions and carnivals are the top-grossing events if well-organized.

I think a lot of the ideas mentioned are ok for smaller groups but when it comes to the main fundraiser of the year, these may not be the best choice.

I do have a blog that I talk about fundraising on and some of you may find the information valuable - http://believejay.blogspot.com

My company is Believe Kids and the website is http://www.BelieveKids.com

Thanks so much for the opportunity to submit my feedback on the matter!

Our school just did this fundraiser (www.techcollectors.com) last year and raised over $3,000. It wasn't our main one but it was so easy we just did it for extra funds.

All we had to do was tell the students to bring in their old cell phones, mp3 players, laptops, and digital cameras.

No one had to sell anything or ask anyone for money. They just cleaned out their closests and brought in a nice amount for our school.

We used these funds to help buy new computers for our computer lab.

Art based fundraisers have been very successful. Ones like the programs found here – http://www.originalworks.com/ work well because each participant is raising money selling products that are personalized with their artwork, providing a connection not often found in other programs.