Did your last school fundraising effort fall short of the mark? Do you have any idea why this happened? There are many contributing factors to the success or failure of any fundraising campaign. Some factors occur from things that are out of our control. There is not much you can do if a hurricane blows through or some tragic event happens that involves one of the teachers or students. Barring any of these unfortunate events, here are 4 tips to maximize your school fundraising efforts.



1.) Prizes / Incentives with Value

Your incentive program is the single most important factor when determining the success or failure of your fundraising campaign. It almost could be said that you could sell the most horrible product in the world and do real well if you motivate your students correctly. Of course no one is going to do that, but I'm trying to make my point by being absurd.

In order for your prize program to be successful in motivating more of your students to participate, you must target your prizes for the specific demographic that makes up your school. In short, your prizes need to be age appropriate AND something that the parents of the younger students can get excited about too. Most school sponsored fundraisers don't target the parents with the incentive plan. However, if you want to get their attention, do a prize program that will knock their socks off.

Simply put, if your school is filled with 5 - 12 year olds, then your incentive plan should include items that would appeal to that group of students that would also impress their parents. While trinket type prizes might go over well with the kids, moms will look at them and simply trash the brochure

Choosing the wrong type of incentive for your target group can have a huge negative impact on your school fundraising campaign.

2.) Make Sure The Word Makes It Home

It is not enough to simply have a great incentive package for the students. Remember, many of your students are so young that they will have a hard time getting it across to their parents just what is being offered for certain sales levels. As a matter of fact, you might just say that your prize brochure and parent letter are the things that "sell" your parents on the incentive program.

One of the best things you can do to get the message home about your fundraiser and prize program is to show the prizes at school on the same day that the sales brochures go home. Also, have a parent letter or prize brochure that pictures the prizes so the students can show them to their parents. Dong both of these things will pretty much guarantee that the moms will get the idea that this is not your ordinary fundraising prize program."

3.) Sales and Safety Coaching

Most fundraising salespeople are little kids who are either going to have to sell Grandma and family friends some of the products that they have in their sales brochure, or they are going to have to convince Mom to do it for them. If you have a worthwhile incentive program, your students will turn on those big brown eyes and get it done! One of the best ways is to coach your students to ask mom and dad and mom's best friend and an aunt or two to take turns taking the sales brochure to work with them. If you coach your students to do this, you will go a long way on heading off safety issues in your school fundraising efforts.

4.) Safety

Personally, I favor structuring the prizes to motivate every student in the school to sale to 20 items max. Beyond that most students are going to have to go beyond family, friends of the family and people they know real well to make those higher sales numbers. That to me is a child safety issue.

We have been structuring incentive programs for years that are geared toward rewarding students heavily for just selling 5 - 15 things. For a school with over 250 students, especially if they have been plagued by low participation in past school fundraising efforts, this approach to the prize program will usually double your previous sales. Simple as that!

In fact if you have been having 25% participation in past fundraisers, a 15% increase in your participation will double your sale. I know this sounds odd, but that is the power of the numbers in large groups.

Safety is important no matter what age group your students are, but even more so if they are small children. I personally prefer to give prizes that are worthwhile for simply selling a few items to family, friends and people they know. Then mom or dad can carry the brochure to work to help out too.

Use these simple fundraising tips to make your next school fundraising event a complete success.

Copyright (c) 2008 AIM Fundraising