Every year I talk with people who have had their school fundraising program literally dropped in their lap.  Many times this person has taken on the job because there was no one else to step up. In every case, their main concern is that they want to do a better job with next year's school fundraising than was done this year.  Imagine the pressure of picking a product or running the sale in such a way that the school actually makes less than they did last year. Now that is what I call pressure!

To make your life a bit easier here is a simple guide to ensuring that your school fundraising events achieve their goals and operate smoothly. Namely, that they are both profitable and trouble free.

1. Setting a Goal

The very first thing that you must do is determine how much money you need to raise. Take into account all expenses that you expect to incur. However, determining how much you need to raise can be quite a job. It is also important to have specific goals to go for. Running a school fundraising campaign with the intended goal to "raise as much as we can" is very hard to communicate to parents of your students and will likely not get a lot of support. If you don't have something that you need to raise the money for, it is better not to have any school fundraising at all.

2. Determine Your Timeline.

When conducting a fundraiser you must set a timeline. It is wise to consult a professional fundraiser if you are planning to do any type of product sale. They can help you determine a timeline that will allow you plenty of time to conduct your fundraising activities. They can even help you plan events around your calendar so that the Fall Carnival won't interfere with your product sale, and your product sale won't interrupt your Book Day's and so forth.

3. What is Your Target Audience?

Determine who you will be targeting in your fundraising. For instance, do you want to make your school fundraiser a family event like an auction, carnival, spaghetti dinner or chili cook-off.  Or, do you need to try to raise more money by doing a product sale like cookie dough or Christmas wrap. Each one of these type fundraisers have it's own application in different schools. There are some schools that do a spaghetti dinner and make ten's of thousands on them, while others will barely break even.

4. Incentives.

It is my personal observation that the incentives used in school fundraisers has more to do with the success of that fundraiser than any other factor. A school could almost sell five dollar bills for ten dollars and do very well if you motivate the students and parents correctly. One misconception about prize incentives is that many believe that the bigger the prize the better the sale. If one of the prizes for the top seller is an item that is the latest craze that year, then you will have a better sale.  Do not fall into that trap.  The power of school fundraising is in the size of the group, not in who sells $1,000 worth of "stuff."  Think about it, would you rather have 2 students sell over $1,000 and 25% participation in your sale?  Or would you make much more profit if you had 40% and no one sells more than $80.00?

When you think about it, the prize that gets the most kids to sell $80 is much more important than the big prize that gets 2 kids to sell $1,000!

5. Promotion

How will you promote your fundraiser? The easiest way to promote a fundraiser is through ample communication. In the case of school fundraising, be sure to send a letter home to the parents well before the start if the event. Send another informational letter home with your sales brochure. Parents can be busy people and sometimes things slip their mind.

Though this guide is geared toward education system these are the basic steps involved in any form of fundraising. Use these steps to plan your events. If you plan your work and work your plan things will fall into place.