There’s no dancing around the fact that school budgets are tight, so here are some of the best school fundraising ideas to try out in your primary school
CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Third Space Learning
Donations and raising money are more in the news now than ever before. Just to keep a school budget afloat, teachers are abseiling and throwing themselves out of planes! Teaching staff always go the extra mile to find raise funds needed for their schools. Fairs, fetes, tombolas and non-uniform days have become the bread and butter for schools looking to raise money to help their pupils.
That’s why we’ve put together our top list of school fundraising ideas to raise money more effectively (and have fun while doing it)!
These school fundraising ideas have been brought together with primary schools in mind but many of them are equally suitable for secondary schools. As with all fundraising activities in school, it’s important that all stakeholders know who’s responsible for which aspect of fundraising. If your parental engagement is high and you have an active parent teacher association (PTA), please communicate with them at every stage.
You’ll often find that there’s a member of the school PTA who’s either trained or just naturally adept at fundraising or grant applications and it makes sense to use their skills. When it comes to school fundraising, parents, governors, teachers, senior leadership team – we really are all in this together.
N.B: Some of these ideas may have to be saved for a post-COVID world!
Primary school crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is an online fundraiser that many of you will have already used personally to raise sponsorship. Think about how you could use it to benefit the school. Which school fundraising activity will you raise money for – perhaps a walk-a-thon or running event?
Sites like JustGiving and Crowdfunder enable you to set up a web page, explain what you are collecting donations for and what it is you are doing. It’s a great way to let people know why your efforts are important and how they will benefit children.
Everyone can get involved in sharing the fundraising initiative around on social media with their own personal take on why the school deserves funds. Alternatively take a look at Rocketfund, a site set up by Nesta, specifically for schools to raise money for digital projects.
Community grants for primary schools
It is always surprising how few schools make the most of what and who is around them. Local businesses and companies might seem distant and uninterested, but you’d be wrong. They are very often interested in supporting their local schools with a grant because they want the school and children to succeed.
A community grant is something that businesses offer to non-profit organisations so one of the best school fundraising ideas is to research the top companies where you live and find out if they make grants to schools.
Grants 4 School
Visit Grants 4 Schools and find out about different grant schemes available to you. This site is a one-stop funding information service to schools. It provides a comprehensive grants’ database allowing schools to search for relevant grants and funding sources.
In-kind donations for your KS1 and KS2 pupils
This isn’t a common fundraiser – which is all the more reason for considering it. You could ask individuals or local businesses for an ‘in-kind’ donation. This might be to offer a specialised service, such as accounting, products for class, materials for events, resources for the school grounds and so on. There are more people willing to give something away or offer a service for free than you realise.
Primary school ‘Amazon Affiliates’
Amazon Associates provide a share of all sales generated from links to its website. This allows schools, and other non-profit organisations, to generate revenue each time a purchase is made with an affiliate link. For every purchase made through these links, your school could earn up to 10% in advertising fees from Amazon’s affiliate program.
Making this work is all about clear communication with parents so they know exactly what they have to do, and how. It’s very simple. They just need to set it up once and then ignore it! Your primary school fundraising sorted, quite possibly for the duration of that parent’s time on Amazon as most people never bother to change their charity of choice.
Click and fundraise
It’s not just Amazon either. The Easy Funding website is something else to get involved in. It’s effortless fundraising really. Whenever a supporter – friends or parents, usually – shop online, they login to the website and start shopping with over 2,700 retailers. Every purchase generates a donation for their chosen PTA from the retailer.
Primary school lottery
It may be hard to imagine, but one-in-four schools now have their own lottery and these are popular and an effective way of raising money. They also sound like a nightmare to run, but they don’t have to be. Visit Your School Lottery for an easy way to get things up-and-running. Supporters can join for as little as £1 per week, and it doesn’t cost the school anything.
Teacher baby photo competition
Always popular, teachers (and ideally SLT and other school staff) bring a photograph of themselves as a baby into school and pupils have to match the baby photo to the member of staff. This can be incorporated into a school fete or used as a stand-alone competition.
Book fundraising in your school
Another excellent idea is book project fundraising – it also helps develop children’s artistic skills and raises the profile of their writing skills. Sites like Fundraising Cookbooks enable you to create professional quality cookbooks, using your pupils’ recipes, which you can then sell.
Franchise your primary school
Tea towels, mugs, bags, cards, aprons, bags for life, bears, calendars, school labels – the lot. Personalisation is key because it fuels ownership. Every year of my teaching career I have been part of the ‘tea towel’ fundraisers.
Children draw an image of themselves and these are grouped as a class and a school onto a product. ‘Self-portrait’ fund-raising is always popular because it feeds into the keepsake culture of sentimentality and children love seeing their artwork on merchandise.
Primary school bingo night
A sociable and popular game, bingo is a fun and easy to set up, making it a great fundraiser that parents and children can do together; to raise more money, you can always sell food and drinks too.
A bingo night linked to a certain day or festival makes the evening extra special and allows for more fun fundraising in school. St Patrick’s Day is always a popular day for a bingo night.
A twist on traditional bingo nights is ‘rock and roll bingo’ which replaces bingo balls with clips of popular music from the last five decades; the numbers on the card have the artists and song titles – see the rock and roll bingo website to get started.
Primary quiz night
Quiz nights are also relatively easy to organise and can raise significant sums of money. They are an excellent way of bringing parents, teachers and pupils together in a fun social context, as well as other members of the local community. For primary schools, ‘Are you smarter than a ten-year-old?’ is always a great place to start. It’s hugely fun to watch your pupils beat their parents on matters of the curriculum while also raising funds at the same time!
This could also become a regular feature in the school’s event calendar. Food and drink can be included in the ticket price (e.g. £10 per person in teams of six, including a fish and chip supper). If it’s adults-only, get an events licence from the council and sell alcohol for extra cash. It’s also a good chance to throw in a free raffle (everyone brings a prize).
Don’t neglect to recycle primary school supplies
If you have empty ink cartridges you can recycle them to raise cash for your school by visiting Empties Please. They collect used printer cartridges and donate the money raised straight back to the school. It’s a great way to raise green awareness and there shouldn’t be a shortage of cartridge donations from the across the school population.
Think about doing the same for mobile ‘phones, DVDs and CDs, books, currency and jewellery – check out Fone Bank, envirofone, We Buy Books, World of Books and Music Magpie for all your recycling needs.
Plus, generate some extra money by donating your clothes, accessories, shoes, bedding and towels with Rags 2 Riches 4 Schools.
Buy a primary school brick
Brick fundraising is a new way to raise money for schools – though it has been used in sports and social clubs for many years.
The idea is simple – supporters buy or sponsor a brick to be put towards a new building project. This is then, symbolically, recognised by having a commemorative or engraved brick bearing the donor’s name fitted into the building walls or pathways. Visit Engrave Bricks for more on this.
Talking of bricks, what about getting LEGO bricks personalised as a fundraiser? Try out Fab Bricks.
Local scarecrow trail
Hold a scarecrow trail around your locality. Families register to build a scarecrow and pay £5 to £10. Scarecrows are placed in front gardens and people buy a trail sheet from the school for £1-£2 including a map of the route.
The trail involves some puzzles to solve and guess the scarecrow (these can be themed and people guess who they are – from Elvis to Hagrid!). They’re great publicity for the school, so make sure to get the local press involved.
Online auction
What about hosting an online auction as a school fundraiser? Using a site such as Jumble Bee you can easily list any number of donated items that your children, parents, and teachers would enjoy bidding for; the auction can be opened up to everyone in the community to raise more money!
For more of an event, and for a school fundraiser that makes a lot of money – in certain circumstances – hold an auction of promises where parents and the local community pledge something that people bid for; for example, a meal for two, babysitting service, taxi service, gardening service, or even dog walking.
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