As a band teacher, school fund raisers are definitely a big part of my work. Back about 10 years ago, school fundraising wasn't really an issue in this district. There was always plenty of money for a music program, so any fund raising we did was purely for school trips. Every year, we try to take a choir tour of Europe, singing in some of the great cathedrals of the world. It was a lot of fun, but even if we didn't make a lot of money we could still find ways to get most of the kids to go.
Nowadays, we need to have to have a school fundraiser if we want to replace any equipment at all. District funding has been cut recently. Partly it is because the area has become poorer, but partly it has to do with the millage. For some reason, the demographics are changing in the district. Because there are less families with children, less people want to spend money on schools. As a result, the school isn't getting the money it needs.
This means that I have had to get pretty creative with some of my school fund raiser ideas. For many years, we just used the normal school fund raisers. Basically, we would have bake sales, sell candy bars, and occasionally try to sell magazine subscriptions. That was about it. Those ideas worked pretty well too. The reason that a school fund raiser usually involves food is because parents and community members are almost always willing to buy a tasty treat for a good cause.
The problem is, as we have to make more and more money off of our school fundraisers, we have to resort to ever more creative ideas. Last year, we held a lottery to raise money for our trip. The key with a lottery is to have good prizes, but this is easier said than done. For a school fund raiser, you often can't afford to invest in valuable and interesting prizes. The only way to go about it is to get community volunteers to donate goods.
Fortunately, we had a lot of great things to raffle off. Our school fund raiser prizes included free meals, an overnight stay at a luxury hotel, and some beautiful original works of art. Tickets only cost a couple dollars, so people were eager to enter a drawing. Although it took a lot of organizing, it was definitely worth the effort. We made a lot of money off of that lottery.
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