There are so many wonderful activities and things created around the world now that we would love to have for our classrooms. But, with them, can often come a larger price tag. We’ve always loved to fundraise and raise money for our classroom – and today I’m sharing my best classroom fundraising ideas with you!
Classroom Coffee Cart
You all know how much I love a classroom coffee cart. Not only is it great for raising money, but it gets your students working on all sorts of important life skills. Read my full blog post here to find out more. Or if you want to get started straight away with a coffee cart, download our set up pack here.
Bake Sale
Bake sales are easy, people love to get involved – and they always sell well! Whether you sell to just staff, or you open it up for everyone to purchase. You can ask staff members to each bring in something that they baked. Then, sell off the cakes/items to staff and students. Send notes home to families in advance reminding them about the bake sale and to invite them to bring in money to purchase items.
Sponsored Walk
This always goes down really well for us, and it means we can get out into the community and be active too! We take collection buckets with us while we walk to try and earn some extra money too. Send home a sponsor form with each student that is taking part – and staff members too! And those sponsors will add up very fast.
DonorsChoose
Unfortunately, it’s not available in the UK. But this is a fantastic online portal where you can submit what you are trying to raise money for – and other people come along and donate to your cause! Once you raise all the money, you’ll get sent the items that you requested! People are always looking to help out teachers. And this is a great way for them to give back to the community – while also helping you out!
TpT Class Fund
Teachers Pay Teachers are a fantastic website where teachers and education professionals share their high quality, engaging resources and activities with other teachers. I love it, and it helps to fill in so many gaps in our curriculum and when we’re looking to work on specific skills and fun activities.
Over 80% of teachers in the United States use TpT – and even more worldwide! But, if you’re looking to get a lot of resources this year, definitely consider signing up to TpT Class Fund. While this isn’t a fundraising option for class or anything. It does allow you to collet funds that you can spend on TpT to use to purchase items for your class. Find out more here.
Designing Christmas Cards
Every year people go out and buy Christmas cards to send to friends and family. And every year, this is a great opportunity for us to make some money! Whether you have your students design Christmas cards on the computer and then have them printed, or make them in craft activities.
You can then send photos of these home or email – and be sure to do this around the school to – for people who may be interested in purchasing Christmas cards from you to take home.
Money wise, the digital option always works out great. Students can get really creative on the computer or iPad designing their cards, and then get them printed out either in school or at a local printing service. Be sure to tell them why you’re printing them and you may get an even bigger discount! This makes them look more professional too.
Jeans Day
I think most of us love to be jeans, and we’d love to wear jeans to work. But, for a lot of us, school policy doesn’t allow that. So when you have jeans day and staff are allowed to come into school in jeans – that’s a huge novelty! Charge for wearing jeans and you’ll soon see how quickly that money adds up.
Non-Uniform Day
This is kind of the same as above, but open it up to everyone in your school that for a fee they can come to school in anything they want that’s non uniform. Of course, you may want to put a few guidelines in there too.
Lunches for Teachers
Lunch is a tough one for so many of us. Whether we don’t have time to take a proper lunch – or we just haven’t had time to prepare one today. And yet, lunch is so important for us that we eat it to stay fuelled up and full of energy.
In the winter, nothing beats a warm lunch, especially if you’ve been outside on yard duty. Things like pitta pizzas, toasted sandwiches, soups are all easy and affordable to make. And trust me, teachers will jump at the chance to grab something warm to eat for lunch.
And in the summer – go for the opposite. This is the time when I especially love to eat fresh salads or sandwiches. But, I don’t always have the time to get these prepared. Having someone come around to offer this would always work perfectly for me in the summer. And again, these are affordable and easy to make.
Plus – think of those affordable life skills your students will be working on again!
Popcorn and Movie
Popcorn and movie night at school always goes down well – especially when it gets closer to Christmas. In fact, one school I know, had teachers volunteer to come in to school one evening to help look after the students who were there to allow their parents/family members to go Christmas shopping!! Families LOVED this idea – and so many staff signed up, that they were able to rotate the rota so staff only gave up 1 hour of their evening each!
Families were charged for entry to the movie which included popcorn. Then, there were small snacks available as extra to buy as well as drinks. (Families were told about this in advance so they could fetch alternative if they couldn’t afford the extras but they were kept affordable enough for everyone to enjoy). Then, there was an extra fee if they wanted to leave their child in the care of staff.
Can you imagine how much of a life saver this would be to so many parents? And if a lot of staff sign up, like for this school, that means most staff will only be giving up 1 hour of their time. Health and safety did a check as well and some staff even brought their own children with them and stayed for the duration – paying for their child – and they got to enjoy a Christmas movie too.
Krispy Kreme Donuts
Krispy Kreme donuts actually have their own fundraising options. Reach out to the company to discuss the type of discount/amount of donuts you want and then start planning your donut fundraiser!
Partnership
Partner with a local greenhouse for Mother’s Day hanging baskets. We all know how life can get crazy sometimes, and trying to get out to a store to go shopping can be difficult. But, if you partner with a local greenhouse, you could get discounts on hanging baskets and then sell these on to make a profit – everyone wins!
Pop Sockets
Did you know that you can make custom pop sockets on their website? Have your students design some or use the school logo and offer these for sale.
Elf on the Shelf Store
This was actually new to me, but a friend of mine did this last year and said how it amazing it worked for them. Basically, the school purchased a bulk order of ‘Elves’ at the start of the year, and offered these to the parents at a great rate that was cheaper than local stores.
But, they had multiple options and a whole elf store!! Families loved this idea and they had the opportunity to purchase extras like a welcome elf package, a goodbye package, clothing items, props etc.
They kept the store open throughout December because as more parents were seeing Elf on the Shelf in action – they wanted more things!
Don’t forget – you have access to a computer, design software and a printer – and you can do so much with those!
Snack Cart
A snack cart is kind of like a coffee cart that we mentioned earlier, except it’s full of snacks. You can do these whichever way you want. But something we’ve always found worked well was to offer healthy snack options Monday-Thursday and then a treat on a Friday. So on top of earning money, you’re also encouraging healthy eating and trying new foods.
An order form would be sent around on the Friday before asking people for numbers to give a rough idea of ordering on the week. There was always a little extra of each thing so that people could buy if they needed something on the day as well.
If you buy snacks in bulk, these work out cheaper and have more of an earning potential for you.
Read-a-Thon
Now, this won’t be suitable for all classrooms. But, kind of like a sponsored walk – except with books. Students get sponsored for how many books they read in a month.
This is a winner on all levels. It helps to motivate students to read more. And it gets more people involved in the whole reading initiative while also sponsoring students and helping you to raise money for your classroom too!
Restaurant Fundraising Night
Did you know that a lot of restaurants are really happy to help out with fundraising? They’ll often offer a % commission to you for your fundraising from all the meals that were purchased. For example, they may give you 20% commission – now if you have 50 people attending, just think how quickly that 20% will add up for your fundraising!
ArtWork
Have students artwork printed onto mugs, blankets, calendars etc. And sell these on. Nobody can resist showing off their children’s masterpieces!
Amazon Affiliate Marketing
You can set up an affiliate marketing program with Amazon for the class/school. Then, create a shopping list for parents to purchase, using those links on Amazon. When they purchase stuff for their kids, you’ll also receive some money back for your school.
Pizza Party
Invite parents in and make it a family event! Have pizza night and a movie altogether in the hall. Families will love not having to come home and back food – and the students will love the novelty of being at school, with their families, at night!
Money Intervals
This is always a fun one. Have members of staff do crazy or funny things when a certain amount is reached. For example, 1,000 raised gets the teacher to wear a school uniform, 2,5000 raised gets someone to be chef for the day etc. Anything funny that will motivate fundraising is always freat!
Recycling
Recycling is a very important part of life – and something that’s an important skill for us to work on with our students. And now there’s opportunities to earn money from recycling. Even things like asking families to send in clothes that they no longer want and weighing them in to raise money. All of these things can add up.
Christmas Dance
Many of our students love attending discos. And a Christmas dance can be extra special!
You can make it an event to invite families in to dance with students and join in the Christmas atmosphere – and this will allow you to have drinks, sweets, face painting etc. on offer to earn extra money.
Or you can keep it as a school event just for your students. You can still have those extra things for sale to earn money too.
Teacher Bake-Off
Or even a parent bake-off! Everyone loves a bit of fun and friendly competition. Get contestants to invite friends and family along and charge for tasting foods. You know people are always going to want to come along and see friends/family members taking part in a competition!
Penny Drive
Collect pennies from all students. You can even make this school wide, and the class that brings in the most pennies gets an ice-cream party.
Paint Nights
These are becoming more popular than ever. Reach out to a local company who offers paint nights, and see if they’ll be willing to collaborate with you. Especially when it’s coming up to Christmas or Mother’s Day – and you can do a special theme for this as well.
Craft Nights
Similar to paint nights, but there are so many craft workshops available now that are great for earning some extra money for your classroom. Look around your community and find out what events are going on and popular. I recently attended a Christmas ceramics workshop where all got to make 3 Christmas decorations out of clay. It was a fantastic experience and everyone really enjoyed. And with events like this – people are more likely to fetch along friends and family members – which means more potential money for you!
Cake Jars
Cake jars are another great item to make for fundraising – especially if you make them to sell on a Friday, because then you’ll have staff members who buy them for the weekend with their families too!
Craft Event
We’re in a day and age where so many people are into homemade goods, especially Etsy! And now is one of the best times to have a craft event. Invite in local craft businesses to your school and charge them for a table – and even a % of their earnings.
Then, open it up as a free event and invite your staff and students friends/family members. Advertise it in the community as well. Expose people to your school and invite them in to find out more.
Christmas Fete
And finally, a Christmas fete. We always love a Christmas fete. And this can be one of the biggest earners for us. You can do this in a number of ways, but the way that we have found most successful is the following;
- Have each class in the school make something to sell at the fete. It could be Christmas decorations, slow cooker hot chocolate etc. Each class is given a budget to spend and then they must try to make that back and earn a profit. There’s lots of great ideas on Pinterest for things to make.
- Invite local craft businesses to your fete and charge them for a table and even a % of their earnings.
- Have some fun things there to occupy people that are free. For example, invite your local fire station in to fetch their truck and some firefighters. Reach out to local singers to sing Christmas carols.
- Collect raffle prizes. Ask every member of staff in the school to try and collect at least 1 raffle prize. Then sell tickets for the raffle before and during the Christmas fete. This is important because some people might not be able to attend the fete and you don’t want to miss out on ticket sales. We always give 2-3 books of raffle tickets to each student and member of staff to sell to earn some extra money.
Christmas Concert
We always look forward to our annual Christmas concert. You can have your students sign Christmas carols, sing along, dance, and just have fun and be themselves. Sell tickets to students family members to come along to the concert. You can also borrow – or invest – in a video camera and film the performances. Then burn it onto a disc and sell this to student family members too. If you’re doing this, remember to get permission off every student in advance so that you know who can and can’t be on the film.
Recap
Those are some of my best ways for how you can raise money for your classroom or school that are mostly easy and affordable. What are some of your best classroom fundraising ideas? Or even school-wide ones! Share them in the comments down below with us!
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