Fundraiser Ideas

A dunk tank is a remarkably easy fundraiser, particularly when it comes to school fundraising. For those who are unfamiliar, a dunk tank is a large tank of water with a plank or bench overtop for a person to sit. That person is dropped in the water when another person throws a ball and hits a target, causing the plank to separate into two pieces. You can see an example of a successful dunk tank fundraiser in the video below.

A dunk tank fundraiser is best executed not as a standalone event, but in addition to an outdoor community event, such as a town fair or a school’s field day. To raise money, simply charge a fee to throw balls at the target (three balls for $5, for instance). Also, a dunk tank fundraiser is likely to attract a large crowd, so be sure to sell tickets for a 50-50 raffle as well (a raffle in which the winner receives 50% of the money collected and your organization receives the other 50%). Don’t forget to make sure that it is legal to hold this type of raffle in your area beforehand. When you’re ready to begin your dunk tank fundraiser, simply search for dunk tank rental companies online. There are lots!

Who should you get to be dunked?
Try to convince the mayor and local celebrities (radio personalities, local news personalities, etc.) to volunteer to be dunked. In a school setting, be sure to ask the principal, the vice principal, the gym teacher and well-liked teachers to participate. The captains of school sports teams might be good choices as well.

For a video of a successful dunk tank fundraiser for cancer on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, see below:

A common fundraiser in the UK, abseiling (called rappelling in the United States) is a great way to raise money for an organization.  For those who are unfamiliar, abseiling involves lowering yourself down the side of a building or down a cliff with climbing equipment.  It’s basically the fun part of mountain climbing.  It can be an excellent fundraiser because people are motivated to participate by a sense of adventure (and the desire for that sense of adventure is often enough to motivate participants to aggressively seek people to sponsor them).  There are also some people who will use a charity abseil as a rather bold way of overcoming a fear of heights and many people will donate to help them do so.

For many reasons (legal, insurance, safety, etc.), a charity abseil isn’t an event to undertake without the guidance of an established company that specializes in hosting abseiling events.  You can easily find a reputable abseil company by searching online.

It’s worth noting that, for our non-UK readers who might still be asking themselves what it means to “abseil,” this charity fundraiser might be far more difficult to pull off in your country.  For instance, in America (where this post was written), it is likely that it is nearly impossible to get permission to run a charity abseil off the side of a building as depicted in the video below.  You may, however, still be able to successfully pull off a charity abseil on the side of a cliff.

For a great overview of a successful charity abseil, watch this video:

Lots of bars and pubs hold trivia nights. For those who are unfamiliar, these are events in which teams of people gather to socialize, eat, drink and answer trivia questions. Bars and pubs often hold trivia nights on a regular basis, which allows friendly rivalries between teams develop. Trivia nights can also be a great way to build camaraderie among people who already work together (for instance, an office’s accounting department could challenge the human resources department to a friendly trivia challenge). Sometimes there is a prize awarded to the winning team (taken from the trivia night entry fees), but often bragging rights will suffice as a prize.

A trivia night fundraiser is a wonderful fundraising event because, if done correctly, it can be so much fun as to cause people to forget that they are actually attending a fundraiser. This allows a trivia night fundraiser to become a successful recurring event because it does not exhaust your supporters. Though people enjoying attending well-executed fundraisers, they also associate them with giving something up (usually money). Thus, if you can design a trivia night fundraiser such that it raises money and is exciting enough that people would choose to participate in it even if they didn’t support your cause, it can become a successful recurring fundraising event.

There are lots of ways to raise money with a trivia night:

• The easiest way to raise money with a trivia night fundraiser is to charge an entry fee. Make sure to set the price of the fee low enough so that it doesn’t deter people from making your organization’s trivia night part of their weekly or monthly routine. You could also work with the host bar or pub to make it so that the payment of the entry fee entitles participants to a free beer. Thus, even reluctant patrons will choose to participate. Remember, if the bar makes more money than it usually would, your organization raises money and participants are happy, everybody wins.
• If your organization partners with the right bar or pub, you might be able to convince the owners to split the night’s profit with your organization. You can either have them contribute a portion of the profit out of sheer goodwill and a high likelihood of subsequent positive press coverage for the bar or pub or, with the understanding that your event will bring additional business to their establishment (you could split the night’s profit overall, you could receive the profit from the orders of the trivia night fundraiser participants or you could collect all of the profit that exceeds the profit made on a similar night when there is not a trivia night fundraiser). Be sure to talk with the owners about making this a recurring event (which would increase customer loyalty). Also, it’s possible that the owners might be willing to reduce the price of food and drinks for the night or just for trivia night participants. This would, of course, help you fill seats and raise more money. The bottom line: There are a lot of ways that your organization can work with bar and pub owners to generate extra and recurring business for the bar and money for your organization.
• Consider adding a 50-50 raffle to your trivia night. A 50-50 raffle is when people buy a raffle ticket, one raffle ticket is drawn and the owner of that raffle ticket receives half of all of the money collected. The other half of the money goes to your organization. Note: When planning a raffle, be sure that your raffle plan is in accordance with all applicable laws.
• An alternative method of raising money (and you’ll have to judge whether or not this is suitable for your supporters) is to charge teams for wrong answers in the following manner: You could have each team contribute $50 and transfer $1 to the prize pool every time a team answers a question incorrectly. When the event is over, the team with the greatest score (the most money remaining out of their original $50) can receive one half of the prize pool. The other half of the money can go to your organization.

Finally, be sure to capitalize on natural rivalries. While you can fabricate rivalries expressly for the purpose of team-building (as in the Accounting vs. Human Resources example above), you can also encourage fans of your city’s two main sports teams to face off, or groups representing both sides of any standing rivalry. This will make your trivia night fundraiser even more exciting.

If you’ve never attended a trivia night, check out the video below (skip to 0:51) to see how one English pub in Los Angeles, California, successfully runs its trivia night.

This is a particularly fun fundraising idea.  Not only does it have the potential to raise a lot of money for your organization, but it will be one event people will be talking about for years.  It would be especially great for PTA fundraising, but it can be used by many groups.

Offer parents the option of attending a “Second Chance Prom.”  Just like a regular prom at the end of high school, this prom can involve asking someone to go with you as a date, flashy dresses and big hair.  You can even negotiate a high volume/non-profit rate with a limo company ahead of time (or, if local regulations permit, you can have the parents’ children serve as chauffeurs for a donation).

Charge a little more than people would usually pay to attend a fundraising dinner.  This is because your event will last longer than a standard fundraising dinner; it will be a lot more fun than a standard fundraising dinner with a silent auction; and you can even offer dinner as part of the event.

Be sure to also sell babysitting services during the event.  Not only will you raise more money by doing so, but you’ll remove a barrier to attending the event.

Here’s an example of a successful second chance prom for Relay for Life:

This is great high school fundraiser and a creative fundraising idea.  You can easily teach a social media class for adults who would like to become more familiar with these technologies.

Lots of parents simply don’t understand Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or other mainstream web technologies.  Some would also like to understand how to text or text more efficiently (using T9, for instance) and become more familiar with texting abbreviations.

Some would also like to understand how to:

• Use Skype
• Add music to an iPod
• Use an iPhone
• Make minor changes to images
• Set their email account up so that it can be read through Gmail

You could even introduce them to fun sites they might enjoy like Pandora or teach them the basics of navigating Youtube, which is a maze.  Many parents might also like to know how to set up Google Alerts and/or Google Reader to follow topics they enjoy (both of these services are also very helpful in the business world).

Charge a fee for attending the class(es) and advertise your offerings in school and PTA newsletters.  Enjoy raising quick money for your organization while helping to educate others.

Here are some basic guides to topics you might want to cover, so you don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” when creating your lesson plan:

• A social networking guide
• A Twitter guide
• An RSS guide

It is always great when you can find a way to raise money without asking people to give up anything of value to them.  This is one of those fundraising cases.

Lots of parents have boxes and boxes of used baby clothing and children’s toys in their attics, basements and closets.  It is just taking up space and, if they don’t plan on having any more kids, it is of no value to them.  It would be easy to organize the collection of these baby clothes and in order to sell them at a baby clothing rummage sale.  Just make sure to wash the clothing ahead of time.  This is a very easy fundraiser.

While you’re at it, get people to consider donating kids’ books and other unwanted books as well.  These books can be sold online.

This is a great fundraiser, not only because people will appreciate being offered a helpful service instead of just being asked for donations, but also because it can easily be carried out in people’s free time.  It would be great for a hospice, church, PTA or high school.  Advertising this fundraiser to other members and supporters of these organizations should prove easy and effective.

This fundraiser can take one of two forms (or you can offer both services, of course):

You can offer to transfer people’s family videos in VHS format to DVDs. A lot of families have family videos in VHS format, which is harder to play and far less stable than DVD format.  Transferring between the two formats is very easy.  All you need is a machine that specifically makes this conversion possible. Professional versions of VHS to DVD converters are fairly expensive, so we recommend renting one or convincing a store to let your organization borrow their VHS to DVD converter.  That said, there are far cheaper ways to convert VHS tapes to DVDs, two of which are demonstrated in the videos at the end of this post.

You can offer to digitize family photos. Many families have boxes of developed family photos from before digital cameras became popular.  If a printed photo is destroyed and the original film is not available, the photo is gone forever.  A digital photo, of course, cannot really be destroyed – only deleted.  You can even offer to produce multiple copies of the same DVD of photos for a fee so that the DVDs can be sent to the customer’s relatives.  All you need to convert printed photos into digital photos is a scanner.

The technically savvy can even offer to convert a family’s VHS family videos into a format that allows them to be added to the photo DVDs.  Imagine going from unusable and unstable VHS family videos and piles of developed family photos to just a few copies of family memory photo and video DVDs.  We think it would be easy to find customers among a high school’s parents, a PTA, a church congregation or elsewhere.

For a quick overview of how to convert from VHS to DVD format using a digital camcorder, see below:

To get a basic idea of how you can convert from VHS to DVD using a VHS player and a separate DVD burner (as opposed to an all-in-one machine as described above), watch the following:

These two videos are meant only to serve as primers. There are plenty of more detailed tutorials on the web for those who decide that this easy fundraiser is for them.