Fundraising Ideas for Elementary Schools

Elementary schools annually engage in more fundraising activities than any other group.  Many of them run the same campaigns year after year, finding it difficult to come up with unique, fresh ideas to support their financial goals.  Selling magazine subscriptions or catalog items is a method that has been increasingly declining in popularity, and cookie dough and baked goods sales require a lot of manual labor and time.  How do you get your elementary school out of that same old fundraising rut?  Here, we’ll explore some creative, easy, low or no cost fundraising ideas for your elementary school that won’t require any catalog sales, arrangements with vendors that sell fundraising packages, or hundreds of dollars for products upfront just to get you started.  These are also fun, exciting ideas that will surely get teachers, students, and parents inspired to join your school’s fundraising efforts while having a great time in the process!

Balloon Blast

Set up the school gymnasium or another place for a school gathering.  Fill up the space with a couple hundred balloons.  In 10% to 20% of the balloons, place slips of paper redeemable for cash or prizes.  In the rest of the balloons, put a piece of paper that says “Good try!” or something along those lines, or just leave them empty.  You can also have a “guess the number of balloons” game where patrons can write down their guess, along with their name and put it in a jar.  Offer a prize to the person whose guess is the closest.  Charge 50 cents or a dollar for every guess and for each balloon they want to pop.  You can do several variations on this, too.  Be imaginative. 

Money Tree

Hand out an unmarked envelope to everyone in your class.  Ask every student to place a coin, note, drawing, or something else inside of the envelope, then seal it and hand it over.  Then, staple all of the envelopes to a cardboard tree.  Once they’re all on the tree, parents, students, and teachers can all pay a donation to choose an envelope and they win whatever is in the envelope. 

Pet Pageant

Fashion a wonderfully fun event for students by hosting a pet pageant.  Students can sign up with their pet for a local pet show at an animal friendly locale where they can dress their pets up in costumes and show them off.  Charge a small admission fee for attendees.  You can offer prizes, ribbons, or sashes in several different, fun categories, such as “Cutest Pet”, “Silliest Pet”, “Best Costume”, and so forth. 

Best Seat in the House

Find a comfortable reclining chair or sofa to use for this event.  Throughout the week, sell raffle tickets for a chance to win a day at school in this comfortable seat.  The winner of the raffle drawing gets to spend their day comfortably lounging around and will have pizza and sodas (or other foods and beverages that are a treat to them) served to them for lunch.  

Potato Bar

Set up an evening to put on a potato bar.  Offer baked potatoes with all of the goodies, like bacon bits, broccoli cheese, onion, and so forth that people can put on their potatoes.  You can also find people to donate salads and desserts, if you’d like.  Charge a small price to attend or accept donations.  To make it fun, we heard of one group that actually had a man dress like Mr. Potato Head and walk around.  Kids got to pull off and replace his different parts, which were attached to him using Velcro.

Stick It to ‘Em!

Find a teacher who is popular with the students who is willing to participate, and buy a few rolls of duct tape!  On the designated day of the event, find a place where people pass by frequently.  Push the side of a chair up to the wall and have the teacher stand on it with their back against the wall. Make sure you place gym mats or other padding around them for safety reasons.  Offer duct tape for 50 cents per yard that the students and other faculty members can use to duct tape the teacher to the wall.  Once the teacher is securely attached to the wall, stop selling duct tape and announce that you will now remove the chair to see how long the teacher will stay stuck to the wall. 

Good Grades

Using a pledge form that can easily be created, students get pledges from donors that are willing to donate so much for each “A” or “B” on the student’s report card.  When report cards come out, they bring them to their donors and collect money for their good grades.