School Fundraising Incentives

Looking to breathe new life into your school’s fundraising events?  The very best way to get high participation rates among your students and parents is to make it FUN. We’ve learned that our most successful groups focus on the fun and that focus yields big profits! Dial up the excitement levels for your students by appealing to their sense of fun with your school fundraising incentives and rewards. By using creative “no or low cost” incentives you will get more people involved and will keep excitement high throughout the life of your fundraiser.

PTO Today offers the following helpful tips.

Tips for Using School Fundraising Incentives

1. Work with your fundraising representative for good ideas about incentives.

2. Kick off the fundraiser with an assembly that includes promotion of the incentives.

3. Focus on participation rather than sales totals; award a prize to each participant if possible.

4. Distribute prizes while the fundraiser is still going on. Do this at the start of the school day to minimize disruptions and maximize exposure.

5. Get the principal involved. Fun promises from the principal (like dyeing his hair school colors) can be a big motivator for students.

6. Offer school fundraising incentives to teachers for class participation.

7. Layer prizes. In addition to rewards from the fundraising company, offer school spirit events and special privileges.

8. Publicize the winners on your school’s website and via social media and in your parent emails and letters.

Kick off your fundraiser– Host a high energy kickoff event at your school wide assembly to introduce your fundraiser. Clearly communicate your fundraising goal and give a “prize preview” to your sellers. Show off what your students can win for reaching different sales levels. This will help motivate your sellers.

Use Incentives –while some students and parents will participate in your fundraising campaigns simply because they care about your cause, you will get much more involvement if you use some school fundraising incentives to sweeten the pot and encourage students to sell. Don’t forget the importance of teacher buy-in. Use incentives to motivate teachers to reach classroom goals. Use progressive rewards. By offering an ever-increasing level of rewards that build up to a grand prize, each level of success gets celebrated along the way. Set your incentive levels low enough that everyone gets a prize.

Show real time progress and advertise your school fundraising incentives – Product fundraisers are most effective when your sellers and volunteers can see the progress they are making towards reaching sales goals. This helps keep them engaged and excited along the way. Many PTO’s and parent groups use a big thermometer to display progress in the fundraiser.

It’s clear that school fundraising incentives motivate students. By being creative and thinking outside of the box, you can focus on putting the FUN into your FUNdraising campaigns. What incentives have been most successful in your fundraising campaigns? Leave a comment and share. In our next post, we’ll share 20 fundraising incentive ideas that work.