we made our own envelopes - manila standard letter size.
the school district can answer yuor question about liablity waiver clause. we had to have one even tho the event was during school hours and on school grounds. go figure.
We are going ahead with our walk-a-thon this fall. All officers love the idea and so does the principal.. I do have a few questions.
Did anyone need release forms signed by the parents to allow their kids to walk and waive any type of injury that might happen?
Where would I find fundraising envelopes or did you make your own?
Our plan right now is to have each child that wants to participate put in $5 and then get flat donations after that instead of paying for so many "minutes" walked.
I may have someone who can donate the water bottles for everyone...I'll have to check.
No fancy t-shirts or anything like that at least for this year. Maybe if this goes over well, we can set aside some money for next year(I won't be there anymore)and they can do shirts or hats or something like that.
I'm sure I'm forgetting to put something on here that will come up. I would love some more feedback!!
Thank you for all of the responses. I've put this past my co-president for next year and she agrees that it sounds like a great idea. We are having a meeting before school gets out with officers and I will bring it up again there. We are in desperate need for some new ideas and I hope something like this will go over well.
we hav a walkathon during school hours, once a year. no tshirts none of those things. just a pledge envelope, kids pass them areound family and friends (and coworkers of parents), brings in 20k for a school population of almost 1000. kind of like girls scout cookies, they go to the same people. but people love to support kids in a walkathon more than they like buying cookies . we are always surprised by how much it brings in, and our overhead is the water bottles given to the kids during and after the evnt
We conducted a walk a thon last year and made 10,000. We didn't use a company to assist us; just collected the donations ourselves and kept all the profit. Why give someone else up to 30% of the income?!
We had a local HS student come and was a DJ just to make it fun and we supplied the small 4oz bottles of water for the kids (not water bottles) which was not a huge expense for 650 kids.
We did have an incentive in that the child in each grade level that had the highest donation was given a prize and all children that submitted a donation were entered into a raffle for an MP3 player (K-5 kids didn't need an Ipod). The response was great and we let all the kids walk - even those that did not make a donation.
We were thinking, however, that the walk could be made a little more exciting next time or to have a dance-a-thon next time. The kids LOVE to dance and the DJ could play a lot of the fun type songs & it could be held inside in the event of rain. Since we had scheduled each grade level to come out and walk at a different time, the songs were geared for that age. Parents were invited to come and walk-which they did-and the kids loved having them involved.
We were raising money for playground equipment additions to the kids knew that they were walking to make a positive difference in their school. So I suggest you motivate the kids for donations by explaining what the money will be used for.
Making a positive difference one project at a time <img src=images/smilies/smile.gif>
There is a company called Race for Education. They charge 15% commission on the total that you bring in for your walk-a-thon. They also walk you through the entire process. There is great earning potential with this event. We will be scheduling one for next year, and we are hoping to get rid of our catalog sales forever! One important thing to note here is that you only pay that 15% the first time you use their program, and then you can use it as long as you want and never have to pay the company again.
