My own school's PTA also does a jog-a-thon and every year what we've raised has gone up. This year we raised $54,000, $14,000 over the projected amount.
I did a break down on prizes in another post so I'm just going to link you to that post (it's rather long)
A few things not mentioned there is that we bill this as our ONLY fundraiser. A promise not to nickel and dime the parents for the rest of the year. We're multi track year round and we two jogs, two tracks each. Kindergarten runs smaller laps and does them alone. (20 yards) 1-3 runs in the morning and 4-6th runs in the afternoon. We've offered pizza through school lunches so the parents can come have lunch with their kids. (It works with the free lunches also) This didn't raise any funds since they just paid the hot lunch prices to the school but it did require that the parents RSVP.
The jog/pledge sheets have lines for per lap or flat pledge. We also have out of town mailers for the kids to send out. They have 1 month to collect pledges. On the back of the sheet is the permission form. We close out the jog 2 weeks afterwards. We also have given each child that participates a water bottle the day of the jog and we have in the past given them a ribbon (but the water bottles were donated)
It took me a while to find the prize list (August of last year)
www.ptotoday.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=...f=15;t=000686#000002
I really think it is the only way to go! Any-thon is a good fundraiser for the schools in my council that does it. They always earn great money.

The jog-a-thon is held on a Friday. The teachers usually get most of the money for field trips so they don't mind. And the principal spends the day outside cheering them on.

Parents are encouraged to attend while their child's class is running. They can help mark laps, hand out treats, tally lap cards or just watch. It is easier to get the help for one set of runners rather than the whole day.

We are a year round school so we hold this event twice. 2 tracks per event which is about 500 kids per event. We also set up a small track off to the side for kinder, 1st, special ed and the county classes who use our facilities.

I have the forms on my old PC. Give me a couple of days to get them organized and I will be happy to e-mail them to you.

PWalther


I would love more info on the walk/jog-a-thon. This is something they do during school? Parents will not have to bring them to a special event to do it? Please give me all the details it sounds interesting. Thank you.

KESPT0912,

Well, first of all we organize, plan and run the whole thing ourselves. When we did our catalog sale we had a lot parents (including me) say that they would rather just make a donation than buy the (expensive) junk in the catalog. The kids really love getting pledges and this is where the working parents really shine. Their kids are always the ones with the most money brought in. They take it to work. Most often people will make a flat donation rather than pledge per lap and this will usually earn more money. We set a budget out of the proceeds to use for supplies, treats the day of (popsicles) and the prizes.

We have a schedule that we set up for the day. The students run by grade level. Primary runs/walks for 15 or 20 minutes and the intermediate for 30 mins. We allow 10 minutes between sets for them to get their treat. It takes all day so we make sure it is not an early day, etc...

If you need more info let me know. I chaired this event 2 years ago and put together the binder that they are now using for this event.

pwalther: you jog-a-thon sounds great. We are a small school with about 500 sudents and about 65% free lunch. How do you oranize you day events with the jog-a-thon. I have been trying to put together a walk-a-thon at our school but the rest of my board says we can't even get parents to buy the junk in our catalogues how are we going to get them to just hand over money. It hard for me to push it for our school. I know it works we had one every year when I was a child ( I went to a private school and my board thinks it was a success because the kids I went to school with had money)

We do a Jog-a-thon every year. Always make over $10,000 and this last year we beat our goal of $15,000.

This was also the first year we did a catalog sale for probably 6 - 8 years (since we started SCRIP). We made about $17,000.

Our carnival doesn't make much. Last year we made $3000.

We are a k-6 with almost 1000 students but have about 85% of those on free lunch program.

Good luck!!