We had the "Drive for the Kids" program during our Fall Harvest Festival. It is sponsored by Chrysler/Dodge. The children don't sell anything and best of all the parents don't have to buy anything! Your local Chrysler/Dodge dealer brings 3 new vehicles, parents pick one and take on a short test drive, fill out a quick evaluation form (no strings attached) and for every form your school/PTO receives $5. In two hours, we earned $390! Pretty good for having to do very little to earn it. If you're interested the phone#313-881-9308 we are planning another on for next school year.

We've even done a few auctions which netted over $25,000, but are HUGE undertakings for the most dedicated volunteers only

- He, he... I'm in the middle of starting our first somewhat bipolar auction. One leader's goal is $5000; another's is $15,000. As one of the only two people looking for outside donations, my goal is to just survive it. (I'm not sure I found the right smiley face for frantic giddiness, but this will do.)

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to fundraising for the big bucks: wrapping paper/candy. We make our budget of $11,000, and usually about 20% more (we budget conservatively) every year. The whole project is over in 2 weeks and the money is in our bank, ready to fund our activities.

It's a little work for a few people - 2 people can do it all if you don't review every order. Add about 3 hours per class if you review every order for accuracy and proper payment (we do).

There are lots of other fundraising projects - we do several including pizza kits, cartridges, box tops, Target. We've even done a few auctions which netted over $25,000, but are HUGE undertakings for the most dedicated volunteers only. After 9 years in PTO, I'm still stuck on a good old catalog fundraiser to pad the coffers in October.

Some of these fundraisers may not seem like a lot of work, but in my experience, soup labels and milk tops take a long time to collect. The lenght of the fundraiser is one that I don't like. I like it to start and finish in a couple of weeks so I don't have to keep it on my list. We just did the best fundraiser in my schools history by having our kids sell miracle sponges to their friends and family. The sponge works great and the kids love it. In two weeks we made a couple of thousand and it really didn't take much at all. Try the Xtreme Sponge fundraiser. It worked for us and was great.

Ivy

I just found out from an elementary school by us...a great fundraiser that is little work. I'm looking into it and can post more details when I find out but the basic concept is this....

It's called "Change Wars" what they do is put a jug in each classroom. 10 mins before the school bell rings and another 10 mins. during the middle of school, kids put change in the jug. The object for the classroom is to get as many pennies as possible. You can take nickles, dimes, and quarters and put then other teachers jars.....any silver coin is a zap and counts against your pennies collected. The kids have a huge blast doing it. We made about 1000 bucks last year. It's not a HUGE fundraiser but it's something very simple to do and you don't have to spend much time or volunteers on it.

I forgot to mention schoolcash.com
School gets a percentage of any purchase anyone makes through schoolcash.com -- it doesn't take much for a parent or grandparent to set it up. Percentages are very very good and it includes lots of vendors that people are likely to use anyway.