We do our "FunDay" on a school day. When do you do yours? We talked about doing this on a Friday and staying open in the evening for the people who don't come to our school. Anyone do this on the weekend?
Our spring carnival is not really considered a fundraiser, but this year we did make about $2000.00! Like pto queen's school, we did a Theme Basket raffle with donated items and had an excellent response to this. This was the biggest money-maker since the tickets were $1.00 per chance. We also rented out tables at $10.00/per for crafts or Avon-type things. We only charged one ticket (at 4/$1 or 6/$1 in advance) for any game. A big plus was that we had real carnival games for free from the catalogue fundraiser that we used & a discount on the prizes. Also, this doesn't make money, but we had the police motorcycle & canines come out, as well as a fire truck for the kids to check-out. For some things, such as face painting, we didn't charge at all. Pretty much, any profit is a bonus because we just want everyone to have a good time. Oh, about the dunk tank, if you can get principals & teachers to go in, the kids will spend LOTS of tickets there! Also, the profit that we made enabled us to give all of our teachers money for classroom supplies.
Our Fall Festival sounds a lot like Kathie's. Just a couple of things to add...we did our own concession soda, popcorn,hotdogs, nachos, very simple and made over 800.00 in 3 hours. Another big money maker was the cake walk. WE had over 200 donated by parents and we cleared over 850.00 on that one booth. Another big booth is Gold fish pond. This is where the kids get to take home live gold fish. Big Big hit We also rented tables to vendors for example Mary Kay, Avon, Moms with a crafts etc. we provided the table (borrowed from the church) and charged them 25.00 and they kept all their profit, WE made 300.00 dollars and all we did was organize vendors and set up the tables. This is also the time we do our Class Theme Baskets (each class brings items to place in their own basket ex. fishing, hunting,cooking etc) we Silent auction them that night! we made over 600.00 with that! Also, our local crime stoppers have a jail they came out at no charge and set up the jail and brought their Deputys and kids pd 1.00 and they would arrest whom ever they wanted them to and then the person in jail had to pay 1.50 bail to get out! We also sold pictures for 1.00 (in jail) if they wanted it! Pure profit and the crime stopper people got to hand out their pamplets. I have also saw this done with a horse trailer used as a jail. (Caution you will want grown men doing the arresting!) Ask around we have Church's Chicken restaurt and they have an large inflatable chicken that the kids can jump in and it is freeeeee! Also our dunkin booth is borrowed from a local church. We let the 4-6th graders vote on who gets into the booth. This gets them pumped up about coming to the festival. Having trouble getting enough people to work ask at the local high school, National Honor Society, and other organizationshave to have community service hours. They like to help! I think the biggest way to get people there is what was mention above... line up entertainment from all over your area esp. other elementary. Kids perform and have to stay and play and spend money!! Let me know if you have any questions!
Our school does a festival every spring. In fact, I am still recovering from it since it was held Friday. Here's what we do and it is similar to the last poster's.
We have a silent auction- this is a huge job and does generate $3,000 to 4,000. That committee starts in February with solicitation letters that are written by the students in grades 3-5. Our school, btw, is K-5, about 320 students.Fairly rural. While the silent auction is going on, we have local groups providing free entertainment. This is the local dance group, karate, middle school jazz band, middle school flags, etc. This is great because all those parents (many from other schools) bring their kids and then stay to hang out!
At our festival we have one game for just about every classroom. We have 12 classrooms(two classrooms per grade) but 11 games because 5th grade does the obstacle course together.
We also have three games that we rent - a dunk tank, a basketball shoot and a golf game. We have one amusement vendor who does inflatable things, like the big bouncy room thing. We also have a few food vendors that sell funnel cakes, burgers and something else that I can't think of. We added a boy scout/ odyssey of the mind food table that sells hoagies, water and chips. They (bs/om) keep all of their profits. We also have sand art and face painting.
We do give prizes away. The classroom games are two tickets - 40 cents if you buy ahead of festival day or 50 cents if you buy the day of the event. The prizes are about the same value, so this part is not profit making. But, we round up the prize cost so we are not losing money. For outside vendors (food and amusements) the profit is 80% for them and 20% for us. The only one I remember is the Blow up amusement guys got a check from us for over $1,000- which means we made $200 on that one amusement.
I can't tell you the total profit for this year because the bills haven't been paid but it should be a pretty good one. The weather was excellent and lots of people came. Good luck!
Mom of 7, it takes a lot of work to make lots of money from a carnival, but it can be done. First of all, you need to charge more than one ticket per game. We charge a minimum of two tickets per game, three or four tickets for others (harder games or the really popular games such as cake walk, face painting and the basketball hoop) and eight tickets for the bounce house. As hhspto says, it's worth it to rent a bounce house for the day! Our other popular booth offers hats and other items for sale.
We found that we can charge more at our booths as long as we give some sort of prize to everyone who plays and offer better prizes for the top level. We also offer a limited amount of bonus prizes, such as a small stuffed toy from the lollipop tree when a child gets a gold tipped lollipop.
We have a live auction and a silent auction which pull in $2,000.00 - $3,000.00. All of these items are donated by the community.
We also sell pizza, ice cream, popcorn, drinks, and barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs and sell them with chips and a soda. I hope this helps!
I have a question also. We have held a carnival for the last two years and have been lucky to clear $200. How are all of you making so much? I have seen it posted that carnivals are large profit makers. We did it for the fun, but if it can bring in a larger profit I would love to know how you did it. We charge 25 cents a ticket and most games take only one ticket. We also use the redemption table. Our largest item was a Dr. (Suess)?spelling) hat. We will be holding a Fall carnival again this year.
Also, the profit that we made enabled us to give all of our teachers money for classroom supplies.
