Me personally, I would just charge a flat rate per table and leave it at that. If you wanted to, you could also request that each exhibitor donate an item and have a big raffle and sell tickets for a quarter (or more!). Just make sure to attach the proper business card to each raffle item!!
Are you selling food/drinks? Call your Cookie Dough Fund Raising Company and have them donate a few boxes, and hit the groceries, Call Coca-Cola, etc for the supplies!
Remember one thing, though: Sometimes a truly successful event is a huge success even if it only makes a moderate profit - The exposure to the community and the goodwill it generates is also priceless!!
My son's school is organizing a "Holiday Shopping Extravaganza" fundraiser where we will be inviting people who have catalog based-businesses & anyone who has crafts or small wares to sponsor a table.
We were thinking of charging $25.00 to sponsor a table and ask that once the sponsor made back their $25.00 via sales that they would then donate a % of any additional sales to our school. We will not be charging shoppers any type of entry fee. If the school will let us we will be putting an ad in the local newspaper.
Do you think this cost is reasonable? Is it too high? Too low? Is there a better way to get both sponsors AND $$ in?
Also, I know that different companies offer different percentages back for fundraising (ie: Tupperware=40% but Pampered Chef=15%) so how should we handle this? I don't want to just ask for 15% and then lose out if a company could offer more. Should I just let them tell us what they can offer?
Since I just started this Fundraising committee this year, we're really trying to "put it on the map" at our school so I want this event to make as much money as possible. We're just not sure how best to accomplish this goal! (FYI, our School Board won't allow us any more "traditional" type fundraisers such as cookie dough, candles, etc. because the PTA, etc already do those so we are restricted to organizing non-traditional events/socials,-- which, I'm assuming, make less money. Since we have to make money the hard way, I'd like to maximize our take as much as possible.)
Any advice anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated!
