Could some of you that have had successful fall carnival fundraisers describe what you do and where you make your most money? We too are trying to get away from too many events and felt that a fall carnival might work. Thanks
Do you promote the fall carnival as a fundraiser or family event?
We've have several family events each year (Fall Festival, Spring Dance, Movie Nights, Back-To-School BBQ, etc) and do make some money off of them, but don't promote them as fundraisers. I've been afraid the perception of them might change if we started calling them fundraisers.
We have only one fundraiser, a fall carnival. Everyone knows it and goes all out. We net about $20K. I've posted the details several times on this board.
Parents tell me all the time that they don't mind helping with the carnival knowing that that will be it for the year. We usually have 250+ volunteers for the carnival, silent auction, spaghetti supper.
Our hope is that once we're done raising money for the playground we'll only have to rely on one or two fundraising events a year (besides Market Day). Our Tricky Tray raised $12,000 and we're waiting to see how our walk-a-thon goes. Another school in our district pulled in $30,000 for theirs--if we could market it as a once a year thing that would alleviate all other fundraisers I'm sure it'd go over well. However for some reason our BOE generally frowns on them unless the money is earmarked for a specific cause.
Having done a ton of fundraising these past few months we found that the "selling" fundraisers were by far the least profitable. The easiest to run maybe, but the money they raised hardly made them worth the effort, plus they tend to annoy people.
My neice is in the band and they just did an AVON fundraiser with a lady and they sold $11,000 in products and got 40% from it, which is $4,400. I have her name and e-mail addy if anyone wants it.
