We do a used book and video sale at our annual Halloween carnival and also did one at our spring sock hop. We do fantastically well with these sales - usually $500 to $1000 each time. It does take someone dedicated to sort through the books, but once it's set up the money just rolls in.
We put donation boxes in front of the school office and then send out reminder flyers to the students. We are usually overwhelmed with donations.
I am always afraid to do "honor system" sales. I once worked for one of the US gov't agencies where we all had to have background checks and we had a honor system snack bar where the proceeds went to charity - and someone regularly stole the money.
The idea of the Honor System was if the "store" would be accecable ONLY to the parents.
HOWEVER
I like the idea of a day or two to have it "open" with a volenteer... Maybe one morning a week. That way, if you do have someone there, you can have the children come a purchase a video... Just like they purchase from the student store and so forth... Naturally, all the video's will be g and pg..
This idea can also work with music CDs and games... Although, I guess, we don't really want to encourage the kids to play video games... BUT we do spend a fortune on them...
OHHH I like this idea! Clearing out clutter for a good cause. In our school I would probably designate one or two days to do the exchange though. The honor system with our K-4th graders is not quite what is should be.
I would be interested to hear how this pans out if you really do it.
Unforntunately, my board is putting the whoa on me for new things next year. We don't want to get too overwhelmed!
Has anybody tried this. I am thinking of trying it next school year.
The idea: We all have TONS of videos at home that we dont need anymore (think about all the Barney tapes). Some of them are also pretty good movies that somehow along the line we purchased... To rent these at the local video store cost a about $3... What if all the families donate thier unwanted movies to the school. You set up a place for it (in the library?) and sell them for the price of renting them... So for $3 a family can own the video and if they get tired of it just donate it back... In effect they are renting it for as long as they want...
In terms of collecting money I was thinking of just putting a cash box and have it self regulated using the honor system, so we dont need anybody to deal with the money... You can make deals like 1 video for $3 and 2 for $5 and so forth...
