Our PTA just signed a contract to do a mag sale in Feb. It's through Fun Services who contract with American Publishers. Our rep is awesome.
But first, the reason we went with this is that an intermediate school about 40 miles from our district make 12k+ each year with magazines, and our rep gave us very reassuring numbers.
Something like 6 out of every 10 homes subscribe and half of those homes get 6-8 titles. Also that we are asking people to renew their scripts, and if they don't currently receive mags, most will find at least 1 they want.
You are also not asking people to buy junk they don't want or need, since most homes either subscribe to mags or purchase them at a newstand.
No one in our area does this sale so we are very hopeful. We'll make 40%+ on each sale.
Our sale will be a brochure listing well over 600 titles, a huge number of them with great pricing.(Family Fun at $10 a year)
Students will have two weeks to sell and collect $, with the other program(names and addresses on a postcard the return rate is really low and even the people who do order don't always pay, therefore depleting your profit even more)
Now back to our rep. His prize program is the same old cheezy stuff as all the rest of the fundraising companies, but he has a great turn-in day incentive program. We have three turn-in days. On the first day all students who turn in 2-5 sub get to shop for candy, 5-8 subs is a $5 gc to Burger king, 9+ is a cash reward of .10for each pound they weigh plus whatever inanimate object they can hold in their hands. Second turn in day is the same except the gc is to McDonalds and instead of the weigh in they get to grab a handful of silver coins from a bowl. Third day is for every 2 subs, they get a bag of Jolly ranchers(this is a little more candy than I like but the other parents don't seem to have a problem with it.)
His grand prize for the highest seller is a year long family pass to our local sports/rec center-value of over $300. He also has a teacher incentive.
He will also have an Inflatibles Carnival if we meet a certain quota.
I'm very excited about this one, and you can't say that very often about brochure fundraisers

none of the scholls in our town do this because our Girl Scouts do this fundraiser after the new year. I can tell you that our troop does very well with it.

Our school (not our parent group) used Mr. Earl for years. The profit wasn't ever more than $3K, went down in profit substantially each year, and caused more trouble than it was worth. While it was an easy, no brainer fundraiser, it didn't make any of the parents, teachers, or staff happy to do it. Our school stopped doing it after 9/11 because of the anthrax issues. The way Mr. Earl worked was for each student to fill in the names and addresses of family and friends on a preprinted order form. It said something like: Dear _________, I am sending you this order form for magazines to help raise money for our school. If you order 2 magazines, I get a cool Joe Cool shirt as a prize. I Love You, ________. It was to be filled in by the child. I have to admit, when sent, it did look a lot like the letter that Tom Daschle received, the one that carried the anthrax spores...

Frozen cookie dough turned out to be a better choice for us.

Thinking about doing a magazine fundraiser, has anyone had experience with this type of fundraising, was it very profitable?