We did a change drive for mulch once and raised about $1200.00. That was the magic # that year.
You could have them to submit poems and stories and make a book at of it at school and sell them. They could do that along with their bake sale. (I like that idea).
Our 6th graders go to a science camp each year. At our carnival they are responsible for the Junk Food Walk and last year they did a hay maze. This earns them money but also lets us off the hook for finding volunteers to run activities. They even had a family that did the dinner at the carnival last year.
It is also tradition that the earnings from our book fairs go to 6th grade camp. The fall fair funds go the current 6th grade class and the spring fair funds go the 5th grade class (incoming 6th grade).
Our 5th grade does a bake sale and car washes. The students are resposible for making the cookies and cupcakes in class and bake them in the cafeteria. They then sell the stuff during PE time. The students are resposible for setup, selling, money, and clean-up. For the car wash, we pre-sell tickets and then set a day at school for the event. The kids love it.
Our school covers grades K-5 and the "5th Grade Committee" of our PTO handles fundraising to support the year-end promotion party for 5th graders and elements of our 5th grade DARE program. Funds are raised to cover party costs, t-shirt costs, teacher and DARE officer gifts, and other misc. things. I'm looking to see if anyone has some new, fresh ideas for me to share with this group in the way of fundraising. In the past they have done things like selling Glo necklaces or Krispy Kreme donuts at some of our PTO family events, and selling baseball or hockey tickets for a "school night out" type event. These were well-received and fun, and engaged the 5th-graders.
Last year we had a very ambitious group of parents head the committee and they ran, for the first time ever, a small-scale cookie dough fundraiser. It was their sole fundraiser for the year (rather than multiple smaller-scale ones) and it was more of a parent-effort than student-effort. It worked out well and netted the group a ton of money. This coming year we do not have an ambitious group of parents to chair this committee--we are having a hard time getting chairs and will be reaching out strongly at Meet the Teacher, in fact. I'd like to pose a number of fundraising options to the group--give them some ideas to think about--more smaller-scale ones that are less intimidating to take on. (Our PTO already does a large-scale giftwrap fundraiser and I don't think parents would "miss" having the cookie dough for sale again). I think the parents might also like to see students engaged in the efforts more, too. The cookie dough project was a "take order" only type promotion (rather than "sell orders") and really only involved parents.
Anyway, does anyone have additional ideas on the magnitude of the Krispy Kreme and sports game activities? We could have 2-3 small-scale efforts over the course of the year. Could be similar to the type of fundraisers you see large Student Council groups do (please, not candy sales!) Thanks.
(I like that idea).