Our Youth group recently did a Pancake breakfast at Applebee's resturant. You provide the people to work the tables (could be 4th and 5th graders, teachers or parents) and you sell tickets. I think they were like $15 for a family ticket and $5 for an individual. All you can eat. Applebee's donates all the food so everything you make is 100% profit!

We are going to do this for our 5th graders next year to help with their 5th grade trip.

I love some of the ideas listed already! Will be checking back to borrow some of the ideas. :- )

We just finished our two-day jogathon. Each class runs for an hour (we have over 800 students). We solicit local businesses for donations and they get their names and logos printed on the t-shirts we give out (free) to every student. We then ask the parents to pledge money (5 cents per minute, 25 cents per minute, etc.). Everybody runs the whole hour so the parents figure out the amount and pre-pay.

This year we got over $14,000 in pledges from businesses and over $10,000 in pledges from parents. We still have to subtract the expenses for the t-shirts and other things and will end up with about $20,000.

This is a big event at our school - we play music, squirt the kids with hoses, give out oranges and water, etc. The best part is that other than expenses 100% of the money goes to the school.

Levonda,

This is a read-a-thon idea that I copied from another posting:

I have a great program called 2-4-6. Each student reads for 2 weeks (15 min per day) they find 4 sponsors to pay them $1 for each hour...which would total 6 hours over the 2 week time. So 2-4-6.
Just think of the amount you could raise if 300 students participate.
$24 x 300= $7,200.
I got this from Discovery Toys.

Another idea is a Penny War. Depending on the size of your school it may not make a ton of money, but it is all profit!

Each classroom would get a container. Every penny is worth 1 point and silver coins or bills are a deduction worth their value (a quarter would be -25 points, a dollar would be -100, a dime would be -10 etc.)

Everyone wants to fill their containers with as many pennies as possible. People use silver coins and dollar bills to bomb the containers of other classrooms. At the end the class with the most points wins something...typically a pizza party.

Good luck at your meeting!!

These are some great ideas and I am going to take them as well as any others that might be posted between now and our next PTO meeting (May 9th) to the board to look at for our next fundraiser. Thank you all so much!!

Why not try collecting cartridges and cellphones?? In this project you just send home the flyers and the students bring them in. With the company we use - Cartridges for Kids - their program coordinators pick them up so we don't even have to pack them up. We get a check each month for whatever we sent in the past month. Plus, they contact our business partners so we get money all summer long as they pick up at our business partners. It may not make a mint but we do so little work except advertise and remind. We even run a contest to see who can bring in the most once a year for 6 weeks and the company gives the winning class $50 for a class pizza or ice cream party and a certificate. It really encourages the kids to bring in more...Just a thought for a change...

I should also mention local businesses donate prizes to our Jog-a-thon. Wal-mart gives us one boy's and one girl's bicycle, and McDonald's and Hometown Buffet have also been very supportive. They send their characters (Hamburglar & Hometown Buffet Bee) to run around with the kids. They also bring tons of certificates we can give away. The Jog-a-thon type events are a good way to go if you don't want to "share" your profits with a company!