I have a friend who used to live in Houston. Her 4 kids went to private school and she ran the school rummage sale there. It took a year of planning. She had a team of people working for and even got some local media coverage. They held it in a local warehouse that was donated space from a parent. All materials were segregated by type all items priced as one, For instance, all sweaters were $2.00, all shoes $4.00. In the end, they raised $86,000. All discards were donated or sold to for rags.
Just wanted to let you all know that it has and can be done. Just needs someone to take charge and be a worker-bee to insure success.

I'm really interested in this idea because we have been talking about doing it for quite some time. You can limit it to clothes but consider that you are going to get some clothing that people just want out of their house but is so out of date or worn out that no one would wear it. We got some good stuff including clothes, but we also got a lot of stained and holey stuff too. I would be embarrassed to ask the Salvation Army or Goodwill to take that stuff. Plus we got stuff like broken appliances and toupees and who would want that?? If you ask people to just donate stuff you do need a lot of volunteers and at least two days of full time workers to sort and price stuff.

if you hve a big parking lot at the school, have a trunk sale; rent parking spots to parents, thats the fundraiser side of it.
then everyone who has rented a spot, comes with the stuff in their car, and sells their own stuff/keeps that money.

whatever doesnt get sold, the owner of the junk has to cart away at end of the sale. thats the best part of it, in addition to not having to worry about the pricing and tagging of stuff.

theyre called BOOT sales in England (cuz the trunk is called a boot over there) and they do them instead of garage sales.

I have been thinking about the 'junk' that people may try to bring and was thinking of limiting it to clothing for the first adventure. Do you think that would be unacceptable for some? I was also thinking of trying to coordinate a pick up from Salvation Army or another cause in our area to take away what doesn't go. Kinda like hitting two causes at once. Keep those ideas coming!

We are thinking about doing this in the spring. To avoid getting rid of a whole bunch of junk after it is over, we thought about doing it the weekend before out town's annual clean-up day, where you can bring your bulkies, etc. (We have it in the school parking lot.) At the very least, it is a 100% profit venture, although it may require quite a bit of work.

Although we have never done this at my school, we did do it at my church. I would advise requiring people to cart away their own unsold stuff at the end of the day. Otherwise, some people may just bring junk knowing the volunteers will get rid of it for them. If you don't have the volunteers needed to sort and price stuff you may want to consider renting space to those who want to participate.