Kindy Fundraising ideas?

[Lucy]

Hi all,

For those who have already gone through the Kindy Fundraising stage, in your experience, which ones worked best?

Which were easiest to organise?

Which ones generated the best profits?

Niliac.....I am sure you have a wealth of advice with this one....I know that you were involved with it all last year?

TIA!

[mrsmac]

We did the draw on a plate one and it was pretty good. I think there are so many around these days people sell less just cause they are inundated with them! The chocolate ones still seem to bring in the most cash.

[Mother Goose]

I second the choc (or natural confectionary) ones. A girl at work just brought some in for her kids child care (a BIG box) and it all sold out within 2 days!!!!

MG

[Rouge]

Draw on a plate, Tea Towels, Cookie Dough Buckets, Chocolates are good but we have found due to the fact that a lot of the mum's have kids at school/brownies/tennis they all seem to do it and it can be a right PITA when you have 10 boxes. I'm lucky as Marc works in an office with hungry people who love choc but not everyone is in the same position. The latest fundraiser they did at our Kinder was Sweatshirts and Polo's with the pre-school logo on it, went like hotcakes and a lot of the kids love them so much they wear them to kinder. Another goodie is the label places like stick it on, because kinder kids will eventually be looking at labelling for school its good because it can be advertised as in advance. Cleanskin wine also went well, fashion nights, parenting experts who donate their time and parents all buy tickets with proceeds going to the kinder. There's also a portrait place that do portraits giving some proceeds to Kinders. Will think more as I know there is heaps more.

[Shellbelle]

So far we have done -
choccies,
draw on plate,
numerous raffles (mothers day etc),
nutrimetics,
movie night (kids movie played at kindy and sold sausages, popcorn, drinks, glow sticks etc),
art show (kids paint paintings and displayed like art gallery for sale!!),
obstacle-a-thon (kids sponsered to do laps of obstacle course),
bunnings BBQ

Gosh will be back when I think of more!!!

[christy]

Matilda's kindy has had toy drives.... where you buy your Christmas toys and the centre gets to choose toys from there.

Also... a sausage drive!! They had a local butcher sell sausages & the centre got $1 per kilo, they were healthy sausages, 90% fat free, no preservatives, no dairy and no gluten.... We bought 4 kgs for the freezer...

[Lucy]

Girls, you are legends, thank you so much.

Keep them coming!

[{sarah}]

Zander came home this week with a sponsorship form for Preschool Olympics They have ten activities & you have a form for people to sponsor them x amount for each activity they complete. We're taking it round to friends & family to sponsor him & because it costs nothing everything is profit! I can give you more info on the activities if you want.

[satya]

I haven't been involved in fund raising yet but I can tell you which ones do the best at my workplace where we get inundated with fundraising throughout the year.

Freddos - they sell like hotcakes. They sell for $1 so pretty much everyone has $1 to spare. Some people like me will buy 5 or 6 at a time to stash in their drawer. The mixed boxes work best - peppermint, plain, strawberry, caramello koala etc. I think you have to buy full boxes and then the mums have to mix them. The other chocolate ones that cost $3 take way longer to sell.

Another good one we had a few years back was slices - like lemon, peppermint etc. They came in a great plastic container. Because it was unusual a lot of people around the office bought them.

Haven't seen it done in many years but the lamington drives always used to be very popular as everyone loves them.

[Astrolady]

LOL

GARDEN EXPRESS !!!!!! Seriously the grandmas LOVE bulbs, and it is no cost to the Kindergarten, you just order in your catalouges and distribute them... The cut of for the summer bulbs orders has just ended. With the summer ones you get 30% of all sales. With their main one "Spring Collection, available from Feb, you get 50% of all sales. Our kindy easily gets over $200 profit each time we do it.

Kindergarten Mugs - We get mugs once a year with the Kindy logo on front and the kids names on the back that are currently within the Kindy on the back. The costs to parents is $9 a mug.

Family Portraits - we get a guy (can give you name if you PM me) that comes to the Kindy and does family portraits. You pay $10 to book your sitting, which the Kindergarten keeps, and you get a free family portrait. The way he makes the money is from the sales of the other photos cause he will do a few different sittings. I got the whole package last year and it cost just over $100 and the photos were fantastic. You just can not resist purchasing the lot, well I can't LOL. Your main photo must be a family photo with a parent/guardian included that is the only catch, you can then have just the kids or just husband/wife after that pic. Oh and your family portrait is also fully framed. You can also pay a little bit extra and have all your photos put onto CD as well as the prints.

Mothers/Fathers/Easter/Christmas Raffles - Parents donate something small each and it gets put into 1 or 2 hampers, then sell a book of 10 raffle tickets for 50c each.

Obstacle-athon - Another big money spinner for our Kindy. Teachers set up an outdoor obstacle course, and kids get their families to sponsor (donate) them money. The kids do 5 circuits each and have a card with their name on it, where they get a star for each time they pass the check in point. The obstacle has heaps of different stuff like climibing, throwing beanbags thru hoops, carrying a saucepan of water from one bucket to another, walking on stilts (the upside down cans with string) etc etc.

I hope that is a few different ideas for you Lucy. We don't do the chocolate stuff due to our strict healthy eating policy.

Love

[baby0206]

hi i am actually doing on right now, we have brought canvas's and painted them then put the kids hand prints onto them the canvas's cost us $2.25 each and we are selling them for $20 bit of glitter and stickons and they look awesome.
Something different and not too hard also a garage sale works well too, hire out a hall and get the parents to bring stuff then sell it!! Easy, long weekends work well, we did this over easter holidays and raised $4000.
hope this helps.

kim

[Lucy]

You girls on on fire.....Kat & sarah, can you pm me details? THANK YOU!

[Rivlas]

If you do a chocolate drive don't do it near Easter, Mothers/Fathers Day as we found people didn't but then due to chocolate overload. Also they sell better in the cooler months as people see chocolate as a comfort food when they are cold. Lamingtons worked well for us and hardly any work. Anything that is preordered/paid is usually the least amount of work for the few who are left to hand it out. Saw one where you preordered Beanie Kids but lost it, anyone heard of this?

[briggsy's girl]

LOL

GARDEN EXPRESS !!!!!! Seriously the grandmas LOVE bulbs, and it is no cost to the Kindergarten, you just order in your catalouges and distribute them... The cut of for the summer bulbs orders has just ended. With the summer ones you get 30% of all sales. With their main one "Spring Collection, available from Feb, you get 50% of all sales. Our kindy easily gets over $200 profit each time we do it.

Oi!!! it's not JUST grandma's that love Garden Express fundraiser!!! they have minimal mark up on everyday prices, and the school/kinda gets heaps of profit from it!

cookie dough - not sure how well it would work for a kinder, but all the schools and stuff here do it at least once a year (they stagger it over a few months, so we have a constant supply!)

SPC fruit bulk packs - again, not sure how they work profit margin wise, but the local school/kindy are running it at the moment for about the third year - we're from a small town, so maybe 80 kids combined from the two, and they still do alright

at work, we choose a charity to support every year, and do fundraising efforts all year towards them - we've done the photo sittings, trivia nights (can be harder to organise, but also very profitable), pie drive, raffles (mothers day, easter, fathers day, valentines day, winter, summer, spring - always a raffle on the go!), chocolates on team leader desks all year round. we've also had a fete and party plan day...

party plan days work ok - not too difficult, but can take a bit of advertising - get lots of different party plan people to come in, $10 to have a table (or whatever amount), people pay a couple of bucks to get in, sell supper or whatever...

if you have someone associated with kindy that sells something, and you just want to do a big party - instead of getting free products (though with kids toys it could work) you get a percentage of all sales from the party... i've done this several times with different products...

those last couple are probably more time-intensive to organise, so might not be what you're after, but i figured seeing i was waffling, i'd just keep going

[Astrolady]

LOL BG I just put in a $142 order, but that did include 2 Grandmas plus my own

Love

[briggsy's girl]

i think my last order was about that from the fundraiser (and about four times that on their website cos they didn't have all i wanted in the fundraiser catalogue!)

worst thing is, the freebies that came with the spring bulbs were things we weren't sure we wanted - so SIL stole them for the kidlets - how rude

[suziegirl]

You have prob done your fundraiser, but i know i always end up eating all the choc's myself instead of selling them and my family always hated choc fundraisers.


cheers
PS i liked the ideas of bulbs and lamingtons

[Kazbah]

we did bulbs and raised heaps, and we have a toy catalogue as well. There are choccies but they all come at the same time as other ones and I personally don't think that selling choccies is a very responsible stand with all the worry about childhood obesity around at the moment.