School Fundraising
When fundraising for your ball or sporting event, there are many options you can choose. The most popular ways are holding a few Mufti-Day’s, and/or a school social. These are the 2 easiest options in which students will be in attendance, meaning a better profit for the ball fund. A fun idea might be to auction off helpful students to other students or teachers for a day of ‘slave’ labour, book carrying, classroom tidying, fetching and carrying. Perhaps you could arrange for your school to hold a mufti day with a twist, a crazy theme or costume idea (this idea definitely needs school approval!). What about an old fashioned car wash with various levels of service, including vacuuming and polishing!
Product sales
There are businesses in New Zealand that provide schools with products such as chocolate, sports water, or selections of candy for the sole purpose of fundraising. The supplier of these products cuts out the retailer and will sell direct to you at a wholesale price that allows you to resell the product at a higher price to make a small profit that you get to keep! This is one of the best ways to fundraise and combine this with a school disco and you have to streams of fundraising in one! An important question you should ask the supplier is their business policy on unsold product! Is there a sale/return policy in place? does the supplier allow you to return unsold product? is there a refund or charge for returned product
Advertising and Sponsership
Advertising or ask for sponsorship from businesses in your surrounding area. When you consider approaching local businesses, you could write letters/emails or have a student representative visit them. They may be willing to sponsor a prize, and you could ask if they might like to have a student worker for a day in return for a donation towards your school ball. Students could volunteer for an odd job service with users making a donation to the ball fund for the student’s work in mowing the lawn or raking up the leaves etc.
Create competitions with businesses, if a business has a product or service that they sell to the many students who will attend the ball i.e. suit hire, dress sales, hair extensions spray tanning and more, arrange to advertise or promote their services at your school and negotiate a monetary donation to the school ball funds for a certain amount of purchases from your school this is like offering a group discount but the discount value is given back as a donation.
Search for businesses in your area or region that offer fundraising merchandise that you could sell and receive a percentage of the profits, for example pies, chocolate, calendars. You need to consider a few things however – like what sort of things the students and families in your community are likely to support, and what is appropriate for the season, for the area you live in. eg. selling sunscreen in the winter is not likely to be very successful. It is also a good idea to check your ideas with the teacher in charge, and your school is likely to have some guidelines about what you can do, and may be able to help you ensure your ideas are legal.
Get to know the students in your school, you never know whose parents, family, or friends could be someone with some great connections and ideas.
Just remember, that the more effort and enthusiasm you put into your school ball, the more successful it will be. Always take into account, that no matter what your budget, there are ways and means of getting the most out of every person to make your ball a huge success!
Cutting costs for a more affordable event
If you are working with a small budget, and you have specific spending limits designated to each supplier, you can always consider changing the date of your ball to a date or day that is not so busy. Saturdays are usually the busiest day of the week, so if you book for a Thursday or Friday, you can ask for an upgraded package at no extra cost, or a possible discount. There are many other ways you can save costs. For instance, if you are planning on using a professional event stylist to decorate your ball you could offer student help with the decorating of the venue. Decorating takes up a considerable amount of time so by helping with setting up this will reduce labor costs and save time. So offer for you and some of the other students to help with the decorations, or alternatively – create your own.