As a school, you’re always doing your bit for charity fundraising. Whether it’s a summer fair or sports day, there has always been a variety of ideas that schools have had to raise money. These ideas have evolved with time and technology, and the scope of creativity in your ideas now is phenomenal. Here are 50 different charity fundraising ideas for schools that you could take advantage of.
We’ll cover:
- Charity Fundraising Ideas For Schools
- How to Market Your Charity Event
- Ideas for Promoting Your Event
Charity Fundraising Ideas For Schools
When raising money for charity, there are plenty of different ways that you can explore. Why not get creative? Or why don’t you just stick to the tried and tested traditional ways of raising plenty of money? Either way, here’s a list of 50 great ideas that’ll be sure to rake in the funds: fundraiser ideas for high schools
- School Discos
- Sponsored Fun Run
- Talent Shows
- Non-Uniform Days
- Bake Sale
- Coffee Mornings
- Competitions
- Quizzes
- Book Sale
- Sponsored Walk
- Bring and Buy Sale
- Battle of the Bands
- BBQ
- Car Wash
- Fancy Dress Days
- Fashion Shows
- Guess the Number Game (e.g. jelly beans in a jar)
- Toy Day
- Charity Headshave
- Jumble Sale
- Karaoke Challenge
- Sponsored Silence
- Magic Show
- Music Concert
- School Olympics
- Pantomime
- Pyjama Days
- Raffles
- Read-a-thon
- Recycling (Ink cartridges sent off for recycling to reduce landfill is rewarded by Recycling for Schools)
- Treasure Hunt
- Sponsored sleepover
- Great Charity Bake Off
- School Strictly Come Dancing
- Custard Pie Your Teachers
- Sponsored Relay-Reading (reading a page each of an author’s entire work aloud)
- PTA Pub Quiz
- Supermarket Bag Packing
- School vs Food Eating Challenge
- Sponsored Healthy Eating Month
- Sponsored Fast (but be safe!)
- Truth or Dare the Teacher (or they make a donation)
- Name the Bear/Football Cards (guess which name is under the scratch-off section)
- LipSync Challenge
- Treadmill Marathons or Bike Rides
- Sponsored Bike Ride
- Duke of Edinburgh
- Sponsored Skydive
- Charity Golf Day
- Teacher v Pupils Sports Tournament
How to Market Your Charity Event
Identify Your Target Audience
For the majority of your funding events, for example, non-uniform days or jumble sales, your target audience will be the students of your school. But, when hosting a pantomime or a music event there’ll be people in the local town or village who will also want to come to watch and support the show.
Once you’ve identified who these people are – maybe go off previous events and see what kind of audience attended that – you should then start to work on how you can persuade them to come and participate.
Prepare the Marketing Message
Your marketing message is crucial for persuading people to come to your event. It should include:
- A catchy slogan. Something that will stick in somebody’s head and when it’s used they instantly remember and think of your event.
- The appeal of the event. Give a little glimpse of what the event is about and how your attendees would be benefitting from coming along.
- Persuade to participate. By mentioning the charity who you’re raising money for and a target of what you’re hoping to reach, people will almost feel obliged to go along if they have ties with the certain charity through a loved one or friend.
Your marketing message should be spread over a variety of different mediums. That way, it has the best chance of reaching out to a wider audience and maximises potential return. Like your event, why not get creative with the way you market it? Use a mixture of digital and more traditional printed methods to get your message across as effectively as possible.
Ideas for Promoting Your Event
Signage
Leading up to your event ask local shops and restaurants if you can display posters or flyers for your event in their shop windows. This is a free way of displaying your signage so passersby will be able to take note. Make sure it stands out and really grabs the eye of the audience, you can do this by nailing your layout.
Website Announcements and Justgiving Donation Pages
Create a page on the school website dedicated to promoting your event. This will act as a one-stop page where all the relevant information about your event is provided. You may want to consider selling tickets (if required) from this page too, for the ease and convenience of the viewer.
You could also sell tickets from a third-party site, that way they can promote your event to their wider audience too. Other handy pages – which people are used to seeing – are pages like JustGiving.
Ticket Outlets
Just like with your signage, why not ask local shops and retailers if they’ll sell your tickets on the counter? They then serve as a ticket vendor for you and it means that people don’t have to directly come to the school for tickets and potentially go out of their way.
Direct Mail
The school’s database will have every pupil’s home address, so why not take advantage of this and post out personal invites? Personalisation makes the receiver feel valued and that they are wanted to be there, which will help pull a larger audience and encourage more people to get involved.
Like your posters and leaflets, the quality of your invites is also important. A nicely presented invite on quality stock shows that the event is serious and well organised. Your stock is important, it can finish off your invites nicely or ruin them completely so make sure you choose the right stock.
Social Media
Use the school’s social media accounts to reach out to your follower base to inform about the event. This is arguably one of the most important marketing mediums of the modern age so it’s vital that you utilise it. It’s also a great place for interaction so you could potentially reach out to local businesses or radio stations to ask for sponsorship or coverage of your event.
Email Marketing
Customise and send out an email advertising the upcoming events. Even if it’s only a non-uniform day, an email to the parents as a reminder makes sure that they don’t miss it and forget to get their children involved.
Newsletter
The school newsletter is a great way of informing the pupils and the parents of everything upcoming in the next month. Have wide coverage of your event in the newsletter and maybe even offer a ticket special offer if they present a voucher out of it on the day.
Nail Your Newsletter
As you’ve just read, newsletters are a great way of getting messages out there about a variety of topics. So, it’s important that you nail them. There’s no point sending out a newsletter that only tells half the tale. Not sure if you’ve included everything? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. Download our free guide to find out more.