How do you consider easy fundraising activities when your booster club is filled with power-house volunteers who know how to organize an event that will raise money to benefit the students? You are organized and space your biggest fundraising activities evenly throughout the school year. What place could a smaller easy fundraising activities hold? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
Spacing events throughout the year helps prevent burnout of volunteers and gives everyone a time to relax, recuperate, and refocus on other important parts of their life. At least until the next big fundraising activity.
Just because everyone is taking a short break, though, doesn’t mean the fundraising has to stop. During these short gaps there are opportunities, easy fundraising activities of all types that can help raise money.
Below are five quick and easy fundraising activities your booster club can implement with little effort, but with big rewards.
Booster Club Easy Fundraising Activities: Easy Fundraising Activities Online
Social media makes it easy to reach thousands of people in a matter of seconds. They do so through crowdfunding, which is defined as raising small amounts of money from large amounts of people.
There are numerous crowdfunding programs you can use on social media that can save you time. Below are two of the top platforms that make it easy for booster clubs to raise money.
Fundly
Fundly is an easy-to-use site that lets you create a page to seek donations from your online community.
Over 330 million dollars have been raised so far. That may be because Fundly is an easy fundraiser that helps you connect with donors on a personal level.
Pros:
- Easy page customization
- Access to guides and tutorials
- Has mobile versions so you can accept donations on your phone
- Can connect with other platforms like YouTube and Facebook
Cons:
- They charge a small percentage to cover administrative costs, 4.9% of what you earn, plus a 2.9% transaction fee, plus $.30 per transaction that is processed.
GoFundMe
GoFundMe is one of the largest platforms out there that make it easy for booster club fundraising activities. While many of the profiles on GoFundMe are those of individuals requesting money for special needs, groups and teams can raise funds also.
Pros:
- Simple page set up
- 24/7 Customer services available
- Mobile App so you can manage your booster club fundraiser on the go
- No platform fees
- Allows sharing on social media sites
Cons:
- Charges a 2.9% transaction fee when you withdraw money
- You must submit your social security information for tax reporting purposes
- Some people have had difficulty when withdrawing money if not sending the money straight to a bank account
Booster Club Easy Fundraising Activities: Sell Baked Goods or Candy
Selling candy won’t net you as much money as online fundraising because with many programs, you must share the profits. The good news, everybody loves baked goods and candy. Whether it’s chocolate, lollipops, fudge, popcorn, pretzels, cupcakes or cookie dough, people want to buy them.
Below are two of the fastest and easiest programs that allow your booster club to see big rewards.
Cookie Dough
One of our favorite easy fundraising activities is selling premade cookie dough! No matter how many times you sell cookie dough throughout the school year, people want to buy it.
Cookie dough sells because it offers you the one thing everyone hates about baking cookies, and that is making the mix. With cookie dough, which usually comes frozen in tubs, all you must do is thaw, bake and eat.
Pros:
- Everybody loves cookies throughout the school year
- No money needed up front
- Variety of cookie options
- Students can volunteer to help sell and deliver orders
Cons:
- Product needs to remain refrigerated until delivered to buyers
- Some programs add shipping costs
Chocolate Candy
Depending on the program, chocolate candy can mean candy bars, gourmet filled bites, or even chocolate covered foods like pretzels or cookies. Just like cookie dough, chocolate sells.
Pros:
- Easy to implement
- Everyone loves chocolate throughout the schoolyear
- Can offer a variety of chocolate items
- High profit margins
- Buyers get an instant reward when making a purchase
Cons:
- Upfront expenses required to purchase supplies
- You must quit selling when you run out of product
Booster Club Easy Fundraising Activities: Online T-shirt Sales
If you have a knack for online tech, an easy fundraising activity that can be perpetually ongoing is selling t-shirts online! There is a trend across the board of more organizations selling t-shirts online because it is getting so easy! There is zero investment up front in many cases and you can start selling shirts almost immediately!
Below are two t-shirt design platforms that have shown great success helping others find a creative way, to raise money.
Tee Spring
Tee Spring is a t shirt design platform that allows you to create your own shirt or use a pre-designed template that has been created by one of there freelance artists. Once your t shirt design is approved, your buyers can begin purchasing.
You can even place your design on other products such as coffee mugs, phone cases and socks.
Pros:
- Products are of high quality
- Offers pre-made design templates
- Booster Clubs will get a large percentage of the sales
- Can easily connect and share on social media
Cons:
- Shipping charges apply, $3.99 for the first shirt and $2 for shirts after that
- Creating an account can take a while
- Turnaround is longer than most other platforms, longer than a week
Broken Arrow Custom T-shirt Printing
This T-shirt design platform has been around for decades. Broken Arrow is much more versatile than other platforms. They offer embroidery services, digital and heat transfers, thousands of clip art designs and they can even add rhinestones to your t shirts if that is what you desire.
Pros:
- Quick turnaround, usually six days or less
- Free delivery
- Cheaper prices, usually around $7 a t-shirt
- Easy online designer
- Huge catalog of designs
- Great customer service, including fashion and design experts
- No extra fees attached to your quote later in the process
Cons:
- Customer service accessible only during weekday work hours
- After hours and weekends, you can only order through the website
Partner with a local restaurant or food truck
Every town, whether rural or metropolitan, has a favorite restaurant. With parents being busier than ever, eating out is becoming more popular. This growing trend leads us to another of our favorite easy fundraising activities! Your booster club can capitalize on this growing trend and give families even more reasons to eat out, while at the same time supporting your club’s cause!
There are several chain restaurants that are well-known for helping booster clubs with quick fundraising opportunities. Two of them are discussed below. If your town doesn’t have a major chain, work with the favorite local restaurant to create your own fundraiser.
Buffalo Wild Wings
It has a sports theme. And you can watch just about any game playing on their numerous televisions throughout the establishment. This makes it fun for the kids and the adults. But the main attraction, the wings.
Buffalo Wild Wings offers a quick and easy fundraiser called Eat Wings, Raise Funds. Pretty simple and everybody wins. You share the profits and get to eat great food.
Pros:
- Easy to apply using their online form
- Easy to market the event using social media and word of mouth
- Fun Atmosphere
- Good variety of food available for order
- You get to spend an evening eating out with school friends and family
Cons:
- You may not make a huge amount of money since it is for one night only
- Restaurants usually get a higher percentage of the profits
- Not everyone likes Buffalo Wild Wings
Kona Ice
Okay, so this is not your typical restaurant. It’s a food truck, sort of, because they come to your school and open shop.
So far Kona has given 62 million. This shows their dedication to helping organizations and communities thrive.
Pros:
- Everybody loves shaved ice drinks
- They have a proven track record of raising a lot of money
- Variety of fundraising programs
- They come to you
Cons:
- Could be limited to seasonal booster club fundraising
Booster Club Easy Fundraising Activities: Raffles
Raffles can be so much fun and are an easy fundraising activity for any booster club. It’s the hope of winning money or big-ticket items that keep people buying tickets. The more tickets they buy, the better their odds, and the more booster club support you receive.
Raffles can be adapted to fit the needs of your booster club fundraising. Two examples of raffles are discussed below.
50/50 Raffle
This could be one of the simplest ways to raise money. You sell tickets. Fifty percent of the money raised goes to your booster club, fifty percent goes to one lucky winner whose name is drawn from all the raffle tickets that were sold.
Pros:
- Everybody likes to win money
- The more tickets you sell, the more money you can make
- Easy to implement
- Can be run by students
Cons:
- Not everyone likes to gamble, and it may be hard to get some people to play
- May need to get gaming license from your county in some states
- Profits are split 50/50, percentage is not higher for booster clubs
Big Ticket Item Raffle
Big ticket items can range from brand new televisions to new cars. It all depends on how well your booster club can acquire items people want.
If you are creative and think outside the box, you can put together a big-ticket raffle item that will motivate people to participate in the fundraiser.
Pros:
- Can turn into an exciting event with a lot of tickets sold
- If done right, could bring in a lot of money in a short time
- Everyone likes to win something big
Cons:
- It could be difficult to price the raffle tickets correctly (low enough to get a lot of buyers, high enough to make a good profit)
- Requires great marketing skills to get businesses or individuals to donate items
- Not everyone will want to spend money without a guarantee or immediate reward
- Must make sure the item you auction is something many people will want
With these five examples of quick and easy fundraising activities you can see there are options for making money for your booster club, even when you are not hosting larger fundraisers. The time between each major fundraising event can be lucrative, with little effort on your part.
While planning your year of fundraisers, don’t forget to add in the smaller, yet impactful, ways to make money for your booster club.
