What is the most profitable school fundraiser?
OUR SCHOOLS HAVE RAISED OVER $80,000, $90,000 AND EVEN $100,000 IN SINGLE SCHOOL FUNDRAISING EVENTS.
In this article, we’ll break down the elements that make School Fun Run such a high-profit fundraiser for our schools. It’ll also help you know what to look out for when selecting a School Fundraising Service Provider. So, read on…
1. ENGAGE YOUR SCHOOL COMMUNITY
People are busy, so if you want to host a highly profitable school fundraising event, don’t be boring! Choose a fundraising idea that will engage with your school community and make it fun for them to support your event.
Along those lines, there are a lot of intangible benefits that come from quality school fundraising. The right fundraiser will begin by boosting school spirit and student wellbeing. If you choose a fundraising idea that excites your students (one they are proud to be associated with), they will naturally bring in new supporters from the wider community… and by doing that, you’ll have more people supporting your cause.
For context, at School Fun Run we say our job is to create HAPPY KIDS and PROUD PARENTS. That’s because after helping schools fundraise for over 30 years, we know that community engagement is the first element you should consider when choosing a fundraiser for your school community. If your community is engaged the funding will follow.
2. EXPAND YOUR SUPPORT NETWORK
Here’s the truth; cash-based fundraising is dead! Gold Coin Donation Days, Mother’s Day Stalls etc all still have their place on the school’s fundraising calendar, but if you really want to know which school fundraisers make the most money, the answer is cashless ones!
You may have also heard ‘cashless school fundraising’ being called ‘online fundraising’ (which is fine because they’re the same thing). It just means that your donors will make their pledges over the internet, as opposed to the traditional method of people giving actual cash to the students.
There are many significant reasons why the most profitable fundraiser for your school will be powered by cashless or online fundraising:
Firstly, anyone in the WORLD can support your local school. If they have the internet they can donate. Fundraising used to be limited to the geographical area around your school. That meant students would have to go door-knocking to ask people for donations. These days, thanks to online fundraising, your donations can come in from anywhere on the planet and frankly, that changes everything.
Secondly, close family and friends don’t always live near your students. Many might live interstate or overseas and these are the people who genuinely care for the educational outcomes experienced by the child who is seeking extra funding for your school. Since moving to an online fundraising model back in 2012, School Fun Run has seen the average amount donated jump up by around 300%. We have also seen the average amount raised per student increase from around $20 with cash to around $130 online. Interestingly, the amount of work families need to do has also dramatically reduced. For example, most students only get a handful of donations online, but they are such high-value donations, so they add up really fast.
Now, we all know that people are creatures of habit. With online fundraising, families can simply use their social media accounts, text messaging and emails to ask their network for support. This approach to fundraising ties into normal consumer behaviour, in contrast, if you asked people to sell chocolate bars in their workplace, it’s a big change to their normal way of being.
So, online fundraising gives people a chance to support your school fundraiser without having to change the way they interact with other people. That means more people will want to get involved! Plus, when you use Online Fundraising there are no products for families to buy, or sell… and that’s a real parent pleaser!
Cashless fundraising also helps prevent fundraising fatigue in your local community. You’ll find that almost all the funding that comes in online, will come from outside your local geographical area. It means that the people who turn up to support your school fetes, raffles and/or trivia nights won’t be affected by your cashless fundraiser. Giving them a break by holding a cashless fundraiser will leave them willing and able to support your ‘in person’ school fundraising events later in the year.
The last two benefits of online fundraising are (1) Child Safety and (2) Cash Management. Students will literally be raising funds without leaving the safety of their own homes. There is no door knocking and kids won’t be walking around in the public with a bag full of cash. It also means you won’t have any coins to count and bank.
If you would like to know what is the most profitable school fundraiser? Please CLICK HERE and we’ll have a chat.
SO, HOW DO YOU KEEP KIDS SAFE ONLINE
Cyber security and child protection online are big issues. No environment (whether virtual or real) can ever be 100% safe. To protect your school community, you should look for an online fundraising service provider that has these two key elements as a minimum:
PCI DSS LEVEL 1 COMPLIANCE
The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) was enacted in 2004 to assure that all businesses that accept, handle, store, or transfer credit card information operate securely. PCI compliance is required for all merchants and service providers that process payment cards for in-store and e-commerce transactions.
There are different levels to PCI compliance, but the top tier is Level 1. So, to protect your community you should look for a Level 1 online fundraising service provider for maximum security. You can simply ask your provider… “are you PCI Level 1 Compliant?” If they say no, or if they skirt around the issue, just find another online fundraising service provider who is Level 1 Compliant.
At School Fun Run, we do everything we can to protect our partner schools, that’s one of many reasons why we use JustGiving (who are PCI Level 1 Compliant)
CHILD SAFETY PLAN
Make sure your online fundraising provider has a plan to keep your kids safe online. For example, you should only work with online fundraising platforms that:
Does not share a student, or donor full name publicly on any web page
Does not enable students to share photographs of themselves or others online
Includes a cartoon avatar creator in place of a fundraising page profile picture
Uses tokenised, non-guessable URLs for all student fundraising pages, to ensure only the parent of the child can share the URL where appropriate
Does not allow people to send private messages to students online
Does not enable any search functionality by which a member of the public could search for/find an online presence for either the school or a student
Never provides a connection between a student, and their physical location (i.e. the school they attend) online in anyway.
Terminates all fundraising pages when the fundraising is complete
Only authorised users, school coordinators and teachers at the school will have access to the information of students participating in the School Fun Run via a secure log in to the platform
Includes logged in and logged out views of student fundraising pages, so the general public cannot view the activity on a fundraising page
Does not collect or store videos or pictures of students at the school
Does not collect any intellectual property belonging to schools
One final point on Online Fundraising – PAY NO FEES!
Yep, if you look around you’ll find high-quality online service providers that are both SAFE and FREE. You should look for ones that have no fees because this will boost your net profit by 5-10% in most cases… and when I say free, I mean free! You should not be paying platform fees or credit card transitional fees. Again, that’s one of many reasons why we use JustGiving at School Fun Run.
If you would like to know more about this please CLICK HERE and chat to us!
ALL RAISED IN SINGLE SCHOOL FUN RUNS…
$114,058
MILTON PUBLIC SCHOOL
$104,998
TERRIGAL PUBLIC SCHOOL
$103,210
AVALON PUBLIC SCHOOL
$102,457
ST VINCENTS PRIMARY SCHOOL
$100,594
MLC SCHOOL
$100,264
WAVERLEY COLLEGE
OUR TOP FUNDRAISING SCHOOLS
WHAT IS THE EASIEST FUNDRAISER?
This is the second most important question in the world of School Fundraising.
That’s because you will put more effort into things that are enjoyable (not stressful). Having an easy event to organise means the fundraiser will be sustainable for the school as the next Fundraising Coordinator can just pick up where you left off.
In this second part of the article, we’ll look at what makes a school fundraising idea easy.
1. PERSONALISED CUSTOMER SERVICE
The number one thing you need to make your fundraiser easy is high-quality customer service. You should be able to pick up the phone or fire off an email and get an immediate response. For example, at School Fun Run we assign you a dedicated Fundraising Coach at School Fun Run HQ. This person becomes your personal assistant, and they go much further than just responding to your questions promptly. Your Fundraising Coach will proactively monitor your school’s progress daily, and they will call you weekly with hints and tips on how to get the most out of your fundraiser.
Your Fundraising Coach will also give you access to pre-written parent letters, social media posts, school newsletter articles and anything else you need. We’re here for you. Our job is to save you time and make you look like a fundraising pro!
You should ensure that other providers are offering you a similar level of customer service, as the best thing any company can do is invest time in YOU!
2. STRATEGY SESSION
Along those lines, don’t pick a “set and forget’ fundraising service provider. At School Fun Run your Fundraising Coach will conduct a proper Strategy Session with you before we start doing anything else. This session is the corner stone of our service to you. It ensures we understand your needs and wants. It is also where we gather the information needed to tailor-make a fundraising plan for your school.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of the Strategy Session is the peace of mind you’ll get from it. Following this chat, you’ll have a clear Fundraising Plan in place. It means everything will be known before we get started and that helps to relieve the stress of fundraising.
Once again, you should ensure that other providers are offering you a similar service as the best thing any company can do is invest time in YOU!
3. DIGITAL SUPPORT
Minimising your workload means you’ll have more energy to do the little things that make a big difference. It also means you will find the time to have fun with your fundraising!
Not that we are advocating this, but we even have Fundraising Coordinators that go on holidays in the middle of the Fundraising Phase and still break records at their school. It’s that easy because our website does so much of the work for you.
Let me give you some examples:
LIVE FUNDS TRACKING: Not only can you access live funds tracking on our website, but that tracking is linked to your fundraising plan. In practical terms, you can watch the money come in and witness exactly how your efforts are creating donation spikes to drive your fundraising success. Some of our Fundraising Coordinators tell us they prefer to watch their funds tracker over Netflix! I know that when Milton Public School was approaching $100,000, we were all glued to their live funds tracker at School Fun Run HQ as we cheered it along.
Being able to track your funding in live time empowers you with the ability to adjust your fundraising plan during your event (subject to how you’re going). You don’t have to wait for a stressful surprise at the end of your fundraising phase, you can watch it minute-by-minute from start to finish.
COMMUNICATIONS PLAN: We have some very clever technology built into our website that communicates with your fundraising families on a one-to-one basis for you. Have you ever wished you had the time to review how each fundraiser is going on their personal journey so you could send them each a timely and relevant email providing practical advice as to what they could do next? Well, with School Fun Run you don’t have to, that’s because we do it for you! It’s all built into our website and it all happens automatically… so your families are always engaged!
PUSH NOTIFICATIONS: Automated emails are great, but no matter how smart they are, sometimes you might want to say something personal to all your fundraising families… and that’s fine. The School Fun Run website has the ability for you to send notifications to all the families who have created an online fundraising page. It’s just another great tool to make your life easy while helping to produce a big result.
STUDENT & CLASS LEADERBOARDS: You can also see how each student and class is doing with their fundraising at any time in your fundraising phase. This means you can get the top fundraising secrets from kids and class teachers. That allows you to share their wisdom with the student body and school community which can have a big impact on your school’s collective fundraising success.
ONLINE PRIZE ORDERING: As you have most likely guessed by now, we love using technology to make your life easier. That philosophy extends to student prize ordering which is all done online. Families simply log into the School Fun Run website post fundraising and order their rewards. The website ensures they can’t overorder and creates a full spreadsheet so you can track everything - without having to put in the work. You can also download a series of reports after the event and keep hard copies on file at the school.
POST EVENT REPORT: We know that P&C/F Committees can change on an annual basis and we hate seeing our schools try and re-invent the wheel year-on-year. In reality, you should be looking to build continuous success and that’s why we’ll send you a post-event report that elevates your event so you don’t lose the learnings (good and bad). This report can be priceless if the Fundraising Coordinator changes at your school and you want to create a seamless hand-over.
4. PRINTED SUPPORT
School Fun Run is a full support fundraiser. To round out your support, we’ll send you all the physical assets you need to host a highly successful event. Things like fence banners, promotional posters, sponsorship booklets, certificates and alike.
We also send you Class Kits; one for each teacher. Our Class Kits are packed with things to help the classroom teachers assist you with the fundraising. It also contains a letter that will help enrol the classroom teachers into making your life easier… many hands make light work!
All these things combined lead to 5 Star Google Reviews like these:
If you would like to hold a School Fun Run just CLICK HERE, cause we’d love to work with you.
HAPPY FUNDRAISING!