Good planning is the key to any successful event. With these tips, you can use your time more efficiently and organize the most memorable fundraising event in your child’s school history!

Utilize Technology

There’s a website and app for everything these days, tools that can make your life so much easier and can enable you to stay on top of things when it comes to organizing the different aspects of a fundraising event. Communicating with volunteers and delegating tasks can be made so simple using this PTA management tool. Furthermore, with the increased use of digital currencies and online transactions, you can accept online donations, rather than just traditional cash. So consider using a specialized website to make your fundraising organization and the event itself more efficient, and ultimately more successful. 

Set Up A Committee

Teamwork makes the dream work! First, you’ll need to put together your team – teamwork makes the dream work, after all! Having a dedicated group of parents and teachers to assist you (as the leader) will be crucial in making this work. Having individuals with different strengths and skill sets is a good idea to ensure you have all bases covered. Decide as a group when you will meet and how much time you can invest into this project, and then you can get brainstorming.

Create a Timeline

Before you start planning your event, make sure you plan your planning. This should help take some of the stress out of it because everybody on the committee will know their roles and any deadlines they need to stick to (such as renting venues, hiring contractors, creating donation links, making advertising posters, etc). 

Come Up With A Quality Idea

The most successful fundraisers are often entertaining (sometimes with an element of a challenge) or provide value – preferably both! You’ll want to get the students involved as well, of course – it can be a great opportunity to teach teens about cash and how to manage budgets – as well as participate in a fun event, of course.

• Examples of entertaining: fancy dress runs, dance-offs, sporting events, baking contest
• Examples of providing value: car washes, bake sales, junk sales, art sales

You’ll need to consider the following to determine whether an idea is viable or not.

• How many people can attend the event?
• How many people are needed for the event?
• What will the cost be? What’s our budget?
• How much space will we need?
• How long will it last?
• How will we raise money with this event?

What’s Your Goal?

Set a fundraising goal. Goal-setting has many benefits and has been proven to increase your chances of success because it gives you something to work towards. Often your goal might be how much it will cost for a specific field trip or a new building or equipment perhaps.  The whole point of all this is to raise money for the school, so don’t lose sight of that. It can be easy to get sucked into the organization of the event itself, but your number one priority is achieving your fundraising goal.

Once you identify how much money you need and what it’s for, you should center almost all your planning around that. Any decorations, speeches, or marketing campaigns should use the goals as their driving force – everyone should have a clear idea of what exactly this event is about and what the benefits of reaching the goal will be. 

Have Multiple Ways Of Campaigning 

So shouting about your event and what you’re fundraising for will be key in conveying your aim to potential donors is crucial in gaining traction for your event, but how can you let them know about it?

You need to take advantage of the variety of social media platforms out there, as well as the more traditional methods of advertising your events. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are a must – you could even look at Reddit and Pinterest. You can create your own page, or you can send promotional digital posters to other relevant groups for them to post. Ask for shares to make sure the word is spread!

Speak to the school about how you can use their space to advertise the event too. You can also ask to put material on the school website or newsletter, and speak directly to classes about the event. 

Other ways to campaign can be to put posters up around town on notice boards, or in shop windows, with permission. Also try putting an advert in the local newspaper, too. 

Have Multiple Ways Of Raising Money

The more ways you have of bringing in money, the better. For example, you could have a ticketed event for a fancy-dress school sports match which generates money per ticket sold. Then you could have a bake sale at half time of cakes that other parents have made and brought in, or other food stalls too. Then you could have people asking for additional donations at entrances and exits, or in the stands. You might even be able to partner up with a local company that could sponsor the event in exchange for a donation. 

Don’t forget to give people as many options as you can to make it as easy as possible to donate. Have cash buckets. Don’t have cash on you? We have a card machine. Card machine stopped working? Here’s a QR code you can follow to donate online.

Having an incentive for donations can be very helpful because people may be inclined to spend more. Raffles are a great way of achieving this because someone has the chance to win a big prize for only a few dollars, but you can make a lot more money in total than you spent on the prize. 

Don’t Forget About The Aftermath

Once the event is over, it won’t be for you. Directly after you’ll need to think about the clean-up and counting donations. But you’ll also want to take your time to thank donors and, of course, your volunteers. You should hold one more debrief meeting to show your gratitude and to discuss what went well and what could be improved for next time. 

Fundraising can be stressful but with more planning, the whole process can be streamlined. Having a group of people you can rely on will save you from stressing about every aspect of organizing the event, meaning you can focus on overseeing and managing the event as a whole. Don’t lose focus on your aim of raising money and make sure that you enjoy the process so that everyone else can too!