One person's trash is another's treasure and because this is so true, hosting a trunk sale in your school's parking lot is a great and fun event with which to raise money. The first thing you want to do when hosting a trunk sale is to count the number of parking spots in the lot that can be used for your vendors. Do not forget to leave a place for shoppers to park their cars. Once you know how many spots you have, send a letter home with all of the students announcing the sale and that there are a limited number of spaces. A suggested price for selling vendor spaces can be $7 for a single parking spot or $12 for two spots side by side. During the event you can even set up a hot dog, popcorn or drink stand and sell snacks to both vendors and shoppers to bring in extra money. You can even ask vendors to donate items and host a raffle throughout the day too.
There are many direct sales, or home party, businesses that offer fundraising programs. These types of fundraisers are great because they offer unique products that are of a better quality than a majority of the items in other mass-produced fundraising programs. Another great benefit of doing a fundraiser with a direct sales company is that you are given access to a personal fundraising consultant, rather than an "800" number. Direct sales companies also offer 40 to 50 percent commissions for your school and this is generally paid out immediately.
Host an auction one night at your school, offering a chance for the community to gather together and help through donations. To start collecting donations for the auction, send a letter home with all of the students asking for parents to send in donations from their businesses or purchased items. You can also set up a committee to go around to local businesses and ask for donations. Donated items you will want for the auction include gift certificates for local businesses such as grocery stores, home goods, restaurants, gift shops, photographers and home improvement service companies. You can also look for products and merchandise to be donated. The night of your auction, set up tables along the outside of the room where guests can walk around and look at what will be auctioned off. Depending upon how many items you were able to receive, you may want to divide the auction into two different sections: a live auction and a silent auction.
Host an evening event at your school where you will offer a spaghetti dinner, which is easy to make in large quantities, and hold a raffle. Rather than offering the full 50 percent of the raffle as cash, look into turning the cash from pre-sales into gift certificates. To do this, start selling tickets about two weeks prior to the dinner and the day of the dinner go out to local businesses to purchase the gift certificates in denominations of $25 to $50. This will help boost ticket sales if those purchasing them know there are multiple chances to win.