Kids’ programming can be expensive, and, unfortunately, often underfunded. Whether you’re working with a school, a local sports team, or a club, the expenses add up. Because these programs can lack funding, it often falls to program leaders like you to raise the extra money needed.
At 99Pledges, we specialize in fundraising ideas for kids involved in sports teams, clubs, and other group activities. We’ve compiled 35+ fundraising ideas with high fundraising and engagement potential that you can use to fund your program. To help you find the right idea for your organization, the ideas are split into four categories:
- Our Favorite Fundraising Idea for Kids
- Easy Fundraising Ideas for Kids
- Creative Fundraising Ideas for Kids
- Fundraising Ideas for Kids & Parents
You’re sure to find one that suits your organization, the time and resources you have available, and the group you’re working with.
Our Favorite Fundraising Idea for Kids
99Pledges Fundraiser
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
99Pledges specializes in providing online fundraising solutions for teams and groups.
Online pledge fundraisers are a type of social fundraising in which event participants gather support corresponding to their participation in a fundraising event. Here is a breakdown of the pledge fundraising process:
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- Step 1: Create a pledge fundraising campaign for your group’s walk-a-thon, dance-a-thon, or other event. Participants (for example, those dancing in your dance-a-thon) create personal fundraising pages in conjunction with the team-wide fundraiser.
- Step 2: Ask participants to share their individual pages online.
- Step 3: Participants collect pledges from their families and friends ahead of time. Pledged donations correspond to their participation in your event, such as “X dollar for X hours danced.”
- Step 4: Track your campaign’s progress.
- Step 5: After your event, these pledged gifts turn into actual fundraising dollars for your organization.
99Pledges fundraisers are a powerful fundraising tool for a few reasons:
- They help organizations reach new audiences of supporters via digital fundraising.
- They expand the fundraising potential of an event far beyond those actually attending or participating in the event.
- They can be adjusted to fit a variety of events, aligning with the theme of your program.
- They’re fun for kids!
As you explore the ideas in this guide, consider how you might add pledge elements to boost fundraising potential.
Easy Fundraising Ideas for Kids
Matching Gift Programs
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Matching gift programs are a powerful way to increase donations made to your organization without requiring any extra effort (or funds) from your organization or its supporters. These programs typically only apply to organizations that qualify as 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so check your status before launching a matching gift drive.
Through these programs, businesses pledge to make donations matching those made by their employees to approved nonprofit organizations. That means you get two gifts for the price of soliciting one!
Get started in five simple steps:
- Step 1: Have donors make a gift to your organization as usual (through a fundraiser, for example).
- Step 2: The donor will submit a matching gift request to their employer.
- Step 3: The company reviews the request.
- Step 4: Your nonprofit verifies the original donation.
- Step 5: If eligible, your organization will receive a second check from the company.
Chances are, quite a few of the parents, family members, and other supporters giving to your organization work for companies with such programs. The biggest obstacle to receiving a match is simply educating these donors about the opportunity! Spread awareness of matching gifts by promoting resources to supporters and helping them determine whether their employer offers matching gifts.
eCard Campaign
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Have you ever seen a child draw a birthday card for a parent, sibling, or friend? Most kids love crafts, which is why an eCard campaign is a top choice for kid-friendly fundraising.
eCards are digital greeting cards sent via email that can be customized with fun illustrations, animations, and messages. To fundraise using this creative messaging tool, offer parents, community members, and other supporters the opportunity to buy eCards and send them to family and friends.
Incorporate drawings or quotes from kids within your eCards to involve them in the fundraising process. Parents will be especially excited to purchase eCards with their children’s designs and show off the artwork to friends and family! Here is an example of what these cards could look like:
To launch your eCard campaign, follow three simple steps:
- Step 1: Upload kids’ designs. Import kids’ drawings into your eCard building platform and start creating cards using these images as the design. You can also add text to the cards with quotes from the kids to add their voice and perspective to the cards.
- Step 2: Customize your eCards. Add your logo and brand colors to eCards so that senders and recipients know exactly where the cards are coming from.
- Step 3: Add the eCards to your website. Make it easy for parents and community members to find, purchase, and send eCards by adding them to your website. You can set up a dedicated page for these cards and link to it from your website’s most visited pages so that users can find it easily.
For even more designing fun, turn this campaign into a competition and award the kid who draws the design for the most-sold eCard!
Google Ad Campaign
Cost: $
Effort: ✔✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Through Google’s Ad Grant program, eligible nonprofit organizations can receive $10,000 in free ad credits each month, which can be used to promote their websites on the search engine. This makes it the perfect fundraising idea for school booster clubs or PTOs that are formally recognized as nonprofits!
To get started, your group must confirm its eligibility and apply for the grant. For guidance with the application process and grant management once you’re approved, consult a dedicated Google Grant agency, such as Getting Attention. These experts can help you allocate your grant funding and create effective ads that truly drive more traffic to your website.
As a result, your ads will appear on the search engine results page (SERP) and look something like this:
In the above example, Ronald McDonald House’s website appears at the top of the SERP along with ad copy that reads, “You Can Make a Difference — Ronald McDonald House Charities Helping Families Feel At Home Even When They Can’t Be.” This text can be customized according to your mission to entice users to visit your website.
Additionally, you can get kids in on the fun by adding their artwork, images, and quotes to your website. When your ad leads to a landing page centered around the kids in your program, visitors will be more excited to donate and support your work.
Fundraising Flyers
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
In the same way that kids will be excited to see their designs on digital cards, they’ll be ecstatic to design a fundraising flyer that promotes your cause! Host a design contest and have kids vote on their favorite design. Then, launch a fundraising flyer campaign using the winning design.
To raise more with these flyers, add QR codes leading to your online donation page. This way, viewers can easily scan the flyer with their mobile devices and submit their gift. Not only does this make it easier to give, but QR codes also increase the chance that viewers will go through with donating since they can give immediately upon seeing your flyer!
To design compelling flyers that include kids’ designs and your organization’s branding, leverage a graphic design service like Kwala. Their reasonably priced services include unlimited designs for a flat, monthly fee and full ownership of anything created for your organization.
Walk-a-Thon Fundraiser
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Walk-a-thon fundraisers draw on the pledge fundraising model in a family-friendly, laid-back, physical-wellness-promoting fundraising event.
These fundraisers are so successful because they’re easy to host and they have high fundraising potential. All you need is:
- A space or route for participants to walk.
- A pledge fundraising software solution.
- Excited, willing participants!
You simply create a pledge fundraising page for the event overall and organize the walk-a-thon. Encourage kids and their families and friends to create personal donation pages and collect pledges corresponding to their participation in the event.
At the event, these pledged donations should correspond to the distance participants walk (e.g., $5 for every mile walked). The farther participants walk, the more donations your organization receives! Because walking is a more accessible activity, the whole family can get involved.
Read-a-Thon
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
While there is some evidence that reading could improve intelligence, the percentage of American children who read for fun has declined in recent years. Encourage young people in your program to read (and raise donations at the same time!).
Ask the kids to read as many books as they can for the duration of the read-a-thon—you can even incorporate the pledge model into this fundraiser. During the challenge, participants can collect pledged donations corresponding to the number of books they read throughout the month. The more books they read, the more donations they raise!
Depending on the age of the kids, consider outlining some parameters such as page limit and reading level. You can even provide a book list to make sure participants are challenging themselves. At the end of the month, share the total donations raised and the total books read with participants and supporters—both numbers are worth celebrating!
Product Fundraisers
Cost: $
Effort: ✓✓
Fun: ★★★★
A product fundraising campaign can be a great way to raise money for your cause while getting your kids involved in the selling process. Even better, supporters can get an item for themselves by contributing to your fundraiser, like cookie dough or candles!
To get started, all you need to do is to:
- Step 1: Partner with a product fundraising company.
- Step 2: Gather a group of volunteers to sell your products (that’s where the kids and their parents come in).
- Step 3: Equip your sellers with an online web store or order-taking flyers provided by your fundraising partner.
- Step 4: Encourage participants to reach out to family and friends to support their fundraising efforts.
Once your order-taking period has ended, your fundraising company partner will distribute the items and charge your organization a wholesale price for the products. You’ll retain the profits for your group. Be sure to provide small prizes for your top sellers to motivate them throughout the selling process!
Raffle
Cost: $$
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Raffles are an easy, yet profitable, fundraising event your team can host independently or in conjunction with a fundraising event.
To hold a raffle, you simply:
- Choose an item to raffle. Choose something that ticket buyers want to win but doesn’t cause your group to lose money. Good examples are event tickets or themed experience baskets.
- Sell tickets. Ensure ticket prices are inexpensive, but priced high enough to raise money for your organization. This way, you can cover the cost of the raffle item without breaking the supporter’s bank.
- Choose a winner. Draw a winner and give them their prize! If you’re hosting the raffle in conjunction with an event, this usually occurs as the last activity of the event.
Consider asking local sponsors to make an in-kind donation for you to raffle. Whether a local basketball team donates tickets or a local movie theater sets up the ultimate movie night experience, it will be a valuable contribution to your event! Then, all of the proceeds from raffle tickets go toward your organization rather than paying for the raffle items.
Penny Drive
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Equip teams of your organization’s supporters with large jars and challenge each team to fill their jar with coins. Participants can bring in their own change or ask their families for additional support. The first team to fill their jar wins the penny drive!
For example, if you are a coach in a school setting, you’d give each team its own jar and challenge students to fill their team’s jar with spare change. The friendly competition between soccer and football teams, for example, fuels its success. Even though you may not raise major gifts through this campaign, it can still be a helpful effort for smaller fundraising pushes!
Teacher’s in Jail
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
While this is traditionally a school fundraiser, it can easily be amended to fit other organizations such as sports teams or after-school clubs.
The fundraiser follows this structure:
- Challenge teammates or club members to raise a certain amount of money for your organization.
- Give them a day off from regular activities by putting their coach, teacher, or advisor “in jail!” For a baseball team, this could mean their coach has to spend practice in the dugout while they have a pizza party or another fun activity.
Set a fundraising goal that’s challenging but not unrealistic for participants to hit. They’ll be so motivated by the promise of a fun break from routine that your organization will hit its goal in no time.
Running Shoe Drive Fundraiser
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
A running shoe drive fundraiser is the perfect activity for fundraising with kids because you’re working with a population that’s outgrowing shoes, fast.
A running shoe drive fundraiser goes like this:
- Step 1: Encourage kids and their friends and families to search their closets for new and gently used athletic shoes that they’re no longer using.
- Step 2: Collect the running shoes at your next fundraising event, and package them in pairs to send to a trusted running shoe drive fundraising coach.
- Step 3: Send off the shoes. Once they’re received, your organization gets a check in return!
This effort is often most successful when paired with a larger fundraising event, such as a walk-a-thon, 5K, or another event where it would make sense to ask participants to donate their shoes.
Balloon Pop Party
Cost: $$
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Everyone who participates in a balloon pop party wins—whether it’s your organization by raising donations or the supporters purchasing balloons to pop!
This fundraiser is fairly straightforward, following this process:
- Your organization gathers a variety of small-to-medium-sized prizes, such as gift cards, small gifts, and maybe even coupons.
- You blow up balloons, placing small pieces of paper corresponding to each prize within.
- Supporters purchase these balloons at the event.
- In unison, supporters pop their balloons and their prize is revealed!
Choose prizes that are interesting to your supporters while also being inexpensive enough for your organization to raise gifts through the process.
Principal Challenge
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Set a fundraising goal for your group. As a prize for reaching that goal, have your program leader complete a silly challenge. For example, they may have a pie thrown in their face or spend an afternoon in a dunk tank.
Just as with the “Teacher’s in Jail” fundraiser, a principal challenge is often used as a school fundraising idea, but you can adapt the name to make it relevant for your organization. Also, you can theme the silly challenge to align with your activity. For example, a soccer coach might play as the goalie, allowing team members to attempt to throw water balloons into the goal.
Straw Draw Fundraiser
Cost: $$
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Similar to a balloon pop fundraiser, solicit small or medium prizes to give through a straw draw. Each of these gifts is associated with a straw during the event. Supporters will pay to “draw a straw” and discover which gift they’ve won!
Because this fundraiser doesn’t have major gift-raising potential, it might be helpful to loop it in with a larger fundraising event. It’s a great way to raise more through an event and provide additional value to supporters. And if you can get local companies to donate these items to reduce your costs, even better!
Creative Fundraising Ideas for Kids
T-Shirt Fundraiser
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
T-shirt fundraisers are a fantastic creative fundraising idea for kids. It allows them to express their personal style while also spreading the word about your team and its fundraiser with each purchase.
Challenge kids in your organization to draw their ideal t-shirt design. Put the designs to the test, allowing all of the kids within your group to vote on their favorite. Use the winning design to create t-shirts for your fundraiser.
Sell these shirts to supporters like families, friends, or other members of your community. When supporters wear the shirt, it will be like free advertising for your organization!
Scavenger Hunt
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
While a scavenger hunt may require more preparation, the kids involved will appreciate your effort.
Charge a small admission fee for kids to participate, and encourage the whole family to get involved. When planning your hunt, be sure to get creative! There are many fun ways to take your scavenger hunt to the next level, such as:
- Tying the puzzles to your local community. Teach participating kids about your community’s history by incorporating local landmarks and historical sites.
- Giving it a seasonal theme. Regardless of the time of year, there is always a soon-approaching holiday or season change that you can connect the hunt to.
- Jazzing it up with pop culture. Are there any books or movies that are particularly popular? Anything the kids just won’t stop talking about? Draw on those trends!
The more creative you are, the more successful the event will be. If your event looks interesting and fun, more people will want to sign up (and enjoy completing it!).
Talent Show
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Provide a platform for the talented kids in your group to show off their greatest skills and raise money.
Plan an afterschool event and invite students to perform the talent that they’re most proud of. At the event, charge a small admission fee for family, friends, and community members to enjoy the show. Students will appreciate the chance to show off their talents to the crowd and parents will enjoy the adorable photo opportunity.
While you can award a winner and make the event a competition, make sure that participants feel encouraged and supported when displaying their talents.
Color Run
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
To organize a color run, you’ll simply put a creative twist to the classic 5K run by adding a colorful element.
Plan a 5K run, which includes setting a date, choosing a location, and mapping a course. Then, charge a small fee for race admission and encourage runners to wear white clothing on the day of the run.
Give spectators colorful chalk powder at the race, encouraging them to throw it into the air as runners pass by. By the end of the race, participants will be covered with colorful chalk and ready for fun finish-line photo ops!
You can add a pledge fundraising element to this race by having participants solicit pledged donations that correspond to their completion of the race. At the end of the event, those pledges become gifts to your organization.
Viral Video Challenge
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Viral video challenges are all the rage in the current social media climate, and your students will love having the opportunity to make their own!
The steps are easy:
- Step 1: Create or choose a video challenge. The most successful challenges are often silly in nature, whether that means completing a fun dance routine or getting “pied” in the face.
- Step 2: Take a video of a recognizable member of your community completing the challenge. This could be a coach or another leading member. Then, post it to social media.
- Step 3: Challenge others to take part in the challenge! Aim to host the challenge on a social network that many of your supporters use, whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.
- Step 4:After the challenge is complete, participants can start making donations!
Each person who completes the challenge should tag the next person in line. After posting their video, participants make a donation to your organization via your online donation page.
Face Painting
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Hire a professional face painter or ask a talented, creative volunteer from your organization to help out with this fundraising idea for kids. Set up a table at another event, such as a community picnic or fall festival, with skin-safe paints and ask for a small donation for each face painting.
Create some sample designs that kids in your community will enjoy, whether tied to seasonal themes (e.g., flowers in the springtime) or pop culture moments (e.g., Disney or Pixar’s latest hit animation). This will help kids choose a design and make the process more efficient!
Flower Sale
Cost: $$
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Flowers are universally loved, and selling them is an easy fundraising idea for kids.
Increase the chance of success for this fundraiser by planning it in conjunction with a national holiday. For example, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day are already associated with gifting flowers. Sell flower bouquets or bulbs tied to the season, whether at the after-school pick-up line or at the end of a club meeting, to parents who haven’t picked up gifts for their loved ones yet.
Cookbook Sale
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Cookbook sales are the perfect creative fundraising idea for kids because they challenge kids to flex their own creative muscles.
Ask group members to create (and illustrate!) a recipe for their favorite food. Students might end up reciting a family-favorite recipe or they might invent something entirely new. Regardless of what they submit, it will be fun to see “cooking” through your young participants’ minds.
Compile these recipes into a cookbook and sell copies to parents, extended family members, and even across your greater community. If you want to add a little more value to the cookbook, you can ask parents or other family members to submit “real” recipes for the book as well. The adorable submissions from your students will warm the hearts of your community and equal a highly successful fundraiser.
Art Auction
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Task your students with creating a premier piece of art to auction to your community. Then, create an event outside of school hours where you’ll allow friends, family members, and members of your community to peruse the kids’ artwork.
Collect bids for the kids’ artwork, as well as other gifts from attendees who don’t win an item. Throughout the auction event, educate attendees about your organization and how the donations will positively impact your club or group.
Dog-and-Car Wash
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Who can resist an event full of cute pets? Invite members of your community to bring their cars (and furry friends!) to a dog-and-car wash to get them washed in exchange for a small donation.
Obtain parental permission before getting students involved in this fundraiser. Make this process easy by adding waivers to your website to make sure every student who plans to participate has permission to do so.
Dance-a-Thon
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
What if we told you that you can dance the night away while raising donations for your organization? Incorporate pledge fundraising methods in a fun, fitness-based event with high fundraising potential.
A dance-a-thon, or dance marathon, is an event where participants dance for as long as they can (at times, for 24 hours straight!) to raise money for your cause. Here’s how you can host one:
- Prior to the event, create a pledge fundraising page for the event and allow participants to create their own personal pages in conjunction with it.
- Then, you can plan the event itself, making sure to curate a fantastic playlist and have snacks and drinks available to encourage participants to keep dancing!
- Participants should collect pledged donations corresponding to the length of time they dance.
After all the hard work is done, you can hold the event and challenge everyone to dance as long as they can.
Birthday Fundraisers
Cost: $
Effort: √
Fun: ★★★★
With a birthday fundraiser, kids can blow out their candles and make a difference in one fell swoop! Here is how it works:
- Determine the specific project for which you want to raise funds.
- Select an eCard platform that has fundraising features to collect donations.
- Personalize the eCards with your organization’s branding, the child’s name, and a clear call to action for donating.
- On each child’s birthday, send out a batch of eCards, encouraging family and friends to donate in honor of the special occasion.
Remember to thank each child for their generosity, especially since they are using their own birthday to support your cause.
Fundraising Ideas for Kids and Parents
Bowl-a-Thon
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Organize a bowling tournament for families in your community to compete in. Allow families to register independently or band together and register as teams.
Charge a small fee for admission, ensuring it’s enough to cover the cost of renting the bowling lanes and necessary materials. Then, incorporate the pledge fundraising model by having participating teams collect pledged donations corresponding to either their participation in the event or the number of pins their team successfully knocks over.
Gift Wrapping Services
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
During a holiday season such as Christmas, Hanukkah, or even Mother’s or Father’s Day, set up tables in a public place and offer to wrap gifts in exchange for a small donation. Advertise these services to supporters of your organization and encourage them to spread the word as well.
To maximize your profits from this fundraiser, consider tying in another element like customizable holiday-themed eCards. Along with promoting your gift-wrapping services, ask supporters if they’d like to send a custom eCard to a friend or family member in exchange for a donation to your campaign.
Coupon Books
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Search your community for local businesses (like restaurants and retailers) that are willing to participate in your coupon book fundraiser. These businesses agree to provide coupon discounts for the fundraising book, which is then sold to supporters for a small donation.
Participants purchasing the book receive a variety of coupons, making their local shopping experience more thrifty and positive. Local businesses get advertising from being featured, energizing your community’s companies and economy. Finally, your organization receives a donation for each book sold.
Parent’s Night Out
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
In a parent’s night out event, you can either plan a fun event for parents—such as a trivia night or a nice dinner—or simply provide childcare for a few hours one evening while parents plan their own night out.
Invite parents to bring their children to school or your program’s facility for a few hours at the end of the day and accept donations for the childcare services. Plan fun activities for students during the event, whether that’s movies, board games, or crafts. This makes it the perfect fundraising idea for kids and parents alike since kids get to hang out with their friends and parents will appreciate the organized childcare with a provider they already trust!
Bake Sale
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Ask parents in your community to bond with their kids in a kitchen setting, making family-favorite baked goods to sell in your next fundraiser.
Recruit teachers or parents from your parent-teacher organization to host your bake sale table. Open for operations during student drop-off, after-school pickup, and even during lunch. Aim to sell a wide variety of goods in exchange for small donations to your organization.
Be mindful of food allergies, such as nut and gluten allergies. If baked goods contain common allergens, make sure to note that when you display them. Further, make sure to offer allergen-free snacks so everyone can enjoy!
Volunteer-a-Thon
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Bring kids and their family members together in a fundraiser that benefits both the greater community and your team.
There are two popular ways to hold a volunteer-a-thon:
- Option 1: Organize one mass volunteer day where participants band together to complete one large project in your community. One example of this would be a park clean-up or rejuvenation project.
- Option 2: Create a volunteer challenge spanning a certain time period, such as a month. Challenge participating families to complete a certain amount of volunteer hours in your community over that time period.
The steps to holding a volunteer-a-thon are simple. First, create a pledge fundraising campaign. Then, ask participants to collect pledges that relate to their future volunteer efforts. Finally, hold the volunteer event in your community.
Parents will appreciate the opportunity to instill strong service values in their children, and your community will benefit from the improvements your volunteers make. Your organization may even receive more donations from outside sources inspired by participants’ good deeds!
Best Seat in the House
Cost: $$$
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Raffle off tickets to an interesting local event, giving the winner a VIP experience.
Your organization simply procures tickets to raffle, sells tickets, and chooses a winner. Popular events to raffle tickets from are:
- Local sports team games.
- Plays or concerts coming through the area.
- Museums, the zoo, or other local culture mainstays.
Because the event tickets will probably be a pricier item, you can sell tickets for a higher price than you might in another raffle setting. Soliciting the ideal donation amount can be tricky, so be sure to carefully total your costs and set a price that will allow you to make a worthwhile profit.
Restaurant Percentage Night
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
During a restaurant percentage night, your team partners with a local restaurant to raise funds for your cause. The restaurant agrees to give a percentage of sales from a given date to your fundraiser in return for your organization promoting the event.
Parents will enjoy eating out (rather than cooking) and having their choice of restaurant pre-decided. These families can contribute to your cause with little extra effort on their end, doing something they were going to do anyway—eating dinner as a family.
Because it’s a fundraiser and you’ll be promoting it heavily to supporters, the restaurant stands a good chance of experiencing increased business because of it. This is a great selling point to recruit local restaurants to participate.
Trivia Night
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Gather students and their families together to test their trivia knowledge. Accept donations for entry into the competition and reward a winner at the end of the night!
Engage participants young and old with trivia spanning the ages. Interest parents and guardians with pop culture and history trivia, and entertain your team members with Disney or Pixar questions.
To amplify the fundraising potential of this event, consider incorporating an element of pledge fundraising into the event. Allow families to register as teams and collect pledged gifts corresponding to either their participation in the event or the number of trivia questions answered correctly.
Family Photo Day
Cost: $$
Effort: ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
It’s a common sentiment for many parents that kids just grow up too fast! Thankfully, photos help preserve memories from those cherished childhood years forever.
Hire a photographer for the day and set up in a picturesque location in your community. Invite families to have their portraits taken at a discounted rate.
Parents and guardians will appreciate that the entire family is included in the photo, rather than one essential member standing behind the camera. Plus, they’ll appreciate the discounted cost and convenience of having the logistics sorted out for them.
Lawn Service Fundraiser
Cost: $
Effort: ✔ ✔ ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Recruit volunteers from your organization, whether it’s framed as a PTA or booster club fundraiser or a campaign that invites members of your leadership (such as sports team coaches) step up to the challenge.
Offer lawn services to busy parents and other members of your greater community. This includes:
- Mowing and edging lawns.
- Weeding garden beds.
- Clearing brush in wooded areas.
- Cutting down shorter, easily managed trees.
Lawn care is a chore that few people want to dedicate their weekends off to completing. By donating to your cause, they can have it done for them, potentially for a better price than hiring professionals.
Chili Cook-Off
Cost: $
Effort: ✔
Fun: ★★★★★
Bring your community together to enjoy home-cooked chili and bring in donations at the same time.
Challenge students and their families to cook their most-prized family chili recipe and bring enough to share. Organize an event for members of your organization to come together and sample the various chilis enrolled in the competition.
Raise funds by charging for admission into the competition for participants as well as admission into the event for taste-testers. Ask attendees to vote on their favorite recipe or consider bringing in an “expert” judging panel from your community to rate the submissions.
At the end of the event, crown a crowd favorite and a judge-chosen winner.
Additional Resources
With any of these school fundraising ideas for kids, you’re sure to plan an exciting calendar that will engage the whole family and raise the needed funds for your cause.
For more ideas and tips about fundraising technology, check out these other resources:
- 30+ Awesome (& Profitable) PTO Fundraising Ideas for Schools. Learn how your PTO can put its best foot forward with these school fundraising ideas.
- How to Host a Successful Band Fundraiser: 5 Ideas & Top Tips. Looking for a creative way to raise funds for your marching band or orchestra? Try one of these music-focused ideas.
- Top 10 Fundraising Platforms and Tools for Schools. To get the most from your fundraising efforts, you’ll need tech on your side. Here are 10 tools to consider trying.
