School Fundraising Ideas and Resources
DoJiggy Helps Hundreds of Schools Raise Money Online
We Have the Easiest Platform for School Fun Runs, Online Product Sales, Readathons and More
Find the Best School Fundraising Campaign Ideas Here
Many school administrators and parent-teacher groups look for easy school fundraising ideas, especially with the economic downturn and budget crunches. Whether raising funds for a new computer lab or library or enhancing student programs, we can help with the best fundraising platform and creative school fundraising ideas for your organization.
Fundraising is an educational opportunity. With every school fundraising campaign, you are teaching your children about community service and being part of something larger than themselves. Students learn skills such as public speaking, leadership, and time management. Technology such as our crowdfunding software will get your students to customize their fundraising pages. They are helping raise much-needed funds and learning that helping out can be fun and rewarding.
Whether you are a PTA parent, Development office staff, or teacher, these free resources will help support your school fundraising campaigns. If your school is looking for fundraising solutions that work, check out our fundraising software platform. We’re here to help YOU succeed.
Our Top School Fundraising Ideas
The fundraising event your school chooses to run will greatly affect your overall success. Creative school fundraising campaigns set your school group apart from the crowd. You need something your community can get excited about. Here are the best, most popular school fundraisers that clients run on our platform:
School Fun Runs & Walks: This fundraiser is very popular and successful for many schools. Walk-a-thons unite the community, encouraging parents, students, faculty, and local businesses to participate. A walk-a-thon also offers a healthy way to raise money for your school by combining exercise with the cause. Adding a Fun Run theme to the event makes it more fun.
Color Run Fundraisers: Color Runs also work well for kids and make great elementary school fundraisers. Just be sure to use non-toxic color power, which is not hard to find or make. When used as a school fundraiser, it’s also a great idea to add an obstacle course and after-party.
School Serve-a-thons: Another interesting school fundraising idea to consider is to host a student serve-a-thon. A serve-a-thon provides fundraising dollars to contribute to your school’s operating budget and positively impacts the community as students donate hours to help the community.
Auction Fundraisers: Charity auctions can be great school fundraisers. Not only do they bring in a lot of dollars for your school, but they are also a great community builder by involving people from your school and community in a meaningful way (i.e., those who donate items to auction, volunteers, parents, students, and school administrators).
Fundraising Raffles: Raffles are an easy fundraising idea for schools. We offer the ability to incorporate peer-to-peer fundraising in raffles, where students sell tickets via a personal fundraising page. Our raffle software can even randomly select and notify winners. Just find a prize and go!
Reading-Athon Fundraisers: Reading challenges encourage students to raise money by reading. Students and classrooms get personal fundraising pages and compete for the most pages read and funds raised. Now that’s a nice mission-based fundraising strategy that any school or library can get behind.
Sales Contests: Product sales are a great way to get students involved in raising funds for your school by selling candy, school spirit merchandise, magazines, holiday items, and gift or discount cards. Sales contests can be run online with our Simple Stores to keep things organized and donations secure. Create pages for students or classrooms and compete for top fundraising honors and awards.
See 50+ more great fundraisers for schools.
DoJiggy’s Fundraising Software Platform Makes School Fundraisers Easy
What Types of Schools Use DoJiggy?
Our school fundraising resources were developed from hands-on experience, helping hundreds of schools across the US and Canada raise money online. Since 2003, we’ve worked with all types of schools and educational institutions.
Private Schools
Private Schools need to:
- Recruit students
- Accept secure tuition payments
Public Schools
Public Schools need to:
- Host school crowdfunding and p2p campaigns
- Sell school spirit gear
Elementary & Pre-Schools
Elementary & Pre-Schools schools need to:
- Take online payments for after-school or extended day programs
- Ensure privacy for young children
Middle & High Schools
Middle and High Schools need to:
- Sell tickets for athletic and cultural events
- Allow students to log in and manage personal fundraising pages
Why Do Schools Choose DoJiggy for Fundraising Websites?
Ease of Use for Supporters
You want your constituents and school supporters to be able to easily find out why your school is special and be able to make an online donation with ease. This can make or break your online success. Many parents and donors will be on mobile phones. Our school platform is mobile-friendly and supports digital wallets.
Branding that Defines your School or Organization
What image are you hoping to portray with your school campaigns? Do you want your school to look hip and modern or serious and scholarly? Be sure that your branding is decisive and based on your mission. Our websites offer customization to add school logos, images, color schemes, and branding to make the website truly yours.
Clear Calls to Action
The best school fundraising websites allow your school or PTO to be more successful. A Donate Now button and a clear call to action message are included on every fundraising website page.
Beautiful School Website Design
People love seeing a beautiful website! Your supporters are more inclined to donate when you create engaging, branded content. All our websites look good and are easy to use on any device.
Ease of Payment Integration
You’ll need a payment processor to accept online donations and sell tickets and items on your website. Our school fundraising websites are easily configured to take credit and debit card payments.
Included Technical Support
When you need some help, you don’t want to pay extra for it. Some competitors charge extra for tech support, but world-class support is always included with us. Call, chat or email to get help.
Fundraising Tips for Working with Students
A school fundraiser is an event, project, or program designed to raise money for a specific cause or purpose. School fundraising can take many forms, including product sales through eCommerce stores, events, services, online fundraising, and crowdfunding. Keep the following tips in mind when planning fundraising activities for kids.
- Be Safe! The days of going door-to-door beyond your neighborhood are in the past. Children can still ask neighbors, family, and friends for donations, but online fundraising campaigns are generally a much safer option.
- Make it Easy. Your fundraiser should be simple for kids to participate in. Kids are very tech-savvy! So an easy-to-use fundraising website works for most age levels (and of course, parents may need to assist younger children). Kids can easily sign up, personalize their fundraising page, and then share a link through email or social channels.
- Keep it Short. With children, you’ll need to keep their attention, so don’t drag the fundraiser out too long. Hit it hard for two weeks. And if you are hosting an event, plan it for just a couple of hours rather than an entire day.
- Provide Rewards and Incentives. There is nothing kids like better than prizes! Give them prizes if they reach a certain goal. Set up a contest to reward the top performers.
Selecting the Right School Fundraiser
Different school fundraisers require different fundraising budgets, resources, volunteers, and time commitments. The following considerations should help you decide on the right school fundraising campaign and help you create a successful fundraising plan.
- How much volunteer time will the project take? Do you currently have committed parents or other volunteers to assist in your planning process? How will your school recruit more?
- How will students be involved? What roles can students play? Will students be required to fundraise online, and if so, what tools can you provide to make it easy?
- What are the upfront costs, and how will your organization cover these?
- How can you raise community awareness of your school or school group while raising funds?
- What are you teaching your children through your fundraising campaign?
- What kind of prizes are you offering to the top fundraisers? Anything that makes the event more fun for kids means your event will be more successful and raise more money.
More School Fundraising Resources
Crowdfunding for Schools
DoJiggy offers crowdfunding software for the best school fundraising events – including School Fun Runs, walk-a-thons, readathons, and community service projects – in which students and classrooms collect and track donations for their school. Use our peer-to-peer software platform to engage your students to get excited and raise money for your school – without handing over a hefty percentage of funds raised. Many schools report raising twice as much by taking their fundraising events online.
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School Fun Runs & Walkathons
We are all interested in teaching children how a healthy lifestyle can contribute to overall self-esteem, productivity, and enjoyment of life. For that reason, we encourage educators and parents to continue to look for opportunities that send the message of the importance of building an overall healthy lifestyle and School Walks and Fun Runs are just the thing. Fun Runs engage your students in fundraising and provide a healthy alternative to candy sales.
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Elementary School Fundraising
Elementary school fundraising is a great way to raise extra dollars to support the development of educational and extracurricular programs, sports, music, arts, and more. But this is not the only goal – elementary school fundraising is also a great way to teach children about teamwork and working to accomplish a goal (while having fun!). With hard work and cooperation, anything is possible for these young minds. Find out more about fundraising with elementary-aged children.
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High School Band Fundraising
Marching bands, choirs, and other school music groups are often in need of financial support to sustain musical programs, fund competitions and concerts, cover travel costs for band trips, and pay for instruments, uniforms, and training tools. This article is intended to help your school music group plan a successful fundraiser by providing planning tips and creative fundraising ideas for high school and marching bands.
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PTA Fundraising & PTO Fundraising
When schools experience budget shortfalls, they often turn to parents to help raise money and reach out to the local community for support. After all, parents are often more than willing to help support their child’s education, making PTA fundraising and PTO fundraising campaigns a common way to supplement funding. DoJiggy has helped hundreds of PTO and PTA fundraising campaigns, and we’re here for you!
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Motivate Parents for PTO Fundraising Campaigns
The most treasured volunteers in a school are the parents volunteering in the Parent Teacher Organization or Parent Teacher Association (PTO or PTA). They give the gift of their time, talent and leadership yet one of the most vital roles they play is to be the driving force behind PTO fundraising campaigns for a school. Learn how to motivate your parents and get your fundraising efforts going.
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Golf Tournament Fundraisers for Schools
Golf tournament fundraisers work well for many schools and school groups. They are a traditional event that can also be played as peer to peer golf marathons. If your high school has a golf team, this is a natural fit for them and they will enjoy being the event caddies. Learn more about the ins and outs of successful golf tournament planning and see if this is the right fundraiser for your school or group.
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Miniature Golf Tournaments
Golf tournaments are popular for many different reasons. They are a great way to raise awareness for your cause, fundraise, and network with clients and sponsors, among other things. But not everyone is a golfer. Miniature golf is a great school fundraising idea since students of all ages and their entire families can play. Add in games, contests, and more to make your miniature golf event a lucrative fundraiser for your school.
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University & College Fundraising
University students have unique talents and needs in relation to fundraising. With our University Fundraising Resource Center, we strive to provide the best collection of resources to make your University fundraising campaigns more successful. Used with our fundraising software, you will find that these resources will save your organization valuable time and allow you to raise more money for your cause with less hassle.
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50 Best Fundraisers for Schools
These 50+ school fundraising ideas can be used by Parent Teacher Organizations, Student Councils, sports teams, service groups and clubs. So don’t just settle for the cookie dough fundraiser for your school this year, we’ve provided the inspiration here for the best and most lucrative school fundraising ideas at all levels of education from elementary through the high school years.
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School Flyers
Marketing your school’s fundraising activity is an important part of the planning and promotion process. Good visibility raises participation and helps bring more dollars to support school programs. We’ve created these guidelines to help you effectively organize the information for your school fundraising event, and provided sample templates that can easily be customized for your school or group.
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High School Fundraising
When students reach high school, fundraising is a whole new game. Students have passions for sports or arts programs they are involved in, they join clubs with people sharing common interests, and they also begin to develop a strong belief system. They are eager to make a difference and support a cause and therefore are more likely to embrace a fundraising initiative that supports their passions and beliefs.
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Student Serve-a-thons
A serve-a-thon not only provides fundraising dollars to contribute to your school’s operating budget but also makes a positive impact on the community. It works very similarly to a walkathon fundraiser. Students raise money by reaching out to family and friends and asking for pledges or donations to help their school. In turn, the student will provide the community with community service.
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Raffle Fundraising
Raffle fundraising can be an easy and very successful way for students to help raise fundraising dollars for your school. A school raffle can produce high-profit margins with little effort or upfront costs. The costs are generally minimal, especially if you get the raffle prizes donated. Raffles are also a great option for a group of any size, and our platform allows your students to sell for you via their own raffle sales page.
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Reading Fundraisers
A readathon fundraiser is a peer to peer fundraising event where students commit to reading to raise money for your school or Parent Teacher Organization. Each student gets a personal fundraising page to track their fundraising progress. Reading fundraisers promote literacy and a love of reading for children; they offer an academic challenge and competition that kids will enjoy.
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School Auction Fundraisers
Not only have school auctions proven to have tremendous fundraising potential, but they are also a great community builder involving people from your school in a meaningful way. Auctions are often combined with another school fundraising event to ensure success. Whether live, silent, or online, school auctions incentivize parents and community members to support your school.
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School Sales Contests
Product sales are a great way to get students involved in raising funds for your school, PTO, or school group. Many schools sell candy, magazines, holiday items, and gift or discount cards. Adding incentives for top fundraisers allows your school or school group to score an A+ in fun and raise more money for school programs. Check out what we have to offer for school fundraising sales contests.
Learn MoreThe platform is easy to use and it was clear that DoJiggy was responding to feedback as they worked to streamline it even more. We couldn’t have been happier with our experience. In the end our school ended up with more proceeds from the fundraiser than any previous year.— David S. – DeSoto Trail Elementary School
