Fundraising

I have a slight dillema on my hands here. My high school has fallen victim to major budget cuts. We're losing teachers, classes, and sports. No, don't worry, they aren't cutting football, or any of the 8 (I repeat, 8!) basketball teams at our school...Heaven forbid.
But, they are cutting the ski team and the water polo team. Which is just my luck, as I play water polo. We're doing fundraising all summer so we can still play as a club team...but we're running low on ideas. We've talked about car washes, letters to businesses, pop can collections, etc. Does anyone have any ideas? anything would be a great help, thanks!

What about bake sales? Or if any of you raise gardens, selling produce is a good idea as well.

What about a gigantic garage sale? They are always a hit no matter what. I am sure the parents have some junk lying around they would love to sell off......

Raffles are always good too, perhaps some local businesses can donate items to be raffled off?

Yankee Candle Co. has a fundraising program. They sell their products at a reduced rate to schools and non-profit organizations. You can find about it on their website, I think. YankeeCandle.com is their web address. I have never been involved in any fundraising with them, but I know their candles are very good sellers.

I want to second Hissy's idea. The drill team at the highschool I went to did it every year at the football stadium and ended up with hundreds of dollars!

You could always have a car wash... Or hey even a dog wash. The MSPCA holds a car/dog wash every year to make money and it's always a big hit.

How about a Service sale. Auction off things like babysitting, garage cleaning, yard maintenance.

those are some good ideas...i especially like the dog washing! we actually already held the garage sale, but the money for that went to the pool itself because they're going to drain it. we were hoping for about $800-$1000, and we made $4000!!!! any other ideas? everything helps, thanks guys!

I don't know the name of the company, but I know that my parent's church's youth group sold frozen pizzas. They would take the orders, then the company would come with all the stuff and the youth group would put together the pizzas they sold, Papa Murphy's style. That always went over really well - everyone loves pizza!

Car washes, bake sales are always good. When I was a cheerleader in HS, we weren't part of the "schools budget" so we had to raise our own money to go to camp, and get new uniforms and stuff like that. We did 2 car washes and raised like $1500 bucks, not bad for a days work! And Bake sales are great, especially if you have a good location.

Good luck, I hope you raise enough funds to continue!!!

Oh we used to "can" too. We would send like 16 girls to locations such as Dunkin' Donuts, and other busy places ( with their permission of course ) and have a coffee can all decorated and we would be in our cheerleader uniforms. We would tell people we needed to raise money for our squad and you'd be amazed at home many people would drop a quarter in the can. I think my junior year we did this for a weekend and raised nearly 2 thousand dollars. And it won't cost you anything but a little bit of time.

Pizza sales are a great idea. There's a company called Gianni's that makes excellent pizzas. I think they have a web site, too. The cheerleaders where I teach had a rent-a-cheerleader day. They would help out with different types of chores. I think that went well, too.

This is probably going to sound slightly crazy, but if you know any Mary Kay Cosmetic consultants, there's a good chance they could help you out. Each consultant essentially runs her own business. If you have a motivated group, who are willing to hit up relatives, friends, etc, you can make some big money. It helps if those people you contact like makeup, too.

Good luck.