3 Tips for Empowering Students in School Fundraisers
For many schools, fundraisers are critical. Money raised during these campaigns can support student learning opportunities, fund new classroom supplies, and fuel extracurricular activities. Fundraising can even help your school launch programs to engage with the community, all while developing strong relationships with local businesses during the fundraisers themselves.
Along with these benefits, fundraisers can also teach your students life skills like how public speaking or how to collaborate with other students. However, you’ll need the right strategies to motivate students to participate in or take ownership of school fundraising opportunities.
Inspire students to take the lead during school fundraisers with these tips:
- Choose a fundraising idea that excites students.
- Encourage student autonomy.
- Offer incentives.
Before setting goals or planning how you’ll reward students who step up during fundraisers, you’ll need to choose a fundraiser they can get excited about. Let’s get started!
1. Choose a fundraising idea that excites students.
Picking out an exciting school fundraising idea might sound like an obvious best practice, but many schools end up choosing campaigns out of tradition or because teachers and parents like them, not because students think they are engaging. Instead, engage your students by launching a fundraiser that’s exciting for them to participate in.
Consider fundraising ideas like contests, raffles, social media challenges, and movie nights. Or, for your usual fundraisers, plan a celebratory send-off event to give students something to look forward to after their hard work. Plus, you can get students involved in fundraisers’ planning stages by encouraging them to take ownership of their roles and work with fellow students to brainstorm ways to engage attendees and maximize revenue.
Let’s say your school chooses to hold a silent auction fundraiser. Empower students to get involved by assigning different tasks to student-led groups. Choose tasks that students can complete independently but will still impact your event like designing a theme for the event, decorating the event space, brainstorming other activities to hold during the auction, and even participating in auction item procurement.
2. Encourage student autonomy.
Your fundraising ideas should not only get students excited but also promote independence. For instance, pledge drive fundraisers make getting involved and taking hold of the fundraising reins easy for students.
Let’s say you coach the school football team. You might hold a kick-a-thon in which players collect pledges of $5 for each field goal they kick during the event. Prior to the event, students approach their friends, family, and community members to collect pledges and record them in your team fundraising software. Once the event ends, each player tallies the goals they scored and collects funds from the supporters who pledged donations.
Participating in pledge fundraisers is easy, and they require student participation to be successful. Here are a few common pledge drive ideas to consider:
- Walk-a-thon. Walk-a-thons encourage exercise by challenging students to walk as far or as long as they can during a set period of time. According to 99Pledges’ guide to hosting a walk-a-thon, these events can be divided into three stages: planning the event, getting personal donation pages set up, and collecting pledges from supporters. Help students promote their pledge collection pages if they need it, but otherwise your students can take the reins when it comes to fundraising.
- Dance-a-thon. During a dance-a-thon or dance marathon, participants commit to dancing for a certain period of time. They will collect pledges from their friends and family based on how many hours they dance. You can set the dance-a-thon for the timeframe that works best for your students, but many schools choose an eight- to twelve-hour timeline.
- Car wash. Organize a car wash fundraiser and invite parents, teachers, and members of your community. Have participants collect pledges based on how many cars they wash throughout the event. Give students a significant role by putting them in charge of spreading the word about the car wash by designing posters, flyers, and social media posts.
By providing students with independence, they have the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, work with their peers, and get invested in your fundraiser’s success.
3. Offer incentives.
Participating in a fundraiser isn’t always fun and games. Students have to go through training, donate their free time, and take on responsibilities that challenge them. As such, some students may not see the value in participating even if you choose an exciting fundraising idea.
To combat this, consider offering incentives for completing goals. Keep in mind that incentives can include anything that motivates them to fundraise, such as gift cards, free homework passes, or a pizza party.
There are two main ways your school can structure incentive programs:
- Create school- or classroom-wide goals. These goals should be large and not something a single student would be capable of on their own. For example, during a t-shirt campaign, you might set a school-wide goal of selling 500 t-shirts. Encourage students to work together by exchanging which fundraising strategies they use to help them meet the fundraising goal.
- Create individual goals. If you are fundraising on a smaller scale, set up an individual goal that students can realistically complete on their own. In the context of a t-shirt sale fundraiser, the goal could be selling three shirts. To avoid any students being left out, you might provide alternative ways to get the incentive, like helping create flyers that promote the shirts.
To motivate students, consider taking a page from the corporate world and creating awards for top fundraisers. eCardWidget’s guide to recognition awards explains how in a corporate setting, these awards can improve employee confidence, productivity, and retention. The same holds true for students participating in a school fundraiser, as the student who takes home the award for most money raised might be motivated to secure their title the following year.
To streamline the awards and incentives process, be sure to choose a school fundraising platform that allows you to track each student’s progress. This way, you can easily check which students are performing well and which ones may need additional help to achieve the fundraising goal.
Getting students involved in your school’s fundraising campaigns can teach them valuable life lessons about dedication and how to accomplish their goals. It’s also a great way to win over additional support from parents and PTA members, helping your school raise the funds it needs to give students high-quality educational opportunities.
