Parents Fundraising???

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One of the best things we're doing is selling discount cards for Dominos Pizza. The cards are good for a free large pizza with the purchase of one. They can be used twenty times and are good until December 2009. They cost us $1 apiece and they sell for $10, which means we get $9 per card sold. And they are a great deal, too, so they are easy to sell.
 
Our Booster club moms are selling decorated flip flops. They are so cute, the flip flops come from old navy and then get decorated. They have ribbons, yarn, balloons, they come in all colors and you can request anything. I don't know if I'm explaining this really well. All the decorations are tied to the top part. They sell for $10 each, and have been very popular.
 
We sell Homeinterior Candles.Seems like alot of people like them.50% of the profit goes to the gymnast.
 
We have sold:
Yankee candles ( i think 40% profit)
Chocolate bars (hershey's, 50% profit)
Christmas wreaths
Pampered chef

The best money makers:
Running a meet at your gym (we only did 1 b/c we are a small team, and we only ran the concession another organization ran the actual meet so we didn't make much, but if you run the whole meet yourself, it can be a good boost to your acct!
Can shake - usually only once a year, many organizations do this so stores will only allow 1x/yr

TODAY we are having a clothes drive. There are companies that pay by the pound for used clothing, shoes, purses, linens, stuffed animals. My dh's pickup and my van are fully packed with stuff we collected from our neighbors and friends. I'll report back next week on how we did!
 
Our gym just did Rada cutlery. It sold very well. You can google it on the internet. You make 40% off your sales. Our gym made $2400 off of the sales, and we only had about 15 girls sell. The have some very nice things.
We, also, do an Applebee's pancake breakfast to benefit the gymnasts. We sell tickets for $5.00 each. The girls go and work the breakfast (hostesses, older girls serve, etc...). We have a tip jar that pays Applebee's for the food and their cook. We keep the entire $5.00 from the tickets. This goes over really well. We, also, sell Butter Braids. People love them. This benefits the girls, as well.
Our gym is in the process of putting together our very first auction to be held later this month. Big undertaking. Takes some time to plan.
 
We did a BBQ plate fundraiser. We had chicken and pulled pork, cole slaw rolls, green beans & a dessert. Did pretty good. We are in the south - may not work as well elsewhere - guess it would depend on how big people are into BBQ
 
Thank you everyone for the ideas! I figure the more ideas we get we are ableto come up with something that will help!! thanks!!
 
We did the applebee's pancake fundraiser as well this year.... It was a great success... unfortunately, they are discontinuing this fundraiser:(
 
Before starting your fundraisers, sit down and work out how much the booster club wants to make and where the money will go---individual accounts or a general fund or both. In this slugglish economy I think we're all going to see a drop in what we can bring in. People are not going to be as willing to buy something from you after they've been at the gas station!! I would suggest not doing alot of little ones--you will have no friends or relatives left that will talk to you:). Pick a few that have good track records and focus on making those as profitabile as possible.

This is what our gym does:
Host compulsory and optional meet(1 meet in the fall and 1 in Feb/March). We cleared a little over 5k from the compulsory meet and 1500 from the optional. These are usually big fundraisers for a booster club IF you host it and not the gym.
Used leo sales--2x/year---sell all leos at $10. Some money from this went to the girl's accounts/some to booster club.
Poinsetta sales---used a local florist.
Pizza Palz--Old Chicago. They do this nationally for 501(c)(3). Sell coupons for $11 good for 6 mos. People can then buy any of their pizzas with the coupon(the most expensive is $22). I forget the breakout on this, but these sell well.
Bingo--the mega fundraiser. We brought in about $160k last year. Boy, this really requires parent committment and coordination.
The gym has done butter braids in the past and they sell well. Only downside is parents have to come pick up their orders the day of delivery and then be able to get them to their customers quickly since they need to be kept frozen.

Stay away from Cherrydale. We did a cookie dough fundraiser with them and they shipped the dough unrefrigerated, then didn't want to reship a new order and it ended up they just refunded our $. I actually had people that wanted the stuff and 2 mos later had to give them their money back.

Hope all this helps.
 
we had a meeting today and it looks like we need things now!
we are going to have to cut back on coaches salary (bummer to me as they are the ones keeping our kids safe but they seem willing)

I just love our club, The kids are happy and we are family type gym my kids love going and seem to feel soo good there I love how they love being there and how comfortable they and I feel about them

anyhow any good ideas to help our club make money quick???
 
Hi, i am a coach so i cannot access the parent forum but would like to offer help to monkeygirlsmom in the parent forum who was asking for fundraising ideas.

Some ideas that have proven successful in the past at a club i coached at when i lived in Canada.

COOKIE DOUGH...we raised a phenominal amount of money with this.

BUSINESS SIGNS...our former club president's father owned a sign painting business so we sent out sponsorship letters to every business in our community.

1 year for x number of dollars and smallest sign size.
2 years for x number of dollars and next largest sign size
3 years for x number of dollars and largest sign size.

ADOPT AN ATHLETE...this was used by the gymnasts at the University of Alberta. Each athlete went out and found as many people as they could to adopt them.

x number of dollars...adopter would recieve team t shirt and athlete photo and profile
x number of dollars...adopter would recieve same as above plus one seasons ticket to university sporting event
x number of dollars...adpopter would recieve same as above plus team track suit

I would appreciate if someone with access to the parent forum could relay this to that forum or monkeygirlsmom.

Thanks

Don
 
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Some very good ideas from Don, but it is hard to make money almost immediately. Many of these companies that have you sell their products to make money need "lead" time to get all the info to you, have your families sell and then get the product and money back to you. Also the fundraisers with restaurants can take a few months to get going.

What kind of money are they looking at? Just as much as possible?? Things you could do right now(not saying you'll make alot of $) as a start until other things can be set up would be car washes(as in a whole weekend), bake sales(Wal Marts in some areas let organizations sell outside)---little girls in cute leos are hard to resist! and a used leo sale. The leo sales are easy---put up or email notice of date you need the used leos. set a price for all(we do $10--much easier than pricing each one!) and do your sales for a few days before/after practice. I also knew a dance studio had parents bbq outside and sold hot dogs, brat, hamburgers etc. with a bag of chips before/after practices. They did it over several weekends and did bring in a decent amount of $. Probably the biggest challenge is going to be getting the parent volunteers you need to pull these off.
 
wow thank you for all the great ideas! I will def be mentioning these!!
and thank you Don for posting this on the coaches board!!

some of the coaches agreed to do some coaching for less! (we have the best coaches) I just love our gym and want to see it keep growing! my girls feel soo good about themselves when they are there and to me that is soo important.

basically our rec program has gone down and we need the money to help cover the operating cost
 
How about a 'car wash' at a local supermarket or shopping centre.
You charge people for washing/hoovering the inside of their cars whilst they are doing their shopping.

Also, some groups here (scouts, cubs, cheerleading groups etc) pack shopping in supermarkets for donations. I dont know if anybody packs your shopping into bags in the USA but here you have to do it yourself. There are often groups of kids collecting money for packing the bags.
 
I was thinking car wash, too! Or sell hoagies through a local deli? How about a yard sale? Every year our gym does one right outside the gym. We're in a pretty busy area and there are a lot of patrons. Then, all money goes back into the gym. Or sponsor a Coke Wagon (sponsored by Coca~Cola) at a local Wal*Mart or Sam's Club. That takes some planning, like months in advance, but it might be something to think about for the future. We make tons of money with it. Just need volunteers.

Some other big fundraising ideas are cookbooks. You can input recipes on-line now so anyone involved can put their own in. Or Car Magnets?

Coming up with something quick is tough. Fundraising often takes a lot of planning. Good luck!
 
Stay away from Cherrydale. We did a cookie dough fundraiser with them and they shipped the dough unrefrigerated, then didn't want to reship a new order and it ended up they just refunded our $. I actually had people that wanted the stuff and 2 mos later had to give them their money back.

:eek: Yikes!!! :mad:
 
Big $$

We also host 2 meets per year as our major fundraisers, one a club meet and booster club gets concessions, the other a state meet and we get everything. A state meet can bring in $15,000+.

We also sell wreaths at Christmas and ads for the two programs we produce. I'm sure there are more but these are the ones we makes big $$$ at. I know they sell candles and Papa Murphy's pizza cards, but you can only ask people to buy things so often or they turn off the lights when they see you coming, lol.
 
Coming back to report on our clothing drive!

We collected 5977 lbs of clothing, purses, shoes, linens, toys and filled a truck. We made $877.01 in one day!!!
 

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