Tools for Teachers

Turn Your Fundraiser into a Learning Experience
With more schools experiencing under funding, fundraising has become even more important. The responsibility for raising funds often falls on teachers.

As a teacher, your role is to guide students through life as leaders and mentors. Fundraising does not have to take away from that. Look at it as an opportunity to teach students important life skills. Fundraising can be used to teach children:

-Budgeting and money management

-Organization

-Public speaking

-Creative writing

-Graphic design

-Advertising

-Cooperation

-Teamwork

Here are some fundraising projects you can do with your students:

Organize a Snack Shop
Plan to have a snack shop fundraiser. Have your students take an active role in planning the business.

Discuss the different steps that need to be taken to set up the shop. These range from choosing a time and date for the shop, choosing what to sell, picking where to hold the sale, to advertising and managing the sale.

Encourage students to share their ideas!

Plan the Advertising
Discuss the different ways to advertise a fundraiser. Things like posters and flyers are great advertisments. Give your students the six factors that must be on the advertisment -the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How:

-Who is the fundraiser for?

-What kind of fundraiser is it?

-Where is it being held?

-When is it?

-Why are you raising funds?

-How can people support you or participate?

Catchy slogans, bright colors, and easy to read lettering stand out. Give your students some supplies and let them get creative!

Pitch Your Sale
A good sales pitch is important. This can be a wonderful lesson in public speaking. Tlka to your class about what it takes to be a good public speaker. Work on making eye contact and speaking in a clear voice.

Divide your class into small groups and have each group come up with their own sales pitch. Go around the classroom to each group as they're working and give them pointers.

When they're ready, have each group stand in front of the class and present their pitch. They can do it all together, one at a time, or break the pitch into sections with each group member delivering one section.

Have the rest of the class act as judges. At the end of class, declare the winning sales pitch!

Math Lesson!
Depending on the grade level of your students, you can use different parts of the fundraising process as your math lesson. An older group could learn about percentages by calculating profits, while a younger group could learn about multiplication by calculating items sold by price.

Another idea is to make a "fundrasier thermometer" to keep track of your progress. Take a large piece of paper or poster board and draw a thermometer to track dollar amounts with the bottom of the thermometer being $0, and the top being your fundraiser goal. Have students calculate weekly profits, and total amount raised.

You could reward your top seller for that period by allowing them to color in the thermometer up to your new total.