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Fundraising ideas for the school band

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47K views 48 replies 38 participants last post by  SchlockRod  
#1 ·
Short Version :

Do you have any fund raising ideas a school band could do?

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Long Version :

Our band is short on funds (I'm in So-cal and with the new education cuts, money is short everywhere, especially with the arts of course >.>) and the band teacher has literally formed a club to help with fund raising and money distribution.

Currently the predominant idea within the club is to separate the band (voluntarily of course) into quartets and have them perform in the streets for money, in which then the students get to keep half and the band gets the other half. Reading the thread about busking though, I feel that this idea might be more trouble than its worth, though I can't think of any better ideas.

Thats kinda why I was hoping that somebody here could give me some suggestions as to what else our band could do.
 
#16 ·
jazz band gigs.
I think this is a good one, if you guys are Ok get a local Church or other organization to sponcer something in their building. Charge 10 bucks a head. If you stick to dance tunes, as long as your rhythmn section can swing, you can keep soloing to a minimum? I bet you could get 200-300 people with proper space and advertising. 10 bucks isn't that much a person, meaning you could get groups of people to show. Just an idea.
 
#3 ·
Things my school does:

1. We have a "donation only" car wash twice a year with a suggested donation of $5. We haven't had one person who's stiffed us. When people see that it's a donation, I'd say a quarter of the time we get even more.

2. Sometimes we sell things like See's Candy or Ozark Delight lolly pops. There's lots of companies that can help out with a fund raiser like that.

3. This isn't really a fund raiser, but in my band program, it is "strongly recommended" that everyone pays a $200 "fair share" donation each semester.

4. We have a raffle twice a year where each student is required to sell 20 $10 tickets to whomever they want and the winner gets a flat screen TV (a small one, but it's a flat screen :shock:)
 
#4 ·
Do try the ideas listed above.
The ablolute best fund raiser I did while teaching was to sell Poinsettias between Thanksgiving and Christmas time. There are several growers nearby (San Jose).
At a boosters meeting a parent who owned a flower company offered FREE the Poinsettias. Perhaps you could get a grower to give you whosale prices. We pre-sold the flowers. Restaurants, banks, businesses all over town bought our flowers, they usually buy at that time of year anyway. Parents who worked at these places were our best contacts.
Flowers were delivered, two truckloads, to the band room and then distributed in a 3 day period just before our Christmas program. They were picked up before school or after school for those few days.
Most of the time our sales were 5 or 6 hundred plants!
Also you might arrange for a "band night" at a pumpkin patch or Christmas tree lot.
This works by giving coupons that can be used when buying and the owner agrees to give your band the profits.
Realize that the businesses that are donating these items can write them off. Get a band IRS account #
Good luck
 
#5 ·
our band just had the chili cook off and car show today
man im sunburnt:(


basically

people make chili
set up tents on the home side line

and all the teams get numbers
and have to pay to enter(hence making money)
then on teh visitor side line
people with like old or cool cars can pay to enter their own car into the car show


then at the end of the day, the judges give out trophys for 1st 2nd and 3rd for the car show and the chili, which the people who came to it vote on
and then the entrance fee also, which is like 5 dollars or somthing(band people get in for free)
 
#6 ·
at the chili cook off there is also a bake sale where band people make baked goods and sell them to people at the car show.
 
#7 ·
also during the year, we sell cheese cakes and nuts and christmas wreaths during christmas time.

sorry for the bad grammar and the bad spelling, i just got back from the chili cookoff and im tired and sunburnt
 
#8 ·
hard to explain, but my band has a playathon. this years was 17 hours long and each student gave 25 bucks and we had all the bands play, along with a carnival thing and lots of food. keep in mind this is planned all year for us.
 
#43 ·
Scratch Funds marching arts fundraiser is a high-profit, non-product scratch card fundraiser created as an answer to the fundraising disasters you mention. Directors like Scratch Funds as a high school band fundraising idea because it's easy and fun.

Scratch Funds is a great high school band fundraiser idea for bands, color guards, dance, and percussion groups who want an easy, high-profit, no hassle fundraiser without the disasters of making band members sell high priced candy and products that no one needs.

Scratch Funds website: Scratch Funds
 
#12 ·
I try to ask my parents to simply make a donation to the group. Does CA. have the State tax donation towards schools? AZ does, and boy does it help out. This way both sides are benefitting from the donation. Families can give up to a certain amount to a school, then when it comes to tax time, they get the money back.
Often times when a school has findraisers parents just buy the stuff just because they want to support the school, but in the end only about 40% goes to the school the rest to a company.
I have bought plenty of instruments, concert pieces etc. with tax money donations.
 
#15 ·
My high school band did fruit, and it brought it some pretty good money.

They also started hosting a marching band competition....which I think also made a good bit of money after the expenses.

A lot of high schools have a fee for band. Ours was $650 (though there were some fund raising options, i.e. selling more fruit....) and some of those schools that do the Bands of America marching competitions have fees up to $1400 a year...I'm sure no one would mind a small fee.
 
#17 ·
I have 2 things during the year that work EXTREMELY well - however My situation may be alittle different.

I do Recordings of the concerts - make an CD - and take orders at the concerts. (Have kids do all the grunt work). Go someplace like diskfaktory.com and choose how you want them made - how many - and upload all the content. If you want to be extremely legal - You should go through the trouble of securing the mechanical rights - all in all that should be less than $1 per cd for every song you would have on there. Total profit could be upwards of 7-10 per CD depending on how much you charge - and they look professional as well.

ALSO - My High School is a Catholic High School - and we get kids from about 13 feeder elementary schools (elem meaning k-8) So Every year I host a Jr. High Interparish Dance - last year there were over 350 middle school kids running around to the DJ - Invite some guest chaperones from the other schools - pay some of your own - all in all I always leave that night with a couple grand or more for the band.

just 2 cents - Good luck
 
#19 ·
I do Recordings of the concerts - make an CD - and take orders at the concerts. (Have kids do all the grunt work). Go someplace like diskfaktory.com and choose how you want them made - how many - and upload all the content. If you want to be extremely legal - You should go through the trouble of securing the mechanical rights - all in all that should be less than $1 per cd for every song you would have on there. Total profit could be upwards of 7-10 per CD depending on how much you charge - and they look professional as well.
Recordings of concerts are very good ideas, but getting the rights from publishers and composers to record and sell their music can be a real pain and very time consuming (though not as bad as getting the rights to arrange the music, I hear). You would need to have someone specifically responsible for that aspect, and I wouldn't allow a student to be held accountable for that. That last thing a struggling band needs is a fine or legal fiasco....
 
#18 ·
Car Washes, ValuCards, selling Chocolates, etc. etc. are all good and dandy, and I know my old high school did well with them, but one of the key sources of income was the "script" program, where people would buy, at cost, what are essentially gift cards to different locations, but the school gets a cut. Walmart/Meijer being popular stores for it, since everyone shops there.

Beware of fundraising companies in general. A lot of their stuff you can find yourself to sell, at a much better price/percentage, if you're willing to do some of the organizing yourself.

Do you have a marching band? Sell advertising space on the banners for when you travel or do parades.

Get your Band Boosters in the concession stands at sporting events! My school's band got all of the income from our Football and Soccer games.

Do a "Jazz Club" night. Have general seating for $5, or special seating around round, nicely decorated, tables with desserts and such for $10-$20. Get some of the vocalists from the choir to help out, and consider sharing some of the funds with the choral dept.

I am HIGHLY opposed to requiring any sort of free from students to join band. There are other ways to bring in funds, and I think that recruitment is far more important than the potential loss of kids you can get by charging a fee. I'm seeing the numbers declining in arts and music programs all around my state, and it concerns me. Parents already are paying enough for their kid's instruments. I can see $25 or something, or specific fees for "Uniform cleaning" or that kind of stuff, but anything more than that I'm not a fan of.

My high school band, which received very little funding from the school, managed to send 200 of us every 4 years on a week-long trip down to Florida, at a cost of less than $1000 per kid. Make sure that you aren't fiscally over spending, and you can make it work. (what I see some schools spend money on...especially marching band related stuff, ASTOUNDS ME.)
 
#22 ·
In the midwest, "Trivia Nights" are very popular as fundraisers. I'm involved with the National Kidney Foundation, and we recently held one that raised $10,000 in one night. Basically, they sell "tables" that participate in the event. At each table, there are 6 or 8 participants (depending on the size of the table) who each pay $20 to play, so that's $120 to $160 per table... and you can generally sell 40 to 60 tables.

The trivia part is 10 rounds of 10 questions each. An emcee asks the questions, and each table's participants come up with their best answer and write it on their answer sheet. Questions are usually fairly difficult. One answer sheet per table, and all answer sheets get turned in at the end of each round. Students would do the scoring. If you have a band member who's a good public speaker, he/she could be the emcee. You can come up with your own questions, or you can buy them from question services (odd, I know).

You would need to ask some local businesses for support, such as getting a bunch of cases of soda and beer from whatever warehouse clubs or grocery stores are in your area. Here, the soda and beer is always free to the players. If you serve beer, then of course you'd have to have some adult volunteers serving it, and having beer there may eliminate the option of using your school cafeteria or gym as your location. Players also bring their own food and drinks to share with the people at their table. Some trivia nights include a silent auction, but that can be a lot of work.

I can tell you more about how these things work, but if they're not already happening in your area, then it may be hard to get the word out and recruit players for it. Let me know if you want more info.
 
#23 ·
The ideas about gigs sound good but the fee to join band would probably end up killing our band program, so that wouldn't work.

Scrips sound promising, though I'm not sure if we have any deals with the local shops already so I'll ask about that...

Making CDs of our concerts and going through all that work to contact the publishing companies and stuff sound a bit overcomplicated, but if the committee approves, that might work too.

Thanks for your suggestions! Right now our little group is tossing around the idea of raffling off the Jazz Band, where raffle tickets are sold for $X and the winner of the raffle gets to 'hire' the jazz band for an event. The benefits of this to the winner are kinda obvious, seeing a professional jazz group might cost up to $3000 to hire.

Maybe some other people could use these ideas too~
 
#25 ·
What about organising a skills auction. People give services they're good at - maybe some tuition, some gardening, curtain making, babysitting etc. etc. Get someone well-known locally to be the auctioneer. It could even just be a 'big' character from the school staff. Those donated services are auctioned off to bidders, and just for a little more, you could charge an entry or catalogue fee. Make sure you invite people with money - businesses, councillors, local bigwigs etc., even celebrities if you can get 'em, on the basis that the latter will often draw out the former and everyone wins.
 
#26 ·
A "Rehearsathon"

You set up a day where you have a marathon rehearsal and get people to donate $X per hour of rehearsal. We do it at least once a year to help fund whatever tour we're doing and it usually makes a nice chunk of change.

We also make it an open rehearsal and invite everyone and anyone to come and listen. Having a fishbowl for on the spot donations is encouraging as well.
 
#27 ·
Our best selling fundraisers have been: QSP/Readers Digest magazine subscriptions, Worlds Finest Chocolate, Little Cesars Pizza Kits, and Cookie Dough.

We also have a contract with a bank located across the road from our Fair Grounds to park cars during large events. Mostly the Ionia Free Fair, and the B-93 Birthday Bash.

We've held the Jazz Cabaret and included a silent auction.

One of the suggestions to our Band Boosters was to auction off the services of our band members. The winning bidder would get 4 hours of labor. Raking, lawn mowing, painting....whatever odd jobs needed doing.
 
#28 ·
One of the suggestions to our Band Boosters was to auction off the services of our band members. The winning bidder would get 4 hours of labor. Raking, lawn mowing, painting....whatever odd jobs needed doing.
I like that idea BM!

Here's my random thought (when I was teaching band I thought about this but never got to try it as the program was entirely dismantled:x):
Has a music program ever had any luck with asking for sponsors? A family or a business "sponsor" a bari sax for its upkeep/repairs? Or sponsors the acquisition of new music? And then they'd get their name in the concert programs and/or a certificate...
Here in California, where all the millionaires live and we're continuing to cut Arts funding, we have sponsors for the highways: "This stretch of freeway is kept clean by: Robin Williams" (no joke).
My .02 and best of luck.
 
#31 ·
Here in California, where all the millionaires live and we're continuing to cut Arts funding, we have sponsors for the highways: "This stretch of freeway is kept clean by: Robin Williams" (no joke).
My .02 and best of luck.
reminds me of when I was in Oregon and saw adopt a highway signs that were adopted by folks with names like "Barefoot Bill" and "Sparkling Sam." Not quite the same, though...
 
#30 ·
Each concert you do sell a programme, make it like a magazine with writing from the band director and musicians, photos of rehersals, articles etc, each programme would be a one off for each concert (they could be sold after the fact also).

Nothing fancy in printing terms, photocopied greyscale would do (with a colour cover). Large profit margin possible (especially with free access to school photocopiers etc, just paper and toner to pay for)

This would be sort of thing parents and audience members would want to keep (as opposed to something generic and/or something to eat)

Also if you have some composers in the group (or connected to it) include some score fragments in the programme and some writing about the music (what is it about? how was it written?), and perhaps a commissioning scheme could be worked out too, money raised throughout the year from local people/businesses etc.

Composers could be paid to write music for specific events of local interest which the band perform (money split between the composers and the band fund). And the compositions and/or performances could be sponsored ('The Battle Creek Plumbing Supercenter Concerto for Winds')

My 2 pence :)
 
#32 ·
I'm sure some of this was mentioned somewhere, but I'm at work and probably shouldn't be reading too deep in this post!

Pizzaria Unos and Applebees both have really decent fundraising programs that are SUPER easy to do...

The Unos fundraiser basically is just a coupon book... Pass out coupons to folks, tell them to go to Uno on the date listed on the coupon they eat there and hand them the coupon at the end of the meal. After that a decent cut of that person's bill goes to your fundraiser pot. I don't have all the details here right now, but this is a SUPER easy fundraiser that you basically don't have to do anything for. Although they didn't like it too much I had some of my kids at the front door passing these coupons out to people just walking into the place. Again... very easy to make money with this one.

The Applebee's fundraiser is for a breakfast special... For every person that you bring in to order the breakfast they'll give you the profit (ie: Bee's charges you 3 bucks per person, but you charge 8 bucks, so you'll get 5 into your pot). It's kind of fun as the students can be serve as well (not true for all locations).

Carwashes (as I've see other people list) are a great fundraiser as well. My kids did a car wash two weeks ago (yes it was cold in NY) and still ended up taking home ~400 bucks profit. Others have already written about them, and instead of rehashing, I'd just go with what they say. It's all pretty reasonable...

Finally... the dreaded bottle/can drive... It's makes cents (ha, ya get it?)! Seriously, this is another one of them easy things that anyone can do. I'm not a teacher (work as an engineer). One week I asked everyone on the two lower floors of my building to rinse and drop off all their bottles and cans in my cube. I asked other parents that wanted to support us to do the same at their work places... While I was astounded with how much soda people drink in a week, I was pleased with getting about 150 bucks just from my contribution. If you try this, I would suggest going to a place that sorts stuff FOR you... That makes life a bit easier.

This is all for a robotics team I work with, but I'm sure the same rules apply :)! Good luck!