Fundraising for CTSOs.
The Constant Problem
I work in a public school in the fourth largest school district in America.
We’ve got fantastic, determined, devoted students. We have the drive and the ambition to conquer any obstacles in our path.
We don’t have money.
It is the ongoing, never-ending, relentless, frustrating problem that we deal with every single day. In order to provide our students with opportunities inside and outside of our school building, we need financing.
We need an Angel Investor. Nobody seems to be knocking on that door, unfortunately.
So we need to start fundraising for our CTSOs. Stop rolling your eyes—I’ve got some suggestions to make it significantly less painful.
Share Expected Travel Budget With Kids
If you are a first-year advisor, you need a mentor. *If you can’t find one, just message me and I will become your mentor.* You really will have a much easier time if you have someone helping you who has been through the process.
This is because I use last year’s numbers to create this year’s budget. In addition to travel—which is our largest line item by far, we need to have money for snacks and treats at our meetings throughout the year.
It isn’t the most entertaining or fun meeting, but I strongly suggest you have your CFO or treasurer go over the annual budget at the beginning of the year. Students have a right to know what they will be doing throughout the year—and the financial responsibilities they will have to be an active member of the group.
When they see the numbers, they will understand. As soon as we tell our team we need to order 15 pizzas for our monthly Pizza Meeting, they recognize the financial need we have. They’ll begin to understand the importance of fundraising for CTSOs.
Paying Membership Dues
For all of the international CTSOs, you will be responsible for both national and state dues for every member. This is an excellent time to do two things:
- Add a few dollars, which will help cover students with financial needs
- Incorporate the cost of a club t-shirt, so you can order them immediately for everybody
Suggestions For A Small Group
I have started CTSOs at a new school multiple time, so we were beginning from the absolute bottom. With just a few members, you can still generate some impressive fundraising numbers for your CTSOs with these ideas:
See’s Candy – https://www.yumraising.com/yumadmin/login
If you are in a part of the country that doesn’t have See’s candy, you are missing out! This high-quality product has a fantastic, VERY hands-off fundraising vehicle. Once you make an account, students spread the link to anyone and everyone they can think of. Through their social media! That’s all they need to do. Your profit ranges up to 50% of the sales price, and the merchandise is shipped DIRECTLY to the purchaser. You don’t have to track sales or hand out merchandise or deal with shipping or storage of chocolate. It is all handled for you. Highly suggest this one!
Something-Grams
There are lots of holidays teenagers are happy to celebrate, and you can help them with ___________-grams. We are doing Valentine’s Grams with a note and little bears purchased on Amazon. You can do this with just a few kids, because they can sell the grams only during lunch for a few days. To dramatically increase sales, have your small team DELIVER the grams to student classrooms on the holiday. Kids are much more excited about grams when they are delivered anonymously.
World’s Finest Chocolate – https://worldsfinestchocolate.com/
While this is a great company with a great product, buy your chocolate anywhere you want. Go with wherever will give you the greatest bulk discount so you can increase your profit. Even though we can’t sell chocolate during the school day, kids can still sell a case or two at the local park during a soccer game or at the playground. Toughest part of this type of fundraiser is keeping track of the money coming in from students.
Suggestions For A Large Group
These large-scale events need a tremendous army of students and adults to pull off. If you can do it, however, it is absolutely a “one and done” fundraiser for the year, since these tend to pull in big money.
- Carnival – Capitalizing on a fall holiday is perfect for this idea. It will give you a firm idea of how much money you will have for the year. The problem with choosing the fall is that you will need to be planning from day one. That is extremely difficult if you do not have a very strong leadership team, and a deep well of “workers”.
- Fun Run – Another great idea, this will generate big dollars, as you can open up the field of “runners” to both adults and students. The biggest hurdle (see what I did there?) with this type of fundraiser is the legal part of it—you need to make sure nobody will sue you in case they are injured on school property during your event. This one might be harder to get past your administration.
Quick And Profitable
I’m a big, big fan of quick and profitable. Fundraising for CTSOs doesn’t need to be slow. Here are some ongoing suggestions that will give all of your members an opportunity to participate, and will provide services for your entire campus community.
- Sell something every morning – From 6:30 to 6:50 am, campus is open for us. Why not “sweeten” the morning with hot chocolate and maybe a donut or other sweet treat? This is also true immediately after school. While everyone is leaving campus, perhaps they’d like a taco or coffee for the road?
- Weekly lunch options – We are fortunate in our area to have a number of fast food establishments who are happy to pad their pockets—and ours—by delivering their products to sell in our cafeteria. If your school allows this, consider making a deal with a local vendor to sell their product one day a week. Might I suggest Boba? Just saying…
- Exam muffins – Here is one of our unique and highly profitable ideas. During exam days in December and May, the cafeteria is closed due to the half-day schedule. We sell Costco muffins during the break between exams. Ten minutes. That’s literally how long the break is. We sell an average of 150 muffins in ten minutes, at a profit of over $1.50 per muffin. It. Is. Brilliant. You’re welcome.
How About Sponsors?
Saving the best for last, here is the Granddaddy of brilliant ideas for fundraising.
Ask for money.
Literally. Just ask.
BUT…you need the right leadership team to make this work. My current leadership team is absolutely incredible. So much so that we had 15 prizes to do a Holiday Lottery before the December break, where we made over $1,000 without spending a dime.
Your kids need to gather their courage, their self-confidence and their resolve, and just go ask. Our sponsorships for Nationals last June included donations of $500, $1,000 and even a $1,500 sponsorship. In exchange for these donations, we could offer only a donation letter and a space on our Nationals t-shirt. The companies were absolutely happy with those things, and have already committed to helping us this year, as well.
Your part in this is to write up a good sponsorship letter for the kids to give the companies, complete with an attached copy of your 501(c) designation. Then, just let them loose on the local mall or business park. Obviously, they should go in pairs, dressed in their competition best, and be prepared to just have a fun day, even if they aren’t successful.
Pool The Money Or Assign It Per Person?
So, you’ve succeeded in fundraising for your CTSOs, huh? Hopefully it will be enough for you to accomplish all of your organization goals for this year.
What do you do with the money? Does it go “in the pot,” or is it earmarked for the kids who earned it? While there are arguments for both sides, we have decided that everything goes into the group fund. We require members to participate in at least two of our fundraisers, but do not penalize those that just aren’t good salespeople.
We use the money to support the entire organization as much as we possibly can. We use it to support team dinners when we travel, those famous Pizza Meetings, and treats and rewards for our members. We do use some of it to cover students with financial need, but feel that is a perfect use for money sourced that way.
We don’t use it for Advisers travel costs. Between your school and your district, someone should cover the costs associated with your travel in support of your organization. If they don’t, that is a separate conversation.
No matter what, you are teaching your students valuable skills in sales tactics, self-confidence and the importance of stepping out of your shell to talk to businesspeople. Hopefully, you will also earn enough money to take your kids to Nationals. That’s how we change lives, people.
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR
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