6 Ways To Raise Money For Your Practice Field
High School football season is approaching, if it hasn’t begun already. Your team needs a new practice field, and it’s not going to pay for itself! Not to mention, you’ll need to erect a prefab steel building to house equipment, a bathroom and a locker room. Luckily, there are more than a few ways to raise money for your boys’ new field, all it takes is a little effort!
Try something different from the traditional door-to-door wrapping paper campaigns. These fundraising ideas are more progressive and have incredible earning potential.
1. Rent a Student
This self-explanatory fundraiser gives donors a chance to get chores done around the house. Students give up their Saturday mornings to pull weeds, clean bathrooms and perform other small household chores for a fee. The Booster Club or PTA sets the fee for which the students work. Make sure that student’s aren’t taken advantage of by only allowing chores they could be legally hired to do. No lifting heavy equipment or operating heavy machinery.
2. Hole-In-One Contest
Ask your local golf course to partner with your organization and set aside a Saturday afternoon for a Hole-In-One contest for students and their parents. Charge an entry fee and award prizes to the people with the most holes-in-one. To make sure that you keep a majority of the entry fee, choose small but valuable prizes like $20 restaurant gift cards.
3. Movie Night
Turn your school’s gymnasium into a theater once a month. Not only will this work as a fundraiser for your prefab steel building, this “Theater at School” will give students a place to enjoy Friday nights with friends in a safe, fun environment. Show classic movies such as “Star Wars” or “Back to the Future” to get students excited. To increase your bottom line, sell a $10 ticket that includes a slice of pizza and a drink, as well as open a small concession stand with popcorn and candy for students to buy.
4. Teacher Challenge
Involve the school’s staff in the fundraiser! Select 5-10 teachers to participate. Choose a challenge for each of them, such as dyeing their hair purple, wearing a clown costume all day, eating a grasshopper, etc. Assign a task to each teacher and set up donation jars for each faculty member. Give students Monday through Thursday to donate money to the teacher of their choosing. The teacher who raises the most money for your prefab steel building practice field has to complete their challenge during a Friday Assembly!
5. Shopping Spree Night
Patrons of a store have a set number of hours to shop, are required to check out at a certain register in the store and a portion of the sales during that time, from that register get donated to the school. Partner with a local small business or retail business like Barnes & Noble. Market to students and parents before the designated “Shopping Spree Night” to increase participation. Take this idea even further by printing flyers to hand out to patrons of the store not associated with the school, encouraging them to check out at the designated register to help the school. Shoppers not affiliated with the school, who are visiting the store are often thrilled to help kids raise money.
6. Phone Raiser
There are millions of mobile electronics sitting in desk drawers, junk drawers or in the bottom of closets either broken or not being used. These electronic devices can be sold and recycled, keeping the planet safe as well as raising funds for your practice field. Ask students and parents to donate their old cell phones to the school. 
Partner with a company like Give Back Phones, who buy these used cell phones and send them to recycling plants. Selling phones to an electronic recycle center can increase your school’s earnings by more than $5,000.
After each fundraiser, host a post-mortem with parents and volunteers to go over what worked and what didn’t. Revisiting outcomes will help you streamline processes, try new ideas and improve earnings year-over-year. Some of these ideas are short-term fundraisers and can be done multiple times or scheduled throughout the year. Set yourself on the path to a new practice field, complete with a prefab steel building for your locker room, by starting one of these fundraisers now!
If you enjoyed this blog from Karl Hatfield, check out some of his other articles by clicking here.
Photo courtesy: Jim Larrison, JR, Bernard Pollack« Real Entrepreneurs Embrace Failure, Wantrepreneurs Are Defeated By It
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