5 Questions to Ask Before Planning Your School’s Next Fundraiser

Ready to turn your school’s standard campaign into a fundraiser your community will love? Before planning a major in-person event, online donation drive, or ongoing pledge event for your high school, middle school or elementary school—prepare by answering a few key questions about your students and families, your community, and your fundraising goals.

Let’s get started.

1. Who is your audience?

The first step to planning a fundraiser is defining exactly who makes up your donor community. Is it mostly parents or neighbors? What about students’ extended families, alumni, parishioners, extended families, and local businesses?

Don’t assume that your audience will always stay the same. Just as your student body changes year by year, so do your donors. Use recent campaign and donor information to analyze donor demographics—such as age group, area of residence, and average income—as well as past engagement data. 

With this information, you can determine what types of events and fundraisers will most appeal to your audience. For example, parents often enjoy fundraisers that they can participate in with their children.

Additionally, it can be helpful to track donors’ preferred communication methods. You can discover this information by analyzing marketing metrics like email click-through rate and social media engagement. Or you can ask supporters directly in a survey.

2. Does this fundraiser benefit students?

When supporters donate to your school, they’re investing in your students’ education and well-being. If you launch a fundraiser that does not directly benefit your students, you could very well draw criticism instead of support. For example, a candy bar or cookie dough product fundraiser doesn’t exactly promote healthy eating habits.

To show donors that your school is committed to its students, consider hosting fundraisers that specifically benefit students. 

Here are a few fundraisers that promote student education and well-being, and just might boost community involvement as well:

• Read-A-Thons. According to Read-A-Thon, 54% of Americans aged 16–74 read below a sixth-grade level. Read-A-Thons directly combat declining literacy rates by empowering students to read in their spare time and encouraging the community to promote reading.
• Trivia nights. Parents and students alike can participate in this educational event, either individually or on teams. Host a trivia night based around subjects taught in school, like a Geography Bee, or include a mix of educational and pop trivia questions to engage your greater community.
• School book fairs. Book fairs are always popular with students! Partner with a book fair company to sell new books to students, and your school will get a percentage of the profit.
• Walk-a-thons. A physical fundraiser like a walk-a-thon promotes fitness and encourages students to push themselves.

These ideas can be adapted for different age groups, grade levels, and student preferences. Choose a fundraiser that works for your school’s unique interests or needs.

3. What software do we need?

If your school is serious about raising more money, you need to invest in fundraising software. Going beyond a basic platform to one with AI-driven features can improve your fundraising efficiency and analytics.

Consider these types of software tools for your school:

• Event management software. Events have many moving parts, and sophisticated event management software can handle most of them for you, from selling tickets to creating registration pages to hosting livestreams.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising platforms. If you’re planning a fundraiser that involves students or parents collecting donations on your school’s behalf, investing in a peer-to-peer platform is a must. These tools allow each participant to create a campaign page where they can tell their unique story, inspiring friends and family to donate.
• Online donation processing tools. Some donors may still send checks in the mail, but today, many give online. Look for platforms with robust online donation processing tools that allow you to accept a variety of payment methods and encourage more valuable gifts, like recurring donations.
• Integrated fundraising CRM + Student Information System. A holistic single-sign-on fundraising and student management solution provides a complete view of a supporter’s relationship to the school.

Fundraising software can lessen the demands on your staff and make collecting data easy. Research platforms that make sense for your school’s needs and budget.

4. How will we promote the fundraiser?

At this stage, you know what fundraiser you want to host and feel confident it will resonate with your community. But how will supporters find out about it?

To maximize attendance, many schools employ a multichannel marketing approach. This involves disseminating your message across a wide range of platforms to reach parents, community members, alumni, and anyone else interested in supporting your fundraiser.

Of course, some platforms will appeal to your target audience more than others. For example, younger parents may favor Instagram, while students’ older family members are more likely to respond to fundraising announcements on Facebook.

Meet your donors where you know they’re already spending their time, using a mix of platforms like:

• Email. Fundraising email campaigns are effective for general announcements, progress updates, and event reminders. With compiled donor email lists, you’ll be able to reach previous donors and easily add new ones. This is where your fundraising CRM can shine, ideally segmenting messaging by donor type and automating reminders.
• Social media. Use school or PTA accounts on several different social media platforms to get the widest reach possible. Encourage parents and donors to follow your accounts to stay up to date on fundraising announcements. Don’t forget to respond directly to comments and questions on your pages.
• Flyers. If a large number of your donors are parents, simply sending announcement flyers home with students is a great way to reach them. You can also ask local businesses to post flyers in their establishments to reach the wider local community.
• Parent portal. Family members engaged in their children’s education regularly log into the school’s portal to review grades, schedules, assignments, and more. Highlight your fundraiser there and include a link to your donation form.  

In your promotional materials, give concrete details that explain exactly what your fundraiser is, how to participate, and how it will benefit students.

5. How can we motivate student participation?

While not every fundraiser requires student participation, the most successful ones often do. Plus, once students become engaged, their families and friends are far more likely to get involved.

One way you can encourage students to participate is by offering prizes. With the right incentives, students will be excited about the project, and donors will be happy to help students achieve their goals while knowing their donations support education.

You can offer prizes for all participants, the top fundraisers, or participants who reach certain milestones. School fundraising prizes can be anything that gets students pumped up about participating, such as:

• Small toys
• Fun school supplies
• Books
• Gift cards
• Pizza parties
• Field trips
• School swag

Survey your students ahead of time to learn which prizes they’d prefer. Create a poll and link to it in your LMS, where students work every day, or have teachers read aloud a series of options and ask students to vote for their favorites by raising their hands. To get students even more excited about the fundraiser, host a pep rally or campaign launch to show off all the prizes they could win.

Let’s Raise More Money!  

Planning a school fundraiser is a lot of work, but by asking these questions, you’ll get the answers you need to choose the right fundraising idea, invest in the right software, and spread the word on the right marketing channels.