Who Benefits From Big Event Fundraising Incentives?

What makes big event incentives so unique?

We recently signed a small catholic school on one of our fundraising programs. They initially selected our Big Event Reptile Adventures Show for their prize incentive until they realized it wouldn't help them increase their sales further. It may have even hurt their sales because students only needed to sell five or more items to get into the event. They feared that students would stop selling once they qualified for the show. Yes, there were higher prize levels, but the reptile show was the main appeal.

Instead, they ended up going with a traditional prize program. Their previous sales results were impressive, considering they only have 150 students. Every year they bring in close to $30,000 with a very high student participation rate. This made us realize that some schools probably benefit more from our big event fundraising prize programs than others. So which schools should consider a big event program? Here are the differences between the prize programs.

Traditional Prize Programs

• Students win inexpensive prizes at the lower levels.
• As students sell more, the quality of the prizes improves.

Big Event Fundraising Prize Programs

• Students win admission to one of our big events by selling several items.
• Students can sell more and win special privileges and prizes.

Why Schools Choose Our Big Events

Many schools choose our big event programs because they know most parents won't have to sell very much for their children to go to an event. In other words, parents realize they don't have to work hard to appease their students. At the same time, students don't want lower-level prizes from a traditional prize program because they are usually cheap.

So why did the catholic school opt for the traditional prize program? It's because they already had a high student participation rate. If they had chosen to go with Reptile Adventures, their concern was students would stop at the lowest price level because this would have given them what they wanted.

Which Schools Do Well with a Big Event?

What types of groups benefit most from our big event prize programs? The answer is larger elementary schools experiencing lower than desired student participation. Many larger schools can only get between 10-25% of their students to sell. These groups have the most significant potential for sales gain because of the number of students that could be selling. They've become disillusioned with traditional prize programs that force students to sell more for valuable prizes. As it turns out, most students don't even try for the higher levels.

Therefore, larger schools with a lower student participation rate benefit more from big event fundraising programs.

See our prize programs.

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.