What to Do When Fundraising Prizes Aren’t Allowed

Simple ways to strong sales without using prizes.

It's been proven that schools that offer prizes to their students for selling end up raising significantly more money than those who don't. This disadvantages many schools because they aren't allowed to incentivize their students.

So what can you do when your school isn't allowed to use fundraising prizes to motivate your students? Believe it or not, many schools are in the same boat.

The bottom line is that groups need to raise money and therefore develop alternative ways to motivate their sellers.

You may need to work harder and be more creative to achieve your goals. Here are some things you can do to enhance the results of your fundraiser, even when student prize incentives are not allowed.

Reinforce the Fundraising Purpose

High school students can probably grasp the purpose of selling more quickly than younger students can; however, you can get any age excited about 'the why' behind your fundraiser if you can get them to understand how they will benefit from the money raised.

With younger groups, it's probably more important to sell the parents on your purpose since they'll be doing most of the selling anyway. This can be done during your back-to-school meeting, PTO night, and through your parent letter that comes home on the day of your sale in your students' information packets.

Divide Your Group into Teams

Dividing your group up into teams works exceptionally well with middle school and some high school groups. Team members learn how to work together, and the competition against their peers helps drive the selling. You don't need fundraising prizes when you can offer a fun privilege to the group that makes the most money. The fun activity or privilege will inspire you to make the sales. Make sure that you also appoint strong leaders for each team.

Get the Principal to Be the Prize

Getting the principal to do something fun and exciting if the group meets or exceeds its fundraising goal is always a good idea. This works exceptionally well with elementary school students. For instance, you can have them kiss a pig, spend a day on the roof or come to school in their pajamas wearing a wig. Whatever you do, ensure your students will want to see the principal carry it out.

These are just a few things you can do that don't involve using fundraising prizes. In what ways has your school been able to get around the 'no prizes allowed' dilemma?

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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.