When Your School District Won’t Allow Cash Prizes

Creative ways around not being able to offer cash.

Cash prizes motivate groups of all ages, especially older students, who tend not to be as excited about winning toys or gadgets typically found in a more traditional prize program.

Cash prize programs are popular with high school groups. In contrast, many elementary schools like to incorporate cash games like a money wheel or money machine to attempt to encourage additional selling. However, some school districts have policies that don't allow schools to issue cash directly to their students.

If you're in this situation, there are creative ways to get around the no cash-allowed problem. Here are some ideas that may help:

Cash Prize Program

If you decide to use a cash prize program, substitute the amount of cash that each student qualifies for with a prize of equal value. Remember that the perceived value is more important than the cost of the substituted prize. Alternatively, many sponsors are allowed to issue gift cards to their students.

Money Wheel

Most money wheels are set up very similarly. The odds of winning more money are lower. Here's how most money wheels are set up:

• Land on numbers 1, 2, or 5 = the seller wins a gift card or prize worth up to $5.00.
• Land on numbers 10, 15, or 20 = the seller wins a gift card or prize worth between $5 and $10.00.
• Land on Flag or Joker = the seller wins a gift card or prize worth between $10 and $25.00.

Set the least amount on the money wheel at $5 and the most at $25.

Money Machine

Win cash-equivalent prizes based on the money grabbed from the money machine.

• Even though you will not give away any money, you'll still need qualified sellers to spin the money wheel and grab money from the money machine. For your sellers who reach the money machine level, we recommend having $100.00 ready for your event. If you have more than one seller who qualifies, you can keep recycling the money since you're not giving any of it away. Write down how much each seller qualifies for, then provide a gift card or comparable prize.
• You'll want to limit the time in the money machine to 30 seconds. The participants may grab the money with both hands but are not allowed to stuff it in their pockets.

See our brochure fundraisers.

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.