School Brochure Fundraiser Qualities You Should Know About

A helpful guide to your next brochure sale.

School brochure fundraising has been around for years. While many groups continue to raise money using brochures faithfully, others prefer alternative methods like auctions or carnival events. Schools that embrace the idea of selling out of a brochure have found them relatively easy to set up and run. Yet, some don’t care about students having to go out and make sales.

Some schools may be considering a brochure sale but don’t know enough to make an informed decision. It’s the groups that are undecided that will probably want to know the pros and cons of school brochure fundraising.

Let’s consider two advantages:

Brochure Fundraisers are Simple to Implement

Consider all the work that has to go into planning, setting up, and running a school carnival. You must recruit your volunteers and decide what events you want. And this is only the beginning because you still need to figure out how to implement your plan. Also, have you factored in your startup costs? This will be important unless you can get people to donate supplies.

A brochure program requires little work because the company provides everything needed to start the sale.

No Upfront Startup Cost

The company also provides all supplies and promotional materials upfront at no charge. This would include:

1. Student fundraiser packets
2. Promotional flyers
3. Extra order forms
4. Teacher envelopes
5. Additional sales tools

Here are a couple of disadvantages:

Schools Make a Predetermined Profit

Most schools make about 40% of retail sales through a brochure fundraiser. Some groups want more profit. You must do most of the work If you want to keep more of your total sales.

A spaghetti dinner is a good example. You’ll need to assign people to shop for the food, cooking, and serving. However, you’ll still need to cover the cost, which will cut your profit, unless you can donate the food. Some groups can get a local restaurant to discount their cost per plate.

Brochure Fundraising can be Impersonal

Many schools want to reach out to their community personally when they fundraise. This can be done by inviting families into the school for events like carnivals, auctions, or dinners. This brings people together.

Some don’t like selling out of a brochure because it requires parents and students to enter the community to bring in sales.

Some schools in lower socioeconomic communities have also found brochure items too expensive. If they do sell and end up working with a company, they prefer to sell items more at the $1.00 price range. Selling candy bars may be a viable alternative for these schools.

Whatever you decide, picking a fundraiser with the highest potential will be important to bring in the most dollars.

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.