How to Boost Student Participation in School Fundraising

Ways to get students involved in school fundraising and why it’s important.

Not involving students in your school’s campaign is a missed opportunity.  Student registration and participation are critical to success and double as a learning and growth opportunity for students. There are several ways students can help and many roles available for them to step into. Continue reading to learn the benefits to your fundraiser and the students, plus discover ideas for engaging your student body in your next school fundraiser.

How Student Participation Helps Your Fundraiser

There are several reasons to encourage students to participate in school fundraisers. To start, it reduces the workload of the fundraising committee by delegating tasks to student body members. This frees up time to manage the larger tasks associated with the fundraiser, such as communicating with potential sponsors and top donors.

Student engagement will boost your profits. Donors are more likely to give when students are involved and engaged in fundraising efforts, as it shows the importance of the cause. Involving students in sales and marketing expands your reach, increasing the campaign’s visibility and opening more windows of opportunity for donors to engage.

Benefits to Students

Student participation isn’t only valuable to your fundraiser. Students also reap many benefits from engaging in the campaign. Students learn critical life skills such as negotiating, business and sales practices, bookkeeping, budgeting, and project planning. This is also a great time to enhance responsibility and a sense of accountability.

Involvement in school fundraising can improve students’ morale. Trusting students with important tasks boosts their confidence as it shows you believe they are capable of handling the responsibility. They experience a sense of accomplishment when the campaign they are involved in is successful and positively impacts their fellow students.

How to Involve Students in Your School Fundraiser

There are many ways to involve students in your fundraising efforts. A few ways to do this include in your campaign are listed below.

Brainstorming

Students can test their creativity by participating in the brainstorming process. They can vote for fundraising ideas, such as selling products or events to host. You may allow a group of students to sit on a committee meeting to experience a live brainstorming session.

Marketing

Encourage students to help market your campaign. Gain visibility by asking students to share your fundraising page on social media, pass out fliers, or make phone calls to alum and local businesses.

Sales

Encouraging your students to engage with people in the selling process is a great way for them to gain confidence while boosting your profit margin at the same time. Another option is registering a fundraising page on a peer-to-peer platform. If selling tickets to an event, recruit students to work at the box office.

Volunteering

Ask students to volunteer. This can be set up and torn down for event fundraising, working merchandise tables or concessions, or greeting guests. Students can help organize inventory or hand out goods on pickup day for product fundraising.

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.