Welcome, teachers, coaches, conductors, principals. Looking for some school fundraisers that work? Well, there are any number of ideas that you, your fellow staff members and your students can do. Whichever one you choose, be assured: these fundraisers will help your group earn the money you need your cause.

Hold a school carnival.

Everyone loves a carnival! Organize your carnival thoroughly and hope for a sunny day. Have teachers and parents organize stands with carnival games like darts, a ring toss, skeeball with beanbags, and spill the milk. Invite the entire student population to come with class memos. Have the principal sit at a dunk tank filled with slime and watch as the money comes rolling in!

Have the students sell something related to their cause.

Green teams can sell Earth Candles (sell for $12 to $15, at 50% profit), flower bulbs (try our Nature in Bloom selection, at 50% profit), and Dodo reusable bags (sell for $10 to $12, at 40% profit). Home ec classes can sell our cookie dough (try $10 Gourmet Cookie Dough: sell for $10, at 55% profit), and choir students can sell Sweet Yummy Lips lollipops (sell for 50 ¢ each, for 52% profit), All the fundraising products mentioned above can be found here.

Hold a benefit concert.

This is a rare opportunity to showcase the talent of the soloists in your ensemble! At the end of the concert, let the whole ensemble play the very last piece. Have student volunteers sell goodies before the show begins and at intermission. Don’t forget to ask for donations or charge a reasonable entry fee—the audience members will be happy to pay money to help out their talented friends!

At Halloween, turn the school into a haunted house.

This one requires more work than the other ideas, but the profits are amazing. Choose which rooms you want to decorate in the school, with cobwebs, chains, fake blood, torn drapery, fancy chandeliers and slime. Have volunteers dress up in scary costumes and position themselves around the school. Let some of them hide in nooks, crannies, and closets—they’ll jump out and scream at everyone who passes by!

Hold the fundraiser at nighttime. Sell candy apples, eyeball cupcakes and edible blood outside the school in addition to admission fees. If you time the groups which are coming in throughout the day, then you can have your actors play out scenes for each group, like Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster.

Warning: sign guests before they enter the school, gather them into large groups so that no one gets lost, and have plenty of costumed adults inside the mansion to watch over them.

For extra cash, put a swear jar in your classroom.

We all know that young people shouldn’t swear…but they often do, especially the teenagers. To capitalize on this (and to help teach them a lesson), place swear jars inside classrooms. Impose a small fee, like 25¢, that a student has to pay every time you hear them swear. If a student swears multiple times, increase the fee for each time they swear: first it costs 50 ¢, then it’s 75¢, then it’s a dollar….

There are so many choices for school fundraisers! Aside from what’s already been mentioned, you can also hold non-uniform days, football matches, a guess-the-number-of-jellybeans-in-the-jar game, a Jeopardy! -type quiz game, and book sales….among dozens of others. Have fun planning your next school fundraiser! Choose one that’s not too hard and that the student swill love to participate in!