Food: Fundraising With Food

Food Shopping
Articles
Seafood Articles

Cheeses
Chocolates, & Candy
Coffee & Tea
Desserts
Fruit
Gift Baskets
International Foods
Meats
Nuts
Seafood
Specialty Foods
Complete List
Home

Article List
Directory
Resources

Articles/Resources:
Beans
Breakfast
Budget
Cheese
Chinese
Comfort Foods
Dessert
Diet
Eating Habits
Everything Food
Fast Food
Food Gifts
Food History
Food Shopping
Food Traditions
Foods and Events
Foods and Holidays
Foods and Places
French
Fruits
Gift Baskets
Healthy Foods
Italian
Lunch
Mexican
Recipes
Restaurants
Treats
Vegetables

Archives:
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006

Have New Articles E-Mailed To You!

Fundraising With Food
Saturday, November 12, 2005

If your team or organization needs to raise some cash, either or general operating expenses or for particularly large expenditure, chances are you'll have a fundraiser.  Fundraisers can take many different shapes and forms.  For example, some organizations solicit prize donations from local businesses and then raffle off the prizes, while they keep the money raised from ticket sales.  Other organizations might have a car wash to raise money.  Another great way to raise money on a small scale (I'm not talking about nationwide charities here) would be to sell food.

We all love food, and we are even more willing to buy something if we think that the money is going towards a good cause.  For this reason, many fundraisers based on food meet or surpass their monetary goals.  I don't have any actual numbers, of course, but just based on the fundraisers I've personally been involved in, food fundraisers have an extremely high rate of success.

The great part about food fundraisers is the versatility.  You can use almost any kind of food, and then come back the very next month and have another fundraiser using a different kind of food.  Back-to-back car washes, on the other hand, might not be as successful because the novelty of those types of things usually wear off.  Similarly, having too many raffles in a row probably isn't a good idea, either.  I know that if I kept buying raffle tickets but never won anything, I would eventually stop buying them.  You generally won't run into that problem with food fundraisers.

What kind of food should you sell?  That's entirely up to you.  Pizza fundraisers are perfect for high school or college clubs.  When I was in school, my friends and I went to nearly every pizza fundraiser that we heard about, even if we didn't particularly like the club it was for.  After all, when you're a broke college student, you can't pass up the chance to get $0.50 slices of pizza on a Friday night!

Selling baked goods is another surefire way to raise some money for your organization.  This was the preferred fundraising activity of churches in my neighborhood when I was growing up.  Many church members would volunteer their time baking such things as pies, cakes, cookies, and pastries, and then they would gather in the church parking lot (if it was a nice day) or basement (if it wasn't) and sell those goods.  Even though my family wasn't part of any church, we always hit up the bake sales for the chance to buy some delicious homemade cakes for $5 or whatever.

Additionally, I have seen or partaken in fundraisers featuring hot dogs, hamburgers, cookies, ice cream, and even baked potatoes.  As you can see, you really can center a fundraiser around just about any kind of food.

So the next time your organization or school club needs to raise some money, try hosting a food fundraiser.  With a little planning, some good volunteers, and hard work, you can pull it off!

2:10 AM Comments:
Post a Comment

<< Home