Fundraising Ideas

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2	FUNDRAISER NAME	SUBMITTED COURTESY OF	TYPE	POTENTIAL LEADERS	TIMING	TARGET AUDIENCE(S)	DIFFICULTY LEVEL	DESCRIPTION

3	Haunted House Fundraiser	Courtesy of Malinda Perez, MacArthur High School	On Campus	Students	Fall	Community, Students	Medium	We begin planning for a Haunted House in September. We started small with the haunted house (or hallway, rather) and now the haunted house is a two-story, multiple-evening affair. The event is open to the public and we usually charge about $5 for the attraction and make around $850-$1,000. When you're first getting started, invite your administration to walk through the floor plan ahead of time to increase their comfort. To begin, we vote on a theme. From there, we craft a storyline, plan characters, and host auditions. We have stagecraft students who create the set. The beauty of a haunted house is the budget is often small, most things can be borrowed or thrifted. Drama students perform as actors. Speech and debate students help with technical support, marketing, ticket sales, you name it. We also use parents and staff to improve safety. Offering shifts for parents makes them more likely to volunteer.
4	Trivia Night Fundraiser	Courtesy of Webster University	On Campus	Students	School Year	Community, Students	Medium	Hosting a trivia night with paid admission can be a fun and simple way to bring in funds from around the community and your school population. Make a plan to reserve a large space in advance, like the cafeteria or a community center if you can't hold the event at school. A PA system and projector can improve the experience, but with some big speech and debate voices you ccould go without. See if a local business would donate a giftcard for the winner or set aside a small portion of your proceeds for that purpose. https://websterjournal.com/2022/11/15/speech-and-debate-team-hosts-trivia-night-fundraiser/
5	Tournament Co-Hosting	Courtesy of Jessica Cerchiaro, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart High School and Tracey Spinelli, Moon Area High School	On Campus	Coaches	School Year	Other teams	Medium	Small campuses can still gain the financial benefits of hosting a tourament by partnerinng with a nearby school to co-host. My school building is too small to host a tournament and we also have a pretty small team, but we are located about 6 miles away from Moon Area. Everything was physically hosted at Moon High School. They took care of the judges lounge, registration, and ordered trophies. We handled food and paid for Tabroom.com. We both submitted our receipts for reimbursement and then split the profits evenly.
6	Applying for STEM-related Grant Funding	Courtesy of Michael Amstutz, Edison High School	Independent	Coaches, Supporters	Year-Round	Community	Medium	The best way to search for grants is to check your city or county chamber of commerce. They will know if there is a foundation or corporation that encourages grants. Law offices are also a good place to search- they know the organizations in your area that fulfill grants in education. You also want to try your county Board of Education or County Educational Service Center for potential grants that are available. Any large, nationwide company that has an office or factory or site in your area is likely to offer local grants to schools in the area in which they pay taxes, or if you have a parent or contact that works at a large company, they should be able to reach out to corporate headquarters to see if there is anything available. I always focus on the debate aspect because many times the topics deal with STEM-related areas of research and study. Anything that you can tie to science, tech., math or the environment catches the eye of the panel discussing to whom grants should be awarded. I also stress that USX and IX competitors have to be well-read in the sciences and current events to thrive and that creates well-rounded Hellenic students which corporations or organizations can tout to their stockholders or clients. As you get started, look for templates. Grants usually have notes you can follow follow or specific things they ask for in the application. A cover letter is always good to explain what your program actually does and how many students are impacted. You also MUST express the need factor. For example, my school board does not give us anything except bus transportation. We must pay our memberships to the NSDA, registration fees, dues, awards, hotel expenses ourselves, so we have to be very frugal with our funds. If a foundation realizes the need, they are more apt to fulfill and underwrite a grant. The money is out there- you just have to look for it, find an hour or so to complete an application and wait for the funds to appear!
7	Tournament Sponsors	Courtesy of Steve Wang, North Hall High School	Independent	Coaches, Supporters	Year-Round	Community	Medium	I've always operated on the basis of asking for a sponsorship of a portion of up front costs of hosting a tournament, explaining that the Team would be expending X and/or Y amounts, and would be funding the rest of our season, competition at Nationals, etc... out of the proceeds from the hosting of the tournament. I typically included a brief history of the program and highlights of milestones our program had reached. A rundown of our costs for various competitions and a budget for our hosting of our invitational, and a projected budget for the costs of the rest of our season is also generally useful. The most important factor in getting better at it, for me, has been to make certain as much as possible of grant applications is "in the can" in documents/files during the Summer break, so that most of what needs to be done to apply is quickly accomplished when calendar dates are available after school has begun in the Fall. There often simply wouldn't be time to successfully pursue applications otherwise. Time on bus rides home, between rounds, and during off rounds on tournament days is often very useful in polishing/completing applications and arrangements for grants. Look for "natural friends" in your community, such as Optimist Clubs, Toastmasters Clubs, Rotary Clubs, American Legion Posts, your local Bar Association, etc., and appeal to them for help. Even if they aren't able to help directly, their members may very well know of other community sources of funding and/or voluntary judges.
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