Our team has taken a wide approach to fundraising. I think it would be great to find different and unique strategies that teams have taken to raise money for their teams. I love to for people to share what they do besides the typical corporate sponsors.
Our team has done recently:
Prize Calendar: We get prizes donated by local businesses and have a prize on each day and we sell tickets to people who get a chance to win each day of the months drawing. This will usually net us around $2,500, it is a 100% profit because all of the prizes are donated.
Host an FLL Event: Maybe not to unique but we host and run concessions at the event this will usually net us $1,500. The initial cost is the largest investment is tables and the concession equipment. We have found it beneficial to work with teams around us that also hold events and we share resources.
Concessions: We hold concession events for plays, sports games etc. This will usually net us $500-$800 per night.
It’s been a long time since we did this (10+ years ago), but we sold freeze pops at the farmers market. We were mainly there for outreach and got our booth for free however.
An idea that popped in my head for teams with a cnc router, laser cutter or 3D printer was to make unique Christmas ornaments and coasters related to our city or school, like the City logo or a steam shovel.
We’ve hosted Smash Bros. Tournaments in the past. You get money from admission, raffle baskets, and concessions.
We’ve also done Super Bowl Boxes, Applebees Flapjack Fundraisers, bake sales, and car washes.
Our team has hosted a badminton tournament in our school and was wildly successful. I’d say sports tournaments would get a lot of kids in a school to sign up for.
Our CTE center would host “Pankow Con” (overnight lockin) with smash, guitar hero, CS Tourney (source Lan server), board game rooms, mtg tourney, etc. and split proceeds with whatever clubs participated in helping run it.
The Chinese language club, SkillsUSA and BPA also would participate with FIRST students to run it all. I was a student back then but we easily had 200 participants at $25 a ticket. The cost for food and drinks (included in ticket price to start) was a bit high but we had donated prizes for the tournaments so it paid the team over $1,000 when it was all said and done. Plus… Ya know… Giant game party
Tournaments sound like a wonderful idea, my team needs to have something like that. One cool idea I saw elsewhere on CD is building furniture in your workshop and having an auction for each piece. I feel like you could get a pretty high profit from that if you made each piece of furniture super high quality.
Our school’s construction tech class does Dog Houses, Cornhole Boards and I think Sheds as projects for sale to give the students something to do. But doing it as a fundraising effort is something I never thought about before.
Coding Camps are another good fundraiser. 10 students for a a five-day Day Camp usually has low investment and high return. If you have access to LEGO EVO3 or SPIKE PRIME, these can be the platform for the coding. If not the micro:bit (https://microbit.org) is another great platform for a coding camp.
