Need Fundraising Ideas!

How about a recycle day? You could have people bring their cans in and then recycle them and use that money.

Learn how to make paper cranes or another origami piece that is easier (you should be able to google this) and sell them. This could be in conjunction with other sales or incorporated into a theme. My advice is to keep it simple so the girls can be as involved as possible. (I'm assuming Second and Third grade and a troop size of around 10?) I agree about the bake sale, here we are just finishing up Cookie sales.

Last year, we did an impromptu auction for Haiti relief. We had a big dinner party (you could do pot luck) and asked everyone to bring things to auction off. We had a live auction for bigger ticket items, and a "shoebox" auction for small things.

In the live auction (run by me, with a big mouth!), had gift certificates for massages, manicures, haircuts, facials, a guided kayak trip and personal training. We auctioned off a bunch of wine - several people brought one bottle each but we made a package of 6 bottles. People brought all kinds of things - photographs (a woman who does her own), art (guy who owns a gallery), expensive fragrances (a woman who is one of those department store "spritz ladies" who got a sample for us), antiques (a guy who has a booth at an antique cooperative), new leather gloves (someone got them for a birthday and didn't want them - still had tags on them), a scarf (same deal - tags on), and so on. You could ask for horseback riding lessons, ask nurseries for free plants, and so on. As local newspapers for free subscriptions. Ask mechanics for a free front end alignment. Dry cleaners, florists, music stores (3 free lessons) -- anyone you and your scouts' parents write a check to.

For the shoebox auction, we displayed hardcover books (read once - they're in great shape), home-made cookies, jewelry (stuff people didn't wear anymore), a sewing kit, designer pens (not everyone uses them but they were bought by someone who loved them), and all kinds of "re-gifting" ideas. People cleaned out their closets of perfectly good stuff and got into the spirit of giving for a cause!

For the shoebox part, we bought a wheel of raffle tickets and sold them for $1 each or 20 tickets for $15. Every item had a sticker on it with a number (use garage sale labels) and then we had a small box or just an envelope with that number on it) - people put as many tickets as they want into the envelope or box that applies to the item they are interested in. So no one winds up winning an item they don't want, and every item goes home with someone. At the end of the night, pull a winning ticket out of each envelope.

For the live auction, one way to make it fun and also to raise more money is to get more than one gift certificate for facials, manicures, massages, etc., but just tell the bidders that there is ONE. Get a bidding war going, and then when one bidder is at the top, obviously they get the item. Then go to the "runner up" and say, "Okay, you didn't want to outbid, but if you MEET that top bid, I'll give you the 2nd certificate." They always agree - if not, someone else will. It's fun, people laugh like crazy, and you get double the money.

Make sure that your donors know that this is a fundraiser for Japan, and businesses should chip in, even in tough times. People who offer services (massages, facials) usually are more generous than stores or restaurants because it's just their time, not goods, that they are offering. They hope for a continuing customer. If they agree to one thing, ask them for 2.

Let people be creative in offering what they are good at. The kayaking trip, for example, was really fun and cost the donor nothing - she loves to kayak, and it was bought by someone new to the area who wanted to find a place to kayak.

We put out some tables and displayed everything - we leaned a large bulletin board against a wall and posted the gift certificates. As people snacked on appetizers, they roamed from living room to dining room to family room, browsing and deciding what they wanted to bid on. It was incredibly fun. It was like "dinner and a show" - the live auction being a ton of fun even for those who weren't bidding.

Let me know if you need more info.

What a wonderful idea!! Good for you :)

Maybe get the girls in uniform, and although it's discouraged, go door to door. You can go to a wholesale grocery store and buy huge boxes of laffy taffy, snack cakes, whatever, for pennies on the dollar. Sell each item for a dollar (you'll make more than your spent) and have the girls give a little shpeal on how this is benefitting Japan. My EMT class did this when 9/11 happened to support the families of the fallen firefighters.

We also had someone donate a car, and we borrowed a huge rubber mallet, gloves, goggles, and extra protective gear from the shop class. We charged people $5 per wack to destroy the car. We made HUNDREDS of dollars!!

If you're near a Pump It Up I know that they give 50% which is really good. If not check a local bounce house place. Good luck. Great idea. Oh here's another. Find a photographer willing to take photos & place on a cd. Have a 1 or 2 day photo op, charge $50 for a 20 minute session at 1 location then put the pics on cd. You're brownies really wouldn't be doing too much but I'm sure you could think of something. Maybe make nice frames to give out with the cd.

I like the fancy benefit dinner party with silent auction. You can go around to places and ask people to donate live auction items for relief for Japan, you can find some pretty good things. Places will donate gift cards that you can incorporate into baskets that you can auction off. You can also ask the parents to donate anything possible- you could have them donate things for baskets like a "movie night" basket with movies, popcorn, candy, etc. You could make a ''spa'' basket with various spa items and a massage gift certificate. Then, auction them off at a benefit dinner night with all of the girl scouts and their families.

I was going to suggest a huge Charity garage sale. Ask everyone to donate their stuff. The girls could sell bottled water and lemonade during the sale.

Advertise it as a sale with all proceeds being donated to the Red Cross for Japan relief..

have everyone in the troop bring items for a yard sale. sell baked goods and drinks too.

Get donations to fill very large Easter Baskets and sell tickets for a basket raffle.

Some local resturaunts do fundraising nights or days where a portion of what people buy will go to the orgnaization.

I represent Private Quarters, which if you are not familiar, are affordable, quality bedding, bath and comfort wear products. I am willing to donate 15% of sales to your cause. People can purchase on line or we can do a presentation and take orders. Let me know if you are interested and I can tell you more.

I am a Pampered Chef Consultant. We have fundraisers that offer 10-15% back depending on sales. We can also do either a live party or an online and catalog party. I am in Whittier so we are not too far for either. Check out my website and let me know if you are interested. www.pamperedchef.biz/kreationsbykathy
Good luck!

You could always have a car wash.

Also, what about selling raffle tickets? You could probably get some local stores to donate items and services. A guy I work with arranged a raffle for his church by getting different stores to donate items. He was able to raffle hotel rooms at the beach, limo service, spa services, gift cards (for grocery stores, gas, Walmart, etc.), electronics, gift baskets, flower arrangements, etc. and they ended up making a lot of money for the church.

Edited to add:
If you do a car wash I would suggest not setting a price. Explain to people what you are doing the car wash for and let them decide how much to donate. If you don't have a set price people tend to be more generous.

Partylite Candles has a great fundraiser that gives 50% back to the organization - and each person gets some beautiful candles for their support! Let me know if you want more information. We can put it together fairly easily. Have a great day,
J.

I just had one at a bounce house tonight. I booked it only 2 weeks ahead of time. All I had to do was put the word out: Facebook, Evite, flyers. The place just gave us a % of sales for the jumping and pizza/pop was included. Alot of places will give you %age of their sales if you have any event there. Restaurants too. I did one a couple years ago where anyone that went to a certain restaurant all day and said they were there for our group, 20% of the bill was given to our charity. You just have to get the word out and get people to show up. We held 50/50 drawings at the events as well. Maybe the girls could help make flyers, pass them out at businesses/stores (with permission) and help out at the event as well.

Updated

I just had one at a bounce house tonight. I booked it only 2 weeks ahead of time. All I had to do was put the word out: Facebook, Evite, flyers. The place just gave us a % of sales for the jumping and pizza/pop was included. Alot of places will give you %age of their sales if you have any event there. Restaurants too. I did one a couple years ago where anyone that went to a certain restaurant all day and said they were there for our group, 20% of the bill was given to our charity. You just have to get the word out and get people to show up. We held 50/50 drawings at the events as well. Maybe the girls could help make flyers, pass them out at businesses/stores (with permission) and help out at the event as well.

You can order the rubber bracelet bands and sell them
A face painting booth
Sell single flowers - you could get a wholesale florist to donate flowers and then sell them for $1 a piece
Have the girls make tsunami relief lapel ribbon and sell them
This may sound cheezy - but what about selling brownies? Individually wrapped with a "Brownies for Tsunami Relief" sticker on them. If you made tshirts I bet the parents would buy them too.

A bake sale worked great with our Cub Scouts when my son was in it. We picked a Sunday and scheduled to sit out the doors of our local grocery store. Parents and boys baked stuff (in your case you could have the other troops donate some baked goods too) and we had a collection jug. Some people just donated and other told us "keep the change".

50/50 raffle also works well.

A lot of the other suggestions you have gotten are great but some require the ability to tie into another event that would get you an audience (not bad ideas but may be hard to do in the timeframe you indicated).

I'm not sure how to go about it but a co-workers daughter had a fundraiser for a class trip through Amazon.com. It was super simple. All I had to do was click on a link to enter Amazon through the organizations' website and a percentage of my purchase went to the student/organization. It was simple because I wasn't buying anything I didn't really need. I shop regularly on Amazon and with an extra click a part of my purchase was donated. Also, recently my daughters preschool had a pancake breakfast at Applebee's where the teaching staff served breakfast to everyone. The tickets were $10 and $5 of those dollars went directly to the preschool. there was a huge turnout and everyone had a great time.

First of all, congrats on getting your fundraising started! Raising support for a worthy cause can be super rewarding. But obviously, if you're not an official non-profit, it can be really tricky finding a good way to build support for your cause.

One route you might want to consider: setting up a homepage for your group on a fundraising website. Having a group homepage online makes organizing and fundraising infinitely easier ... And though the majority of fundraising sites require you have official non-profit status, many good ones only require that you are a group - and will give you plenty of the tools you need.

For example, one good site is Meet Up (www.meetup.com), who allow you to fundraise directly to your account, and register a group without having an official non-profit status - and they cover groups around the world, while giving you some tools to do event management. But the tools they offer are a little limited outside of fundraising.

Another good option would be Empowered.org (www.empowered.org), a platform that also helps small groups fundraise and organize (regardless of non-profit status). They also work for international groups - and offer a fair amount of useful tools, like the ability to organize your group or to create volunteer activities and fundraising campaigns for more targeted ways to raise support.

Or you could always try to send up your own PayPal account to link to you directly to help you fundraise, but this is a little trickier and a bit inflexible.

Good luck getting started moving forward! Hope that helped.