Campus Fundraising Ideas and campus group leaders can often encounter challenging times trying to consistently raise money for their group. Without sufficient funding, your Chapter or campus assembly won’t be able to take advantage of many opportunities or reach their long-term goals. Below you’ll find tips on how to run thriving fundraisers on campus, along with some great campus fundraising ideas to get you motivated and moving in the right direction.

Keys to Success

Begin with a specific and realistic objective.  While planning your Campus Fundraising Ideas, add up the costs for everything you and your group need to purchase to pull off your event.  Price everything out to the smallest detail.  Once you’ve reached that total, you’ll then know exactly how much your fundraiser will need to earn in order for you to break even.  Now, evaluate your event, considering an estimate of how many people might attend, how much each person may donate on average, to try to determine a realistic amount you’d like to earn from your event.  Strive to reach or exceed that goal.  

Create a fundraiser that is fun and of interest to the audience you are targeting.  If you’re throwing a fundraiser on campus, you’d better make it exciting or no one may come!  Pay attention to the general attitudes of students.  What are activities they would enjoy?  What would entice them to come to your event?  Perhaps offer incentives, prizes, or a special raffle to get them rolling in the door.  

Keep it short.  With campus fundraising ideas It’s easy to fall under the misunderstanding that the longer your event, the better.  In fact, the opposite holds true in many instances, especially on campuses where students are busy with school work, studying, and other campus activities.  Make your function stimulating but also keep to a restricted time limit.  This allows group members and students to better fit it into their busy schedules.

Get and keep your group organized.  Group leaders can find this task particularly challenging.  Often, you and your group members may be busy with studies, exams, homework, and employment, not to mention your social life or commitments to other groups.  Taking an organized approach to your fundraiser is essential to keeping your group members on target and able to complete their fundraising assignments for the event at hand.  One great way to handle this is to create short lists for everyone involved so they know, specifically, what their part is and what they themselves need to accomplish for the event to run successfully.

Campus Fundraising Ideas

Games and Tournaments

Have a game night with interesting games like wild variations on bingo or trivia games or set up a casino night.  Be creative and make it as fun and interesting as possible!  Charge a small entry fee to participate.  You can have prizes donated before the event or purchase them yourself for winners of different games.  You could also start tournaments, like a Twister, darts, ping pong, or pool tournament with ribbons or prizes.

 

Theme Movie Night

Get everyone together for a special movie night with a particular theme, such as “Horror Movie night.”  You can even spice it up by having people dress up like their favorite horror movie characters, and offer prizes for “best costume”, “scariest costume”, and so forth.  You can sell beverages, popcorn, and other snacks, too, to bring in even more money.

 

Food Sales

With campus fundraising ideas offering food to hungry college students is an easy way to their hearts and their pocket books.  There is a variety of ways to accomplish this.  Cookouts and barbeques are always excellent for students on the run or for a casual dinner event.  Selling hot dogs, chips, and other easy to serve items during lunch hours is also one possible way to earn some quick donations.  You could also have an ice cream social or sell beverages or snow cones on hot days or hot cocoa or coffee on cold ones to students, faculty, and others passing by.  You can also reach out to your community to ask them to donate food items for your fundraising event.  Explain the purpose of it and offer free publicity for their restaurant or other business.  

 

Washes

Now, we’ve all heard about charity car washes.  Why not step it up a notch by offering other types of washes, too, such as dog washes, window washes, bike washes, and so forth.  This is a very inexpensive way to set up a fundraiser.  Make it fun and have a great time and people will come. 

 

There are a million ideas out there waiting to be explored.  Some other campus fundraising ideas include having a special workshop, putting on a dinner or brunch, providing temporary public relations services, working with other fundraising groups, and so on.  Be imaginative and make the most of the many potential opportunities available on campus.  

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