Financing school projects, such as new extra-curricular activities, facilities or field trips, can be difficult at the best of times. When money is tight, students and the community can create fundraising projects that cover the shortfall. But before you start your fundraiser, spend time and attention on creating a brief business plan. This will help you ensure that the time and money you invest in creating the fundraiser will actually be profitable enough to generate the funds you need.
Calculate the costs and resources needed to perform the fundraising. You will need to advertise the fundraiser or the project, perhaps through fliers or a local radio ad, as well as spend time, phone calls, photocopy costs and transportation costs for soliciting donations or free services. Ongoing business activities have perpetual costs, such as staff or utilities.
Select one or more business opportunities that you believe have the potential to cover the project's budget. You will need to scale the fundraiser to the size of the project; for example, a bake sale could be a great business event to fund a single issue of the school newspaper. You could charge for tickets to a school dance performance in order to cover its costs. To cover a new computer lab you may need to get a bank loan and repay it through offering paid tutoring services and charging the surrounding community for wi-fi access.
Evaluate the market opportunity for your project or fundraising goods or services. If you need to sell 200 cookies but you only anticipate 40 people in attendance at your bake sale, you may need to re-evaluate the bake sale as an option, or the price of the cookies. Expect to sell items or services to less than 1 percent of your potential market, and determine whether that sales volume will meet your needs.
Determine the financial needs of the project. Some projects, such as a student-run radio station, will have ongoing needs and will need to conduct periodic fundraising; in this case determine how much money the project will require per school term. Other projects, such as a choir trip, are one-time events and should be fully budgeted in advance.
Write your findings for each potential business into a report, and compare them for suitability with your project. Select for fundraisers ideas that have the highest profits, as a percentage of resources spent on them. You may find that you can combine several business ideas or one-time events in order to achieve a fresh new business that will generate higher funding for your school project.
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