Fundraisers for a small, local chapter

[CDP Amy]

Hi there~

I'm a member of a local sorority at the University of Toledo. For a few years, we've been working at Cedar Point for a weekend for our major fundraiser, but this year, for many reasons, we are unable to do so. We made at least $3000 each time at Cedar Point (w/ about 20 ladies working the 2 days, and we worked two weekends this past school year), and so, not being able to continue this fundraiser will really affect our budget, as we have very low dues and have no intention of raising our dues any time soon.

If anyone has any ideas what we can do, it'd be greatly appreciated. We have about 25 girls, so any ideas that are suited for the size of our sorority would be great.

Thank-you!
Amy

[tunatartare]

How big is the resident student population at your school? My school had about 3,000 residents so for our fundraiser, at the beginning of every semester, my sorority would send letters to parents of all resident students letting them know that we were selling care packages. We had an outside person make the care packages, we paid $7/package, it came out to about $8/package with total costs (postage, etc.), and we sold them for $15. They were pretty popular, especially with the parents of transfers and freshmen students. We would then deliver the care packages to students during midterms week. This will only work however, if you have a reasonable amount of resident students. I am not familiar with your school, but if you have like 10,000+ resident students and only 25 girls in your chapter, then that might not be the best idea.

[CDP Amy]

Originally Posted by KLPDaisy

How big is the resident student population at your school? My school had about 3,000 residents so for our fundraiser, at the beginning of every semester, my sorority would send letters to parents of all resident students letting them know that we were selling care packages. We had an outside person make the care packages, we paid $7/package, it came out to about $8/package with total costs (postage, etc.), and we sold them for $15. They were pretty popular, especially with the parents of transfers and freshmen students. We would then deliver the care packages to students during midterms week. This will only work however, if you have a reasonable amount of resident students. I am not familiar with your school, but if you have like 10,000+ resident students and only 25 girls in your chapter, then that might not be the best idea.

We probably have about 4000 students who live on campus, so we're about the same size as you. I know that another company that's near campus does care packages for the beginning of the school year, or some other event (I really don't know), but they're very pricey. This may work for us, thank-you! One question, though: what did you put in the care packages?

If anyone has any other suggestions, please post them. I'll give a list of possible ideas to our Philanthropy Chair, and hopefully some of your ideas will work!

Amy

[tunatartare]

Well, like I said, we have a woman make them, but usually she puts in things like raisins, granola bars, cookies, fruit snacks, etc.

[SOPi_Jawbreaker]

One fraternity at our school did a raffle for a DVD player. They're in MGC with us and the MGC orgs tend to be much smaller in number than the other GLO's at Penn State. This fraternity sold raffle tickets in the HUB. They did really well with it, raising over $1000. The only thing with raffles is that you need to check with your school if you can do it, and if you're allowed to do a raffle, there may be a bit of paperwork to fill out.



My sorority sold candy grams in the HUB during the week leading up to Valentine's Day. One of our girls made roses kinda like these but she used pink tulle ribbon instead of an opaque ribbon. Then she covered each rose with a plastic bag and gold twist tie. We sold the roses for $1 each. We also had mugs filled with candy and wrapped in clear cellophane that was tied with red and pink ribbons. We sold those for $5 each. We also sold cute takeout boxes (from Micheal's Arts and Crafts) filled with candy and wrapped with cellophane and tied with red and pink ribbons. We sold those for $3 each. Students could either buy one and take it then and there, or we could deliver it if the recipient lived on campus (they had to fill out a gift tag with the name of the sender, the name of the recipient, and the recipient's dorm room address). On the night before Valentine's Day, we took the candy grams to the commons buildings and asked the person at the commons desk to put the candy grams in people's mailboxes for us. Maybe, you could do something like this in conjunction with the care packages at the beginning of the school year. Just use your school colors rather than pink and red. Since it's only $3 or $5 and you'd be selling in the student union or some other populated area, you could probably get a lot of returning students (i.e. upperclassmen) buying them for their friends on impulse.

[SOPi_Jawbreaker]

I just remembered another fundraiser we do, SOPie In the Face. I think it was $3 to throw and $5 to smoosh. We posted flyers, had sisters invite their friends and classmates to come, invited the other orgs in our council to come, and had sisters invite people from other student organizations they're in.

[CDP Amy]

Originally Posted by SOPi_Jawbreaker

I just remembered another fundraiser we do, SOPie In the Face. I think it was $3 to throw and $5 to smoosh. We posted flyers, had sisters invite their friends and classmates to come, invited the other orgs in our council to come, and had sisters invite people from other student organizations they're in.

Thanks for the ideas!!

[PhiMu-tude]

Ok...I am the philanthropy and fundraising chair for the Rho Zeta chapter. Our chapter is around the same size as yours but our school is slightly smaller. We are in Louisville so we have a big city to our advantage so this may or may not help you. In August, I send out letters to local businesses to get donations of either gift cards, gift certificates, or actual items. We then compile baskets shortly before Thanksgiving that we have a silent auction on in our student center. We raised about $2,500 from doing that and there really wasn't a ton of work to be done other than the donation letters and phone calls to local businesses. We also do a car wash in the Wal-Mart parking lot....they are a CMN supporter so they match what we make plus $200. This is a hit or miss depending on the weather normally. Hope this helps.

[Tom Earp]

A Sorority at My Alma Mater used to sell Yellow Mums at the Home coming Game with Red Ribbons tied to them. It was the schools colors.

It was a big thing back when, but I have not seen them do it in years.

All of the Alums would be forced to buy them for wives!

[amyersDZ]

around halloween we have a bobbing for turtles booth. It is a dollar a bob and 4 of the plastic turtles have numbers on the bottom. (some have no number) if someone pulls out a turtle with a number they win a prize that we had donated to us. We made around $180 last year doing it. It wasn't a whole lot but every little bit helps.

DZ love and mine

[Royal Zeta]

I think we might try that this Halloween, The churches in this area do alot of activities on that night, because times are so dangerous, I think we might open up several booths like that to increase our Scholar Ship Fund. THanks for the idea.