[Best] Preschool Fundraising Ideas
Table of Contents
Cookie Dough Sale
Popcorn Sale
Fun Sock Catalog
Candle Brochure
Snackin’ In The USA
Easy Fundraising Ideas For Any Preschool
Even the youngest children can make a difference. They can help raise money with easy fundraisers for preschool programs, or for any good cause in your community for that matter! Our 11 Best Preschool Fundraising Ideas are profitable and productive for your group. If you are looking to Find the Best Preschool Fundraisers – we can help you.
11 Top Fundraisers For Small Preschools
Sure it will take a little organizing and imagination, but oh how it will be worthwhile!
If you’re going to hold a preschool fundraising event, then you might as well choose something your students will love to support. Let’s face it, some early childhood education fundraisers are just not that much fun. So since we are helping kids out, doesn’t it make sense they have a good time?
Don’t start from scratch! Enjoy our best 11 preschool fundraising ideas to help little students, kids, toddlers and tots! These also make fundraisers for childcare centers too. Finally, remember you can use the funds for your center or donate the proceeds to the charity of your choice.
Get your kids involved!
Look for ways to get even the youngest children involved so they can have a share from the very beginning. Be open minded here because this is an opportunity to build experiences and character in young children that will potentially help them in their professional career later on.
For instance here are few tips to help you plan your next event:
- The children can help in drawing and coloring signs, flyers and advertisements talking about your next event to raise donations for your preschool center.
- Additionally, the kids can hand out flyers to their family and friends. They can also show people their fundraiser brochure in the case they are selling food and snacks.
- You can also invite the children to help make videos about the preschool event and then post them online.
- Additionally, you can get the kids to actually participate in creating an item that you can sell.
- Finally, remember to thank the kids, students, supporters and volunteers!
Whether you have the NAEYC accreditation or not, these preschool fundraising tips work! Choose a plan that resonates with you and has the highest fundraising potential profit. Then use these free resources below to help you reach your fundraising goal.
Write a young children’s book where every child is an author
Imagine your child being a published author!
In this fun fundraiser, you could pick either a theme or story to tell. Plan it so every child could contribute a chapter of the book.
You might be wondering, “how could a young four-year-old child write a chapter in a book?”
Actually it’s very easy. The child can dictate the story and the parent or preschool attendant can write it down. Voila! Now every preschooler is now a published author!
Furthermore, the children can even illustrate it. Simply add their drawings to the book to accompany their story. And finally, have them sign their work when they are done.
This is a cute way to pull at the heart strings of any potential donor.
Tip: Run a first addition and combine it with tickets for a moms night out dinner for two. You could hold a silent auction for the highest bidder.
How much will this cost you to Do This?
There are many self publishing websites online for you to print your children’s book. Simply get everyone excited about the idea of writing a book together as a preschool class. Then collect an order for the number of copies every parent wants to buy. Finally you can order your books and pay for them using the money that you collected upfront.
Tip: Choose a popular local charity to support. Tell your supporters that you will donate a portion of the proceeds to the charity. This will move some to support your drive where they might not normally do so otherwise.
Can you see how you can make money with this preschool program? Can you see how your students and family will love the idea of their kids becoming an author writing their own book?
Sell cookie dough for your pre-k students
Where do you get the cookie dough from? FREE Resources!
That’s the easy part. Fundraising Zone can provide you with free brochures to advertise their many flavors to choose from. The plan is a simple one. The kids can simply show the brochure to their friends, family and neighbors. Of course your children will need adult supervision to do this safely.
How much money can your preschool earn?
Your preschoolers have the potential to earn up to 12 dollars on every $24 tub of dough they sell.
The popularity of this fund raiser event is very evident. It is because the preschool teachers and parent’s groups say the cookies taste great and find it has a very good profit potential.
How much will this cost you?
Best of all there is no money out of pocket for this food fundraiser. This means it is a risk free program for parents and students. The customers simply pay for their order upfront. You even get free shipping when you meet the minimum order required.
Remember to thank each customers for their donation support. Hopefully your gratitude will move them to want to support your sale next year too.
Kid Kalendars — A fun take on custom calendars
One of the great things about kids being in preschool is learning how to draw, color and paint. So why not turn some of these works of art into a kid’s calendar? This way your kids and parents can enjoy them all year long!
There are two ways that you can do this. First, depending on how big the class is, you can have every child contribute one work of art to the calendar. The second way is to have a custom calendar for every child. This way they can put several pieces of their artwork up. And parents will love this to show off on their wall or refrigerator.
How does it work?
First you can commission the kids to draw something based on each month of the year. Then you can assign the right drawing with the corresponding month it belongs to. The students will love this!
Next have one of your teacher aides take a digital photo of every piece of art.
After that you will need to plan out which photos to use in the calendar.
There are many websites online that will allow you to make custom calendars. By the way, you can usually get a better price when you bulk order instead of just buying one at a time.
Send a fundraiser letter home with the children to their parents informing them about the calendar sale. Tell them why you need to fundraise. Take every parent’s order and collect payment upfront in advance. Remind every parent to order enough for both sets of grandparents!
Fun shirt sales fundraisers for kids
You can do this several ways to raise money for children’s education.
Here are a few t-shirt ideas:
- A shirt for parents that says, “My kid goes to _____________ preschool”.
- Hold an art contest in your community. Invite everyone to participate. Have people vote on facebook for their favorite design for the new shirt. Thank your artists so they help support next year’s art contest.
- Take orders for the shirts and collect payment upfront. Plan on doing it this way so you have no money out of pocket.
- Additionally, you could do a shirt that has a famous quote on it. You can similarly hold a popularity contest for the best slogan or logo and print shirts to sell.
How much will this cost you?
Get people to prepay for their shirt orders. This way you have a no upfront cost event for your preschool.
Learn about these Unique Childcare Fundraisers
Dress up photo day
Team up with a local photographer to come and take portraits of the children at your child care center. Make sure mom and dad knows ahead of time so the kids will be at school that day and dressed appropriately.
How can this be made fun for the students?
Choose a photographer that has different costumes, hats and props to take fun photos of the children. Look for ways to entertain the children and make them laugh. This way they will take the kind of photos that will move mom and grandma to buy many copies!
Your preschool can arrange to get a percentage of all photograph print sets sold. In the end, the parents, photographer and school will all be happy!
If you make it fun enough you will make it memorable! Make sure to take plenty of photos and videos to put on social media. You can use the same photos and videos to talk up the event next year!
A fundraiser to involve the students, parents, family, neighbors and the community
The more people involved the better. This allows every parent to reach out to their list of contacts and get them involved in peer-to-peer fundraising.
Cutest baby contest
Speaking of cute photographs, every mom has beautiful baby pictures they cherish. So why not create a baby contest to see who had the cutest baby? After all everybody thinks their baby is the cutest!
This is an idea can be done virtually using zoom, text and email or actually done at the school. All the photos can be posted online for people to vote on with their wallets!
How could you monetize this?
You can charge a small entry fee for each baby photo. Or just suppose
Just suppose every parent could give as many votes for their own child at a dollar a piece. Parents can also call their friends and family and ask them if they would like to vote too. This could easily become a very profitable event for your preschool. By the way, this makes a great fundraiser event for toddler groups too.
Sell popcorn for early childhood education
People across the United States of America have been buying popcorn for decades and supporting youth programs. Think about the Boy Scouts for instance, since they have become synonymous with selling popcorn. Your preschool can do the same thing.
Food and snacks always sell well.
Your preschool has an advantage though. While the scouts sell popcorn for $ 20 a pop, your preschoolers can sell gourmet popcorn all day long at only twelve dollars each.
You might be wondering where are we going to get this popcorn from?
Well you can make it yourself and bag it too. However this gets messy and time consuming very quickly. Plus your parents are busy enough already as it is.
The other choice is to work with a fundraiser company like FundraisingZone.com. You will receive free popcorn brochures and all the support you need to help you have a successful event at your school. You can even qualify for free product shipping! (With free shipping you have an even greater profit potential for your early childhood program.)
Selling popcorn is an easy way to raise money for children. Finally, remember this—Our Parent and Teacher groups have been making money with our free popcorn fundraising brochures for years.
Why do they come back year after year?
- It is a delicious food product to sell. (That’s why people like this instead of buying a $16 candle.)
- Furthermore it is quite affordable at only twelve dollars. Parents appreciate this. This means your customers may buy more than one popcorn bag at a time.
- Additionally there is a very good profit margin for preschools. For instance your kids can earn up to 50% on every sale.
- You even get free shipping when you meet the minimum order required.
- Thousands of PTA groups have proved this school fundraising program works.
- Finally you also get free catalogs, envelopes, sales material, custom parent letters and training.
Click here to learn more about this popcorn fundraising program for kids.
Hold a virtual restaurant event for your school
Did you know that restaurants are going out of business right now and are looking for ways to get new customers? So why not team up with a local restaurant in your community and see if they would like to work together for your next event?
Why does this idea have so much popularity with people? It is because people like to eat food!
How would a virtual restaurant event work?
Talk to the restaurant manager and find out what the slowest night of the week is. Ask them if they would be willing to give you a percentage of all the business you send their way on that night.
Now it’s up to you to get to work. Collaborate with the restaurant on a fundraiser flyer or cards you can use. When people show the flyer to pick up their order, your preschool will get credit for the sale.
To kick off your advertising campaign, ask the restaurant for a sample of their menu favorites. Then video your customers tasting it and put these videos up on facebook and youtube.
Talk this up far and wide using texting, email, social media and phone calls. This is a perfect way for your supporters to support your local preschool while still maintaining social distancing. It also a fundraising idea you can do annually.
As an alternative twist on this, once the social distancing restrictions have been lifted, you can actually have a party at the restaurant.
You can earn anywhere from a 10%-20% profit margin on this event.
How to sign up advertisers to raise money
So here’s another idea to raise money for your preschool. Think of all the local businesses in your community that would love to have the parents of your preschoolers as customers. Start with the parents of your students.
Here are a few to get your started:
- Local bankers
- Insurance agent
- Lawn maintenance company
- Real estate agent
- Home improvement contractor
Now think of ways that you can use your preschool real estate to offer advertising to these companies.
Here are a few ways to sell ad space:
- Offer to hang advertising banners on your exterior fence facing the parking lot.
- Next, could you sell ads on your website or newsletter? Give them a discount if they sign up for a year at a time.
- What about sending special offers to your customer email list for a fee?
- Could you team up with private schools like Montessori and see if they will pay referral fees for the parents you refer to them?
This is an easy idea that will pay you every year.
Read-a-thons help children learn to love to read!
Do you want your preschool to be more than simply a daycare center?
You certainly want to help your children get a head start with early child educational development.
One of the best ways to do this is to run a read-a-thon to help children fall in love with books at an early age. These are some of the most important fundraising ideas for schools because they raise more than money. They raise awareness for the importance of reading daily.
The lesson? Do a book-a-thon.
How can you do this?
A book-a-thon can help begin a life long journey of reading and learning from books. Now most preschoolers have not learned to read yet. So you can have the children ask family and friends to read to them a favorite story from a book. If everyone was willing to pledge to donate a dollar for every children’s book they read, this would serve two purposes. First of all the children would get to hear a good story. Second, the school will raise the needed funds. And finally, as an added bonus, children will spend more quality time with their family.
You can make it a competition too. Why not award a prize to the children for the most books read and for raising the most money?
Have a bike-a-thon Fundraiser
We already discussed how a thon works. So here is another version —- riding bikes.
This is a great spring fundraiser ideas for preschool. Children have been stuck in the house all winter. Spring is a the perfect opportunity to dust those bikes off and get them out of the garage. Kids need playtime and exercise outdoors. This is a great way to raise money while helping our kids get away from the TV screen and video games.
How can you raise funds this way?
Ask parents to run a bake sale at the thon. Imagine all those home baked goodies that kids of all ages like to eat.
Seek sponsors to pay for every lap around the block or lap around the local school parking lot. You can also sell tickets for a small fee for everyone to enter the event. Take lots of photos, videos and post them on the internet online. Award prizes to the child that raises the most money and bike rides the most laps. This fundraising idea can easily become a local tradition for your school.
Use these lessons learned from NAEYC
We hope you enjoyed these easy fundraising ideas for preschoolers.
Once you find events that work, this is the time to use the education you got while putting this together. Remember the National Association for the Education of Young Children promotes high-quality learning by connecting practice, policy, and research. So what will you do with what you learned?
Publicize your fundraising efforts so you get the best bang for your buck. Then rinse and repeat this next year using everything you learned this year. This is what our most successful customers do when they have their brochure fund raiser each spring and fall.
And finally please let us know how we can help your preschool raise the funds you need.
