Fundraisers are a common practice in schools these days. They are used to raise money for school supplies, school equipment or school events, but does raising money always have to be so wasteful and unhealthy? No! There are plenty of eco-friendly fundraisers available for schools to use. Below are just a few of these alternatives.
Collect and recycle. Recycling for money is the easiest and fastest way to raise money for school. There is no need to sell anything. All students and their parents need to do is collect recyclables items from friends and family members. Different programs accept different things, but the most popular items to recycle for money right now are ink cartridges, laser cartridges and used cell phones.
Students collect these items and turn them into the school. The school turns them in for recycling and in return the school is rewarded with money or new merchandise.
The benefits of this type of fundraiser are: 1. Students don’t have to hassle family members for money, but instead for their recyclables. 2. Family members don’t have to stuff themselves with fundraiser candy to help out. 3. Recycling reduces landfill waste.
There should be no cost to participate in this type of fundraiser. If there is a fee consider finding another recycling fundraiser. There are plenty out there that are free to use.
Unfortunately recycling for money doesn’t always yield as much money as selling products do, but combined with fundraisers like the ones below students and their parents can help raise enough money for the school with no or minimal impact to the environment.
http://www.thinkrecycle.com
Recreate and sell. Encourage a group of students, parents (perhaps the PTO) and teachers to make handmade eco-crafts. Announce the fundraiser plans at the school and have a sign-up sheet for volunteers. Then sell the handmade eco-crafts to raise money for the school.
Good easy to do eco-crafts could include: hemp bracelets, soy candles, cereal notebooks, jewelry made of recycled material, reusable cloth shopping bags, greeting cards and stationery made out of recycled paper. A simple how-to search on the Internet or in the library will provide enough eco-crafts to start a nice little fundraiser. Also consider designating one or two people to teach the rest of the volunteers how to make the eco-crafts if they do not already know how to make the crafts.
Used for sale. Have a school parking-lot sale. In order for this to work students, teachers, parents and school staff are asked to donate their used but still useable items to the school. The school then has a parking-lot sale and sells the items to raise money for the school. This can be done several times through the year.
The same could be done with books. People donate used books to the school. The school then sells the books and the proceeds of the books sale go to the school.
Bake organically. An organic bake sale is another good idea, but organic ingredients do not come cheaply. To help with the cost designate someone to write letters to organic companies and local farmers and ask for donations in return for advertising of their products at the bake sale. What is baked for the sale is up to the school and the people in charge of the fundraiser.
These fundraisers are not exclusively for schools. Any organization (girls scouts, church, baseball team, etc) that needs to raise money can make use of these green inexpensive fundraisers over and over again.
[...] fundraisers if you need to raise money for your organization. In my last article I described what fundraisers are available to schools. The fundraisers below are set up to help you organization sell someone else’s eco-products for a [...]
We are looking to donate some used ink cartridges to benefit a local school. Can this be done through this website? Thanks in advance!
my family needs money to buy me and my sisters gifts. My mom has a job and my dad doesn’t, we don’t have hardly any money. How can we start a fundraiser, because we need money very soon for christmas shopping. i want clothes and alot of other things for christmas, but idk if i’ll get anything