We have done the lottery ticket thing at school auctions as well. I haven’t seen the frame idea but we use a big branch or mini Christmas tree or something like that and attach the tickets to the branches and call it a money tree.
This idea won’t work for you but in case anybody else is looking I thought I’d throw it out there. A club at the high school raises money using a flock of plastic flamingos. They send some kids to stick them in your yard at night and you wake up to about a dozen of them along with a big sign that says, “You’ve Been Flocked!” They attach a paper to one of the flamingos that explains what they are doing and what to do to get rid of your flock. Your choices are something like $15 for removal, $20 for removal and you get to pick who they go to next and $30 for removal, pick who they go to plus insurance that they will not come back to your house again that year. Of course they will take them away for free but most people are willing to play along.
I never heard of bunco until a friend in Pennsylvania mentioned it. Recently heard about it closer to my New England state. I think this is regional too.
They have done the flamingo thing in my town but it is usually put a flock on a friend’s lawn for their birthday or other special occasion (the person who orders the flamingos pays not the owner of the lawn it goes on). They stay on for a certain amount of time and then are collected.
My grandson’s little league team had a Super Bowl lottery. There was a 10 x 10 grid. The cost was $25 per box. After all of the boxes were sold, but before the game, they randomly filled in the tops and sides with scores. Money was gived to the winning score after each quarter, and then to the final score. I just considered it a donation, but one year I won $25!!
In HS, my son’s junior ROTC collected Christmas trees after the holidays. They had dad’s with pick up trucks, one dad’s company donated a wood chipper for the day. They advertised, you booked online pickup and left the envelope on the tree. They also sold the some of the wood chips and the town picked up what was not sold. Over the years, it has become their #1 fundraiser.
A really easy one if your charity is a well known local one. Even better if you work with more than one local charity.
Team up with a local business; a grocery store works best but a pharmacy, convenience store, or other store that uses a lot of bags would do. The store offers a small discount for every reusable bag their customers bring instead of using the store’s one-use bags. Our local store sets it at 5 cents/bag. The customer gets a little plastic token they can drop into a can indicating the charity they want to support. At the end of the month the store donates the total in each can to each charity.
The store saves on the cost of bags and gets a tax deduction, plus It gets credit in the community for supporting the charities. The customer gets to feel good about making a mini donation that cost them nothing. The charity doesn’t have to do anything. Everybody wins.
That fundraiser with bags just won’t work in CT…where they just started charging for anything but a bag you bring yourself. Plastic bags get a 10 cent tax sent to the state. Stores are selling paper for 5-10 cents each. They say the paper costs more.
They already charge for reusable bags…can’t imagine they would add a surcharge for charity but i guess it’s worth asking.
Do watch the raffle and lottery laws in your state. Our school/church had a big Gala every year. We did have a raffle license and raised about $20k per year just off the raffle (traditional kind with 5 prizes, names drawn from a big wire barrel). The law required EVERY ticket stub to be turned into the state after the drawing and an accounting of ticket sales. It was one person’s job to control all the tickets and stubs. In my state, to do a Football board (legally) where everyone buys a square, all the participants have to know each other (like an office or bar) and all the proceeds have to be paid out, so not a way to make a profit even for a non-profit organization. Even reselling lotto tickets might not be allowed.
A few schools doing Galas have been fined because of doing the raffles without a license, for not paying sales tax on the auction items, or selling something they shouldn’t (liquor, lotto tickets). Some of these auctions bring in $200k, so it is real money to the sales tax authorities. The catholic high school here often makes $750k off their auction night.
