FUNDRAISING IDEAS

Looking for ways to raise money for new equipment or to attend the convention? Here are ideas teachers have shared on the listserv that could help you fundraise for your program!

“I use Snap! Raise. This year we brought in over $20k.”

“We do a fundraiser with a local chocolate shop. The kids carry a box of chocolate around with them in school and sell to their friend and teachers. It’s so basic but if you do it over the course of the year, or even half the school year, the kids can make a good amount of money.”

“Agree on the chocolate. We work with World's Finest Chocolate. We have 80 kids in our program in a school of about 1200 students. We make $2500 a month on chocolate sales alone. We also sell "Wake up with BMB" coffee mugs with our talent and crew 's pictures on them. We tie that together with a fair trade coffee sale. The last thing we do are monthly meals at local chains (Panera, Chipotle, Smashburger etc.). It gets our kids and their families out together outside of the studio. We bring in between $400-$500 per night and it becomes a community building event. Along those same lines we host an Applebee's breakfast once a year where our kids act as the servers and bussers. You won't believe how much you can make selling tickets to parents who get to watch their teens clean the table.”

“We have tried a plethora of fundraisers over the years...important to note that we have a broadcasting booster club (501(c)(3) overseeing our fundraising. This is wonderful, but does involve meetings, board officers, etc. on the flip side, teacher reimbursement comes quickly and directly from the booster club treasurer.

  • Broadcasting family garage sales (up to $4000) for a Saturday morning, but requires lots of setup the week before and a collection point for the donated items.

  • Restaurant breakfasts (Applebees). Applebees opens for breakfast to local groups and they do a 50/50 profit share. fun and easy to set up and the high schoolers do the serving. about $1000 for 2 hours of work. We sell additional items at the breakfast (CHSTV spiritwear).

  • Direct donation. Essentially we do our own Snap Raise to save the commission. a lot of work with organizing student email addresses. We send a pre-produced video out to dozens (hundreds) of kids' relatives and friends where we describe the program and describe our needs. (approx $10,000)

  • Our biggest and most fun (and most work) fundraiser is the spring showcase. We can raise in excess of $20,000 in a single evening.

    • Held in a beautiful auditorium theater

    • Silent auction before the 75-minute show

    • Live auction held during intermission

    • 60-minute video recap of the year with 8 to 10 areas of focus (stories, live interviews, short films, stn contests, funny bloopers from them live broadcast)

    • Hosted by the students

    • VIP messages via video from network reporters/anchors

It's a lot of work to put together, but it is an incredible way to end the school year and a big showcase for the work of the students. Throughout the night we move between live presentations by the students to the showcase video. This past year we had two CNN correspondents send messages of encouragement to the students (reporting from Ukraine).”

“Because we are a smaller program, we actually fundraise for STN using two different classes. The prerequisite class for my broadcasting (KTV) class is a community productions class that is hired by local businesses for various productions in which they pay or make donations. All those funds go to the broadcasting classes STN trip. This allows my broadcasting class can focus on the producing our news show and encourages the productions class students to continue in the program so that the next year someone else is fundraising for them. It becomes cyclical and has worked really well for our program.”

“We used to make money from selling DVD’s of Graduation – but the transition to digital and streaming has taken that revenue stream away. To help fill the gap, a few years ago the organization that ran the school’s talent show gave it up and our program took it over.  It is a lot of work, but we make money on ticket sales in the auditorium.  We organize the auditions and choose teachers to be the judges and then the winner gets to perform live on our show.  Our students really enjoy working on it in all facets from helping check contestants in during auditions, producing bio videos like you see on “The Voice” or “American Idol”, and working stage crew during the show.”

“Just a FYI… you can still make money from those graduation videos. I have a WeTransfer Pro account and pre-sale the grad ceremony along with the senior highlight. I upload the the completed files to WeTransfer and supply a download link to those that have purchased.”

“I know this will not work for everyone, but check out the list on the website below. There might be an opportunity in a city near you. We do this as a major fundraiser for the STN convention. We go to tapings of TV shows and sit in the studio audience and they pay us anywhere from $20 to $40 per person. I have kids that bring their family and neighbors and earn up to $200 a show. Check out this site: https://on-camera-audiences.com/locations and see if there is a show filming near you. Or get on their list if one happens to come your way.”