Fundraising Directory

Here’s a fun little money raiser (with absolute rock bottom cost outlay) that would be great for end of term or even end of year when things are starting to wind down.

If you ask students what they think about your school principal you’ll more than likely receive mixed reviews, that’s to be expected. Ask them what they think the principal does and they may have some ideas but ask them if they think they could do a better job as principal and you’ll probably receive a resounding YES!

Now we, as parents and committee members, know that a principal’s job is not an easy one but wouldn’t it be interesting for students to get to know what a principal really does?

That’s the idea behind this fundraising tip where you auction off or raffle the opportunity to be principal for a day. Getting out of school work for the day: tick, not having to wear school uniform for the day: tick, getting to tell adults what to do for the day (well, kind of): tick.
Those things right there are guaranteed to raise some serious interest in this fundraiser.

How does it work?

As mentioned earlier, you can auction this position off or use it as a raffle prize.

• Auction – If you already run a silent auction as part of one of your events, it would be very easy to include this as another prize option. Make sure it’s promoted well in advance as well as on the night to garner interest. If there’s a lot of interest, you could actually offer two principal for the day opportunities (as long as it’s ok with your principal!) if the second highest bidder is willing to match the winning bid and boom, you’ve just increased your profits for no additional cost!If a live auction is more appealing for your community, then do that but make sure you’ve got a good auctioneer to encourage bidding.PRO TIP: Speak to your local real estate agent about providing an auctioneer in return for some advertising at your event.
• Raffle – Sell tickets ahead of your big event and again you could increase interest in raffle sales by offering 2 places – one boy and one girl.

What will they do?

Well, that’s really up to individual schools and what they think will be appropriate but here are a few ideas:

• Give them a name badge to make things ‘official’
• Have a photo taken at the principal’s desk
• Run a staff meeting (with assistance)
• Make announcements over the school PA system
• Lead a school assembly (this can be scripted)
• Attend scheduled meetings – these can be ‘staged’
• Visit classrooms to observe teachers and students
• Read a story to a Prep class

If you find this is a successful fundraiser at your school, you can extend it to include other positions like ‘Teacher for a day’ – PE teacher, art teacher, music teacher or even ‘Committee President for a day’ so that they can see what goes on behind the scenes with event organisation.