Time to raise some funds for your preschool? It's not always easy to find the perfect fundraising activities to support your little learners. You want something engaging – but also easy. Read on for some preschool fundraising ideas that will help you raise more while having fun with the whole family!
Preschool is important in a child’s life because it provides development, socialization, and community. But preschools need funding to provide this excellent care and education. That’s where school fundraising comes in!
Finding creative, engaging ways to involve both the parents and the kids is the key to preschool fundraising. If you need some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place!
This article will look at 11 fun, easy, and engaging fundraising ideas for preschools, including some ideas that work great for small preschools. For each, we’ll also show you how Donorbox can help make your fundraiser a success.
Let’s dive right in!
A read-a-thon is a fantastic way to get the kids involved in your preschool fundraising.
Choose a set of age-appropriate books. Their parents will collect pledges from friends and family based on how many books they think their kids will read. You can share the results in a fun ceremony in class or virtually!
Your main source of funds for a read-a-thon is the pledges the children and their families collect. You can also collect donations during the results celebration.
You can also use a peer-to-peer fundraising tool – a fun twist to your fundraising – and invite parents to create their own fundraising pages and raise money for your preschool.
Donorbox makes collecting pledges easy with peer-to-peer fundraising. Simply set up a “parent” campaign for your read-a-thon and invite parents from the tool. A basic campaign page is created for each invitee. They receive emails to sign up for Donorbox and customize their campaign pages, or they can use the basic one to fundraise.
Then they can share those campaigns with their friends and family. Any donations they collect will flow directly to your account, so you won’t have to worry about exchanging cash or checks.
To collect donations during your results event, consider enabling Text-to-Give for your campaign. This allows donors to give to your campaign simply by texting a keyword to the text-to-give number.
You can also simply include a QR code to your online donation form or fundraising page. A QR code is automatically generated for free for each Donorbox campaign.
Kids grow up so fast! That’s why a fundraiser that helps parents document this time in their child’s life will definitely be a big success.
Hire a professional photographer and find a picturesque place to meet that’s not too far from your preschool. Parents and their children can pay for the chance to take family photos.
Sell tickets to the event based on photo packages. The pricing for the photo packages will vary depending on the cost of the photographer, so be sure to price accordingly so you make good money for your preschool.
Donorbox Events makes selling tickets for your photo day a breeze. You can create unlimited ticket tiers based on what photo packages you’d like to offer. Plus, you can allow people to add an additional donation to the cost of their ticket – which means more funding for your preschool! Check out the below video for a glimpse into this powerful Donorbox tool –
Parents with young kids can use a day off every now and then – that’s what makes this fundraiser so successful.
Choose a weekend day (when you aren’t usually open) and advertise babysitting for the entire day. You should plan on having fun activities for the kids to make it even more enticing, and you should be prepared to feed the kids meals and snacks. To expand your fundraising, consider inviting your students’ siblings, too.
Parents will buy tickets for each child attending this “day off.” You should plan on charging enough to cover your expenses for the day and still make a profit.
Use Donorbox Events to sell tickets for the day. You can also set up an online donation form with different levels and clarify which level of donation is required for access to the day off. This way, parents might feel inclined to give more than the cost of the ticket!
Every child can be a published author with this fun fundraising idea!
Complete a writing/story unit with your preschool students and have them write a short story or poem, or make artwork. Then, compile all their work in a booklet to sell to friends and family. Host a book launch event to make the fundraiser even more fun!
Pro tip: Make your book accessible virtually, too, to easily sell to family members and friends of your students who live far away.
Selling books will be your main way to fundraise. You luckily won’t have too many expenses for this fundraiser, beyond printing. You can also ask for donations during your book launch event.
You can sell your books using Donorbox. Make an online donation form with donation tiers for one book, two books, three books, etc. Your fully customizable form can be updated to fit your branding and your needs for your sale, including any information you need to collect like email, mailing address, and more.
You can also sell copies at your book launch using our Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app. Simply create a live campaign on Donorbox, download the app to your iPad or Android tablet, connect a card reader, and collect card and digital wallet payments in person. This will keep all payments and donations in one place on your Donorbox dashboard, which makes accounting easy!
Boost In-Person Fundraising at Your Event
Busy families with young kids rarely have time to cook – so invite them to eat out for your preschool fundraiser!
You’ll need a community partner for this to work. Typically, you’ll partner with a restaurant willing to donate a percentage of the proceeds from a certain night for sales that mention the name of your school. Then all you have to do is get the word out to your community!
You’ll need to work out your percentage of proceeds with the restaurant. You can also run a fundraising campaign along with this dining-out event to help raise awareness and even more money.
Launch a crowdfunding campaign with Donorbox Crowdfunding to raise money before your dine-out night. This will help you get the word out while raising even more funds for your preschool!
Check out how Life Community Church used Donorbox Crowdfunding to raise over $27,500 for their preschool – with just 11 donations.
This is a fantastic springtime event to raise extra money for your preschool and involve the entire family!
You’ll set up an Easter egg hunt around your school and grounds. Think about ways to make your event even more fun, like renting an Easter Bunny costume or adding games.
Sell tickets to the easter egg hunt. You can also sell food or other items at the event for additional revenue.
Donorbox Events is a great tool to sell tickets for your Easter egg hunt. Selling tickets ahead of time will help you keep track of how many attendees you’ll have, so you can be sure to put out enough eggs.
You can also accept donations during the event in person using our Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app. Simply download the app onto your iPad or Android tablet, connect a card reader, and make it easy for donors to give via quick swipes, taps, or dips of their credit/debit cards and the use of digital wallets. This is a great idea for live fundraising at an event like this.
The Friends of Governors Island used Donorbox to sell tickets to their Easter egg hunt! They sold out since it’s such a popular event. They used the different ticket tiers to designate times and age ranges, which is a great way to keep your egg hunt organized.
This preschool a-thon fundraiser idea will get your students up and moving.
Schedule an event where your students can come in to dance to fun, age-appropriate music. They (or their parents) will collect pledges from their friends and family to support their dancing. You can up the fun by having the parents join in, too!
Your preschool will benefit from the pledges your students’ parents collect for them. You can also sell t-shirts to commemorate the event.
Donorbox Peer-to-Peer is the best way to collect pledges for your preschool. Your students’ parents will simply create their own campaigns after being invited to join yours via Donorbox. If you don’t want to invite parents from the tool, you can allow anyone to fundraise on your behalf by simply having Donorbox add a button “I want to fundraise for this” to your campaign page. This button opens your fundraiser up to anyone willing to help.
Enabling Donorbox Peer-to-Peer along with all its features is super easy, and it’s worth it to keep the momentum going. Take a look at this quick video to learn more about this powerful tool –
Bingo is a great preschool fundraiser, too! This one involves the whole family.
You’ll need to have bingo cards and a way to draw numbers. You can invite your students and their entire family to join in on the fun. Have prizes for both kids and adults.
You’ll raise money by selling bingo cards. Come up with a reasonable price for each bingo card and be prepared to collect payments in person. You can also sell bingo cards ahead of time online, or even turn this into a virtual event!
Selling bingo cards in person is easy with the Donorbox Live™ Kiosk. Once you have the app on your iPad or Android tablet and connect it to a card reader, you can easily accept payments with cards, smartphones, and smartwatches.
You can also have people pay for their bingo cards using Text-to-Give. Simply set up an online donation form with donation tiers that correspond to the cost of cards, then enable text-to-give. All your guests have to do is text your keyword to the text-to-give number and they’ll receive a link to your form.
With features like UltraSwift ™ Pay and QuickDonate™, the donation process is smooth and quick. They can also easily repeat their donation with QuickDonate™ , meaning more money for your preschool – and more bingo fun for them!
Here are some ideas to help your smaller preschool raise money without as many students or families to rely on!
A little friendly competition makes this fundraiser a big success, even if you have fewer participants.
You’ll come up with a fundraising incentive to reward the child/parent who raises the most money for your preschool during a certain period of time. Even if you don’t have as many people fundraising for you, your fundraisers might be more determined to get more donations from their network.
You’ll use peer-to-peer fundraising to raise as much money for your preschool as possible. It will be important to empower your fundraisers with information about your preschool, so consider creating a fundraising toolkit for them.
To make this competition work, you’ll need to create a fundraising page with Peer-to-Peer enabled. Once parents set up their own campaigns based on your original campaign, encourage them to personalize it as much as possible – and then share it with their network! Whatever donations they receive will flow directly to your account.
Check out how Early Childhood Center enabled Donorbox Peer-to-Peer on their fundraising campaign by adding a button “I want to fundraise for this” to the campaign and keeping it open for all to join in.
Enable Peer-to-Peer for Your Campaign!
Cookie dough is easy to sell because everyone loves it and it’s usually frozen, so people can use it whenever.
Partner with a company like Otis Spunkmeyer that lets you fundraise without any upfront costs. Then, have your students and their parents sell cookie dough to their network. Once you have your orders collected, you can place your order with your provider and distribute it to your fundraisers!
You get to keep whatever funds come in over the cost of the cookie dough. So the more cookie dough your fundraisers sell, the more funds you receive for your preschool!
You can launch a Donorbox campaign to easily collect payments for your cookie dough. Use an online donation form, with tiers and custom fields to collect contact information from your purchasers.
You can also use peer-to-peer fundraising on Donorbox and have your fundraisers make their own campaigns to accept donations for your preschool in exchange for tasty cookie doughs.
Pro tip: Merge it up with the fundraising competition idea and encourage kids and their parents to sell as many cookie doughs as possible via their own peer fundraising pages on Donorbox. Reward the winners and appreciate every participant for their hard work.
This fundraiser helps expand your network – even if you have a smaller preschool!
Invite recent alumni of your preschool back to perform in a showcase. Their family and friends will want to come to support them. This is a fun opportunity to stay connected with the children and parents who already have a relationship with your school, while also expanding your fundraising possibilities.
Sell tickets to the showcase and collect donations in between performances. You can have an emcee work the crowd to boost your fundraising during this fun event.
Sell tickets to your alumni showcase using Donorbox Events. You can set a deadline to buy tickets so you’ll know exactly how many people will attend.
To collect donations in person, have your emcee tell everyone about Text-to-Give. All your audience has to do is send your keyword to the text-to-give number to receive a link to your online donation form. Or you can post a QR code linking to your form around your event for easy access!
If you want to make in-person giving a breeze during your event, don’t forget about the Donorbox Live™ Kiosk app. You can easily download it to your iPad or Android tablet and connect it to a card reader device to start accepting swift cashless donations. Learn the steps in our guide.
Preschool is such a precious time. It’s important that preschools receive all the funding they need to make their students’ education as dynamic and developmental as possible.
Like with PTA fundraising, there’s a lot of opportunity to be creative and involve both kids and parents with fundraising for your preschool.
To run a successful preschool fundraiser, just remember to keep it engaging and use strong fundraising tools to make it easy. Donorbox is here to help every step of the way with dynamic, flexible features built to help with any type of fundraiser. Sign up to start fundraising today!
For more school fundraising ideas, check out our Nonprofit Blog. You’ll find a plethora of other topics related to donor management, leadership tips, and other best practices over there. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the best collection of our resources in your inbox every month.
Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower