Every day, Montessori schools make such a different in the lives of the children they reach. If you're looking to raise money for your Montessori school, you've come to the right place! In this article, we'll share creative Montessori fundraising ideas to help you provide enriching programming for the children you support.
Maria Montessori was an Italian doctor and educator. She opened her first school in 1907 in a poor district of Rome. Using her knowledge of children, she designed a classroom and education that allowed children to work at their own pace and teach themselves. Many schools or organizations follow her original principles and work to strengthen children’s independence, concentration, and self-discipline.
In this article, we’ll share 11 creative fundraising ideas that work with Montessori education principles to help such schools and organizations raise funds.
We’ve categorized the ideas into various important Montessori philosophies to help strengthen your fundraising efforts.
Montessori bases its education on the idea that children can do more by themselves than we give them credit for. Children are shown respect and encouraged to act independently. The following fundraising ideas can be run by children with little adult supervision.
If your school has older children, a thrift collection and sale is an excellent option to let them learn about business and raise funds for the organization. Children can ask parents to donate items to the event and hold a garage sale or auction to resell these items to the community.
Since fundraising events involve several activities, each student can choose projects that interest them the most, whether that’s event planning, decorating, ticket sales, online fundraising, or marketing.
Pro tip: Help kids raise funds or sell tickets by creating online fundraising pages or an event page respectively. Share the links with them and ask them to spread the word. Family, friends, neighbors, and relatives would love to encourage this giving culture in them by donating money.
Kids of all ages can cook! Small children can crack eggs and pour and mix ingredients. They are also excellent taste testers! Older children can read the recipe and cook products themselves with little supervision.
Montessori schools can hold a bake sale and encourage parents to let their kids actively participate in making the dish. Children and parents can also help by marketing the event in person, by mail, and online.
Schools can hold this fundraiser on their own or add it as a silent auction during another established event. Your nonprofit can entice people to attend and bid on baked items. Market the event with weekly social media posts. Schools can raise additional funds during the bake sale with raffle tickets and text-to-give donations.
Text-to-Give is a great addition to your bake sale to encourage the event attendees to make a donation to support and appreciate the kids’ efforts. They can simply text a keyword or your unique campaign ID to a texting number and receive a mobile-friendly link to make a donation. Donorbox Text-to-Give also makes repeating donations simpler and quicker, as shown in the image below –
Another Montessori principle is that children can learn anywhere. They constantly absorb the world around them like a sponge, and what they absorb is the foundation of their personality. This belief gives parents and adults around them the responsibility to educate children through actions.
One of the first things children notice is how parents or others treat those who need help. There are many ways to teach a child about charity. AmazonSmile is an excellent way to show that you don’t need to be rich to support a cause you care about.
Montessori schools can sign up for an Amazon Smile account and share how easy it is for parents to give with every online purchase. Schools can advertise Amazon Smile on every email, campaign piece, and social media. Parents choose their school when setting up an Amazon Smile account, and 0.5% of all purchases go to the nonprofit. This is a great culture to inculcate in a child as they’re accustomed to seeing parents shop online these days.
See how this below online campaign educates supporters on AmazonSmile with a dedicated section on their fundraising page.
Montessori schools can connect with local restaurants and national chains to hold a restaurant fundraising event. Companies like Chipotle, Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera, and Little Caesars give schools 15% to 33% of the proceeds from a fundraising event. These events are most successful when schools can get more supporters involved.
Market to parents and the community by email, print, and social media. Let them know how much your school could earn and how you’ll use the funds to help educate their children. Restaurant events allow children to learn about charity in a fun and simple way while socializing with other children from the school.
There are so many options for this type of fundraiser. Montessori schools can sell fall bulbs, holiday wreaths, and spring bouquets. Parents can donate plants and flowers to schools for children to plant and watch them grow. No matter how you choose to run this event, students learn more about the beauty of nature and the usefulness of planting.
Companies like Just Fundraising provides everything schools need to run this fundraiser with no upfront cost. Nonprofits can create online campaigns and make a 50% profit on every sale.
Children have different abilities and interests with each development stage. Depending on the age, children will focus on order, language, sensory, movement, and social skills. The following fundraisers combine activities from each skill area and help all students enjoy the day.
A Montessori olympics offers several activities, including an obstacle course, walkathon, prizes for school spirit, student artwork raffle, and more. Each exercise encourages individualized learning and enjoyment.
Nonprofits can sell tickets to this event and collect donations. Or they can make this a free event to attend but sell tickets to participate in each activity. To raise more money, you can add a raffle for parents and other interesting games to keep the adults engaged as well.
Nonprofits can find sponsors to fund the event or invite smaller vendors and sponsors to set up tents to market to attendees.
An event page similar to the one below will help you sell tickets online for different activities in your olympics event. As you can see, the nonprofit has added multiple ticket levels for game tickets and raffle tickets. Donorbox Events also lets you highlight the tax-deductible value of each ticket by inputting the fair market value and the tax rate. Your purchasers will receive the ticket as well as the receipt automatically after the purchase. You can also accept donations from the event ticketing form and manage all data (purchasers, sold tickets, donations) at the backend.
A family fun night is another event that offers various activities for participants. This event can include an inflatable rock wall, giant slide, sand and spin art, cake walk, pin bowl, teddy bear toss, and Velcro wall. These activities can be enjoyed by a wide range of children and parents.
If your Montessori school chooses this type of event, you can also ask children to come up with fundraising activities, decorate and set up the event, and sell tickets. Getting children involved in preparing for this fundraising event will make this a fun and educational experience.
Pro tip: Leverage peer-to-peer fundraising for these events. Invite kids’ parents to create fundraising pages in their kids’ names. The kids and parents both can reach out to their friends and neighbors to raise money for your organization. Donorbox Peer-to-Peer will help you get started in minutes. Most of the process is automated and our fundraising pages are the easiest to set up and use.
The most significant difference Maria Montessori made was a classroom including items that focus on skills building and enable children to choose which activities they want to learn.
For Small Hands was developed by a Primary Montessori teacher to make it easy and cost-effective for schools and parents to get their hands on items consistent with Montessori principles.
Parents can bring Montessori teaching home with child-size kitchen supplies, puzzles, maps, bead sequencing sets, instruments, art, and crafts. For Small Hands’ annual School Credit Promotion group orders allow parents to purchase items for the school. Schools receive credits of 10% for parents’ orders of $25 – $500 and 15% for orders of $500 or more.
There are companies that let you receive profits for hosting book fairs and selling books. Scholastic, for example, offers its Scholastic Dollars program to help organizations raise money with the Scholastic book fair. You can use the dollars that you earn to buy books and other educational materials for your school. Know more about the program here.
In the below crowdfunding campaign, an English department instructor is raising funds for less privileged students who fail to buy books at the annual Scholastic book fair.
This can be a great example for your Montessori school if you want to encourage a parent or a teacher or another supporter to raise funds for your own students who can not afford books. With Donorbox, you can even turn this into a peer-to-peer campaign to have more than one supporter easily raise funds for you and all their funds directed to your parent campaign.
Auto-Education is the belief that children can teach themselves. Montessori schools provide the environment for children to learn, and teachers offer guidance, inspiration, and encouragement.
Kids these days are addicted to social media and they love to share. But parents aren’t always happy with this addiction. You can bring a balance between the pros and cons of social media sharing with the simplest fundraising idea: an online campaign.
Create an online fundraising campaign and tell kids that they can easily help you make this campaign successful with the power of their presence on social media. Ask them to share the campaign online with their friends and family while requesting them to make a donation. You can also reward them with small gifts once the campaign is over.
The below campaign includes social media sharing buttons to encourage people to share the campaign on social media in order to help raise more funds.
Pro tip: Add a virtual donor wall to your fundraising campaign page and ask donors to leave the kid’s name in the comments box on your donation form to appreciate the kid. When kids see their names on the page and the positive change they’re helping bring, they will be more inspired to follow the giving culture in the future.
This virtual donor wall belongs to the above Montessori annual fundraiser campaign page.
Another way your school can encourage independence and interest in learning more about fundraising, business, art, and more is through a calendar fundraiser.
Let the students in your class choose what they want on the calendar and let them organize how to make and sell the calendars. Teachers can guide their students and direct them where to learn more about creating and selling a calendar, but the fundraiser should be run mainly by students.
You can use a website like CalendarFundraising.com for kids to design calenders and then sell them to raise funds. Parents and other family members would love to buy these calendars that their kids have created.
Most Montessori schools and organizations want campaigns that match Montessori principles like respecting the child, teaching independence, preparing the environment, and teaching through actions. Hence, we have curated ideas that specifically help you provide an educational experience to your students and their parents.
Donorbox is an affordable online fundraising platform for nonprofits of all sizes. We’ve helped 50,000+ nonprofits boost their online donations and manage donors effectively. Your Montessori school can use Donorbox to collect online donations with recurring donation forms and Donorbox-hosted fundraising pages, easily sell tickets via a simple event-ticketing form, and raise funds through text-to-give, peer-to-peer, and crowdfunding campaigns. If you’re thinking of starting a membership program in your school, you should definitely try Donorbox Memberships. Learn about our powerful, simple-to-use, and affordable features here.
Successful fundraising often requires expert guidance, high-powered add-ons, and a little tech help! Donorbox Premium is there for your nonprofit. Our pricing is personalized for each organization. Get in touch with our sales team today!
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Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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Kristine Ensor