“We made close to $600 when we expected to make a maximum of $250. This has been our group’s most successful fundraiser yet,” shared Fundraising Executive Rebecca Estrada regarding JFK MMED Board’s latest Wingstop Fundraiser.
The leadership group has held various fundraisers, each with attributable successes. What made this last fundraiser so fruitful?
For starters, promotion methods were different. The program’s annual Krispy Kreme and Halloween Gram Fundraisers involve placing orders from MMED Board students in advance.
The last in-store fundraiser MMED Board had was at Taco Bell for the 2023 JFK vs Granada Football Game. This fundraiser was promoted through fliers distributed after school to students the day of the event, as well as Instagram posts from various school accounts and Schoology announcements.
For the Wingstop fundraiser, a different promotional tactic was utilized.
MMED Board Adviser Sara Wilson said, “What made our fundraiser most successful was advertising. Advertising is always a challenge as people want to support their school, but you need to make sure that they know about it. If you only tell them one way, a lot of people are going to forget. You need to use more than one way.”
Wilson feels that the largest contributor to the success was bringing parents into the equation. All the other times, advertisements were made to students via Instagram, Schoology Messages, group posts, the school website, and the school calendar. This time the extra step taken involved making parents aware through messages sent out. She also feels the success could be due to Wingstop being a popular eating location.
Students can not be expected to support a fundraiser that they were unaware of. By making the event more known to parents and students alike, there was a statistically significant increase in money raised.
In addition to advertising, the location of the fundraiser is also important. If a restaurant is well-known and liked, it will likely attract more participation. However, the actual proximity of the location is equally important.
For students to participate in a fundraising event, the location should be convenient for them, meaning, it is not far from their area of residence or school. For the Wingstop fundraiser, there were two location options available to students/families to pick up their online orders from, which could have also contributed to participation.
According to fundraiser participant Alexander Velazquez, the fundraiser was so successful that “The online ordering system was temporarily shut down for about an hour at the Sepulveda location because of the large number of orders made by students.”
All things considered, a fundraiser needs promotion and convenience to appeal to students. Sharing participation goals or creating an incentive are all tactics that can be used to increase participation and raise more money.
The timeliness of a Fundraiser is also important. Estrada shared, “MMED Board had a past fundraiser at La Michoacana which is a popular eating location and is very close to our school. However, we projected to make $100 and only made about $30. Meanwhile, the JFK Girl Up Club had a fundraiser on a busier day where there was a football game, and they made over $100.”
As Estrada said, if a fundraiser is local and scheduled around student events, there is a higher chance that there will be participation.
While there is no guarantee that any given technique will make a dramatic difference in money raised, simply trying to implement these techniques wouldn’t hurt and may benefit your club/organization.
