How Can Schools Prepare Over the Summer for A Successful Fall Flower Fundraiser?

Fundraisers can play a crucial part in a school or organizations success for the year. Planning a successful fundraiser takes a lot of time and planning. It is a great idea to start planning during the summer, so you are prepared to have a seamless and successful fundraiser in the Fall. At JOCO Growers, we offer many flower fundraisers for organizations throughout the year, but our Harvest Mum Fundraiser packages are very popular and fills up fast. Planning early ensures that we can provide enough beautiful local flowers for your school.

What Are Your Fundraising Goals?

First you must decide what your fundraising goals will be. This will help you decide how many orders you need from your fundraiser for the event to be considered successful and meet your school’s goals. You also need to consider why you are fundraising. Maybe the fundraiser will go towards school improvements, extracurricular activities, or school equipment. This answer will help you figure out what people could help you through volunteering and how to market your fundraiser for maximum participation.

Below Are A Few Things To Consider for School Fundraising:

1. Plan and Gather Ideas

You need to create a fundraiser timeline. At JOCO Growers, we recommend your event taking fundraiser orders for two weeks between early August through late September. This will ensure orders to arrive for delivery between mid-September through mid-October. With these dates in mind, it would be good to start advertising your fundraiser at least a week before you start taking orders. Building out a calendar will also help you stay organized and on time. It will also help those who are donating their time to have reminders when they need to be available to you.

2. Who Will Help Me?

The next thing you need is to put together a list of volunteers you may need. Below are some things you may need help with:

-Someone to gather and distribute ordering catalogs to students and teachers.

-Making different marketing materials: posters, emails, or flyers.

-Someone how can be responsible for collecting the funds raised from students.

-People to be available to distribute fundraiser orders.

-Someone to take photos and videos during your event.

3. How Will You Collect Payment?

Depending on what fundraiser you proceed with, you need to look at your options on how you can collect payment for your orders. JOCO Growers recommends organizations to accept both cash and checks to allow students and parents flexibility when taking orders. Collecting payment upfront also helps schools stay organized and skips the need of students following up for payments.

4. How Will You Distribute Orders?

You also need to think of how you will distribute your orders. Once your orders are available, having a pickup system for your orders will help you have a smooth operation. Having a pickup table with multiple people who can go through a customer list and pick orders will ensure all customers get exactly what they ordered.

5. How Do You Find A Plant Supplier To Work With?

You need to find a supplier you can work with to help give a fair deal on wholesale flowers. We love working with communities at JOCO Growers. We help them get the best price so they can make the best margin from their fundraisers. We make sure all of our products are top quality and look great in any garden. JOCO Growers ensures local products that you can’t find in big box stores. Our fundraising program brings the classroom to the community. We believe fundraising can be a learning opportunity for kids. School fundraising can help kids learn about their community and the proceeds can be beneficial for their classroom and school. It can show kids that they can have a hand in making a difference.

6. How Will Customers Order Their Flowers?

You must decide if people are going to place their orders will be from a flyer, a catalog, or an online ordering platform and how you are going to deliver them. At JOCO Growers, we have had years of experience planning and executing many school fundraisers. We recommend our system which uses a paper catalog that is easy for students and teachers to fill out and stay organized. We provide these catalogs with all our fundraisers.

Let Your Community Know!

You need to let your community know about your fundraiser event and the reason why your school is having a sale. Encourage students to be more involved by having them sign up for different marketing events. To help spread the word about your fundraiser event, you could have a group of students make a fun video that gets sent to the community through an email. Students can also get involved in making banners and flyers for the school to hang and pass out before your fundraiser is planned to start.

Ask your students if they have any ideas to help get people excited about the fundraiser. We have seen a lot of fun and innovative ideas come from schools to help get communities excited to support their school. It is also beneficial to show kids how to tell people about the fundraiser and why they are fundraising. This will help them be less intimidated and more excited to sell.

Connect With Your Community Even More!

Educating your community on how to properly care for their plants is another good way to get people excited and involved. On the day of order pickups, you can also have a few students showing people what proper care looks like. Or, maybe you can have students make care cards explaining what proper care looks like and they are given out when orders are picked up. You can use this as an educational moment for both students and people in your community that are interested in learning more.

Motivate Students To Get Involved

It is important to help get students involved in your fundraising event. Making a contest for students to participate in is usually a good way to help them get excited. One idea is to create different tiers based on the number of orders a student has made. For example, any student who has made more than 15 orders gets to be a part of a pizza party at the end of the fundraiser. Any student who has made at least 5 orders gets to pick a fidget toy or prize out of a special basket. There are many ways to get students excited. Find what your students are interested in right now and use that to get them motivated. It may be as simple as creating a fun coloring page the student can fill in to show their individual fundraiser progress. You can include this with each student’s fundraiser catalog when you initially pass them out.

Enjoy and Document Your Event

Enjoy and take a lot of photos and videos throughout the whole fundraiser process. Having these assets will be great to share with parents and your community. Additionally, if you choose to do the same type of fundraiser in the future, you can use the photos and videos as marketing tools. Don’t forget to share photos on the school’s website to show people in the community what you’re doing for your school. We also love receiving photos from the communities that JOCO Growers helps so we can share on our website!

From greenhouse to your house, JOCO Growers will be here for you.

It is it not an easy task organizing school fundraising. JOCO Growers believes providing local supplies for school fundraisers is an important part of our community. Helping your school raise money brings us a purpose. Contact us today and let us know how we can help your school or organization.