Successful fundraising can make a great difference in making your educational trip a reality. If you’d like to take your students on an exciting trip overseas, you might need to brainstorm ideas on how to raise funds to cover the trip. With a little creativity and some effort from the excited students you’ll go a long way. Here are some tips on how to organise fundraising and raise money for your educational school trip:
SET YOUR GOAL
Consider some reasons why you want to fundraise and then decide on the details and who’ll be involved. Create small groups of students and colleagues who can help. Promote your goal proudly to potential supporters. It will give them an idea as far as how much to give, and they’ll feel more positive giving when you appear entirely confident about your needs.
START PLANNING
Once you’ve set your goal, list five strong fundraisers you’d like to try. Get the students involved in every part of the event planning, promotions, setup and writing thank-you notes. Your supporters will appreciate that students are taking leadership in the fundraising event, and students will learn valuable life skills.
GET THE WORD OUT
Promote the fundraising events through school and local publications, websites and social media channels. Engage the parents, students and the community in promoting the fundraising. Students will feel part of something big, and parents and families will feel grateful for the opportunities to share.
FUNDRAISING IDEAS
Use your group’s connections to ask for interesting and inviting donations. Do you know small business owners in your community? Do students in your group have family or friends with interesting goods or services to offer? You can try an ongoing fundraising like selling chocolates or arrange timed fundraising events such as cookie dough sales, Italian night or themed events related to your destination.
Here you can find many great fundraising ideas – 101 Unique Fundraising Ideas That Actually Work
CROWD-FUND YOUR TRIP
There are several websites out there that you can use to help crowd-fund your trip. A few are listed below to help you get started. Make sure that you write a good description that outlines why you want to go on the trip as well as some of your goals during your travels. Crowdfunding is especially good for service learning and volunteering trips.
https://au.gofundme.com/discover/travel-fundraiser
https://gogetfunding.com/campaigns/?country=au
https://fundraising.myevent.com/
MORE IDEAS
Here are also some ideas for the students on how to raise money to make their educational dream trip a reality:
Donations instead of gifts – For your next birthday or for the holidays, ask your parents and family to replace the gifts with cash donations to put towards your trip. This will show them how dedicated you are to going and having the experience rather than holding onto material things.
Sports Donations – Do you play a sport? Or you just want to keep fit? Ask friends and family to donate a certain amount for every kilometre you run over the next 6 months, or for every goal you make for the rest of your sports season. It will not only motivate you to keep performing well in order to earn more, but you’ll also be more motivated to keep exercising.
Pet Service – Do you like pets? If so, offer to take care of family members’ and neighbours’ pets for a small charge while they are away from home or during the day at work.
Thank You Letters – Finally, make sure to write a thank you letter to everyone who helped you. Sending just a simple thank you note will show your gratefulness for their support, no matter how big or small it was.
