101 Do It Yourself Fundraising Ideas

Stuck for ideas for raising money ? Check out our list of over 101 do it yourself fundraising ideas! These are creative, easy ideas.

If you're in a hurry to grab some top ideas for fundraisers - here's our popular and free mini-ebook "101 Do It Yourself Fundraising Ideas - Tips on How to Raise Money for New Fundraisers ".

This comprehensive list of ideas is the perfect resource for your church, charity, PTA, middle or high schools, christian kids groups, non-profit group, scout troop, youth ministry or sports club.

There is a section on fundraising ideas for specific occasions, such as the Christmas holiday period

You'll find ideas on how to run successful fund-raising events and activities for each group online elsewhere on this website, but you can download this in PDF format, print out and read it at your leisure.

Of course, you can also email the list to your colleagues and friends.

101 Fundraising Ideas

1. 100 Club 
2. Annual Dinner Dance / Party 
3. Annual Event – dance/fireworks/New Year party, etc 
4. Annual Subscription/Membership 
5. Art Sale / Auction 
6. Auction of Promises 
7. Auctions of Promises 
8. Bad Hair Day 
9. Balloon Races 
10. Balls & Dances – mid-summer, Valentines Day, New Year or Christmas 
11. Barn Dances 
12. Beetle Drive
13. Bingo 
14. Bucket or Street Collections outside stores and in shopping malls 
15. Burns Night Celebrations 
16. Cake Bake 
17. Car Boot sales 
18. Car Wash 
19. Carol Singing 
20. Celebrity Speaker Event (eg.figures) 
21. Challenge Events 
22. Charity Stall for Sales of Second Hand items 
23. Cheese & Wine Evenings 
24. Chess Competition 
25. Christmas Card & calendar sales 
26. Christmas Fair 
27. Clay Pigeon Shoot 
28. Clothes Swap - ask people to donate those unwanted items with their price tags still on
29. Coffee Morning 
30. Concerts 
31. Cookery Book 
32. Cookery Demo or Themed Food Evening 
33. Country Walk or Ramble 
34. Craft Fair 
35. Crazy Golf Match 
36. Disco 
37. Doughnuts - another idea for students and young people. Selling fresh doughnuts can have a high profit margin and be a quick and effective fundraiser when you have a captive audience.
38. Donations 
39. Duck Races 
40. Easter Egg Hunt 
41. Face Painting 
42. Family Portrait / Photo 
43. Fancy dress party 
44. Fashion Shows 
45. Fetes 
46. Fifty Fifty Raffle - you sell tickets for $1 each, the winner from the drawing wins half the money raised, your organisation keeps the other half. Depending on how many tickets you sell, you could raise $20 or $200.
47. Film Premiere – sponsor or show a new film, though you may have to consider asking for "donations" rather than charge a fee 
48. Fireworks Display 
49. Flower Arranging Demonstration 
50. Football Match / Tournament 
51. Fun Runs 
52. Garden Parties 
53. Generous Giving from Wealth Individuals 
54. Gladiators / It’s a Knockout 
55. Golf Events 
56. Grants from Fundraising Bodies & Trusts 
57. Helping Hand service – offer to cut peoples grass, walk their dogs or look after their home whilst they’re on holiday, asking for a donation in return 
58. Horse Racing evening 
59. International Evenings – themed evenings, Italian, Indian, Australian, etc 
60. Just Giving – use Facebook and MySpace to let your friends and family know all about it 
61. Karaoke Evening 
62. Litter Picking - Sponsored 
63. Love-grams for Valentines day (for students)
    Take orders in advance, on the day deliver a card & candy or card & single rose to each person's dorm room. People may order these for that special someone in their life, but also sometimes for friends. You can make a reasonable amount of $$ , just make sure that you buy the cards and candy in bulk and charge a fair price, for example, between $3-5 would seem affordable for most students.
64. Make Overs 
65. Mile of Pennies / Coins 
66. Mufti, Dress Down or Non-Uniform Day 
67. Murder Mystery evening 
68. Music Quiz 
69. Mystery Tour / Trip 
70. Open Garden Events 
71. Paintballing 
72. Pancake Day party 
73. Parachute Jump 
74. Plant Sale 
75. Playstation party – get your mates to bring their PS2 & PS3’s round and charge everyone to play the different games 
76. Poetry Competition 
77. Pub Tournaments – e.g. darts, Skittles, darts, pool, cards 
78. Quit It – give up chocolate / smoking / etc for a week / month 
79. Quiz Night 
80. Raffles - the first year just go with what prizes you can. As you repeat though, you'll find businesses are more willing to donate to something with a successful history, so you'll probably find that you're "on a roll" and things willl just get bigger and better every year.
81. Rambles 
82. Readathon - ideal for primary schools, students get sponsored for every book they read or just a flat donation for pupils that just need to be encouraged to read
83. Run a Marathon 
84. Santa Letters writing 
85. Santas Grotto 
86. Scavenger Hunt 
87. Selling Christmas Gifts from Catalogues 
88. Seventies Night / Disco 
89. Singing Telegrams on Mother's Day. Ideal for students, call your mother and sing the song of your choosing for a small charge.
90. Smarties tubes – collect £1 coins for your cause 
91. Sponsored Abseiling 
92. Sponsored Anything - Hot Tub a Thon, you name it, having fun is the name of the game !
93. Sponsored Head/Hair shave 
94. Sponsored Jail break 
95. Sponsored Silence 
96. Spring clean your wardrobes and sell on eBay 
97. Spring Flowers & Hanging Baskets – Demonstration & Plant Sale 
98. Strawberries & Cream Tea party – at Wimbledon time.  Also how about hand dipped chocolate strawberries as a student graduation or end of exams event 
99. Talent Show 
100. Ten Pin Bowling
101. Tennis tournament 
102. Treasure Hunts 
103. Trips & Outings 
104. Unwanted Gift Sale – perfect after Christmas 
105. Used Stamps 
106. Wine Tastings 
107. Salsa Night 
108. Welly Throwing Competition 

Please feel free to email us with any suggestions that are not on the above list!

Download and print the 101 Do It Yourself Fundraising Ideas List now.

Helpful Tips for New Fundraisers

The first tip that I have for any new fundraiser is to find out what you want to get out the whole process. There are a number of reasons why a person gets into fundraising.

Sure, it makes a person feel good because they're contributing to a good cause, but there are many other reasons.  You may be raising money for your favorite charity, your church, your school, a business or any number of other things. 

Another tip is that you should have clear goals.  You should have a goal for how much money you want to raise with your fundraiser. 

You should also have a clear time frame for achieving this monetary goal.  Some fundraises only last a day, but there are plenty others that are ongoing, over a period of time.

Another tip is to give yourself plenty of preparation time.  There is nothing worse than being unprepared.  You have to have everything organized and know what everyone's tasks are going to be. 

You need to make sure that everyone knows what they are going to be doing and what is going to be expected of them.  You don't want to try and wing it at the last moment and have everyone running around, not knowing what they are supposed to be doing.

Another tip is to make sure that you know what all of your expenses are going to be.  There is nothing worse than going into a fundraiser and not knowing what your expenses are going to be. 

You have to run it with a business mentality, so create an income and expenditure budget and try and stick to it!

It isn't how much money you make.  It is how much money you make after expenses are taken out of the total.  You can say, well we raised $10,000, but we spent $9,000 to do it.  You only ended up raising $1,000. 

It sounds simple, but there are so many people that make this mistake and that is because they don't figure in the costs ahead of time or they didn't take the time to get a good estimate of what the costs were going to be.

Lets say that you're going to raise money by mowing lawns.  If you're going to do it yourself, you don't have to worry about labor, but there are plenty of other costs.  You obviously are going to need a lawn mower and have a form of transporting it.  You're also going to have to pay for gas and maybe an oil change or other forms of maintenance.

Download and print the fundraising ideas list now.

If you're going to make and sell some crafts, in order to, raise money. You're going to have to think about all of the material costs that are going to go into it. Unless you're planning to sell them locally, you're going to also have to find a way to ship the items and think about the material costs that go into shipping. That would be the boxes, labels etc.

You may also have to look into advertising costs.  You may need to advertise online, in magazines or in newspapers.  You have to be thinking about all of these things.

Another tip is to simply have fun!  There is nothing worse than treating a fundraiser like a job.  You won't have fun and that might effect the people around you and they might not have fun.  Just remember that you're doing a great thing here. 

Most people wouldn't do what you're doing, they just aren't motivated enough.  You always have to keep the reward in mind.  Anything that you can do to spice things up and make things more interesting and fun, go ahead and do it, within reason, of course. 

Another tip is to motivate yourself and the people who are helping you in the fundraiser.  One way to do this is to provide a little competition. 

A little competition never hurt anybody and it will help ensure a more successful and more interesting fundraiser.  If you're selling a product, give the person that sells the most a special reward.  That will help motivate people to work harder. 

They not only have the motivation of raising more money for the fundraiser, in order to, help the cause, they will have motivation for beating everyone else and getting the special reward.

With this many ideas, fundraising is easy.  Just don't forget to have fun!

Got a unique fundraisiing idea that you'd like us to add to the list - please contact us with details of your suggestion.