4 Creative Ways to Engage Students & Families in Fundraisers

You know family support is crucial to achieving school fundraising success—but getting their buy-in isn’t always simple. Motivating your supporters to engage with multiple fundraisers a year is easier said than done, especially when you’re competing against businesses and other organizations for their attention.

To help you stand out from the crowd and inspire donations, we’ve compiled a list of fresh, creative ways to connect with your top supporters. Let’s get started.

Make participating easy

Your supporters lead busy lives. Guardians may feel like they are playing Tetris to wedge school pick-up, soccer practice, and PTO meetings into their work schedules. To avoid adding another time-consuming obligation to their plates, make it convenient to participate in your fundraiser.

Some of the ways you can make engaging easy on these supporters include:

• Adding links or scannable QR codes to your donation page and any promotional materials.
• Using options like text-to-give tools that allow donors to give in just a few clicks.
• Placing the responsibility of fundraising on students by choosing ideas like a pledge-based walk-a-thon or another peer-to-peer campaign.
• Developing a strategic communication plan with clear calls to action and reminders to donate so parents won’t have to remember deadlines.
• Adding a virtual or hybrid option for events that busy parents can join remotely. 

When families can support your campaign or interact with your messages from anywhere and at any time, they’ll be engaged. For example, a parent may have to work during your charity auction. But if you use virtual audition software, you can expand the event to remote users who can bid from their phones.

Connect fundraisers to educational benefits

Your top priority as a school is always your students’ education, delivering quality learning experiences to students. To show that you prioritize education even in your fundraising efforts, choose an idea that provides educational benefits. 

There are plenty of educational fundraising ideas you can choose from to promote learning, such as a charity spelling bee or math-a-thon. For example, a fundraising idea like a read-a-thon promotes reading to students, both at home and school. As 99Pledges’ read-a-thon fundraising guide explains, this idea improves student reading comprehension and fosters a lifelong love of reading.

Additionally, tell parents how your fundraiser will benefit, support, or enhance students’ learning experiences. Perhaps the money they make from reading during the read-a-thon will go toward purchasing new books for the class. Communicate the fundraiser’s purpose in your promotional emails, posts, and through Peachjar to let families know where the money they are raising is going.

Gamify fundraising campaigns

Having a purpose behind your fundraisers is a significant motivator for many supporters, but some may respond better to a gamified fundraiser.

Gamification is a strategy that involves applying elements of gameplay, such as scoring points, to non-game scenarios. Here are some ways to apply this tactic to your school’s fundraisers to engage families:

• Use points and leaderboards. Give various fundraising activities a certain number of points. For example, sharing a social media post about the campaign could be worth two points, and securing a donation between $25 and $50 worth five points. Then, create a leaderboard that tracks progress. For motivation, offer prizes to your top earners.
• Create milestones or levels. Set up specific milestones or levels for students to work toward. For example, Mission2Math uses an assessment to place students at specific levels and encourages them to upgrade their skills. In the context of a fundraiser, you base levels on the number of donations or total fundraising dollars a student collects.
• Offer badges and trophies. This option pairs well with milestones and levels. First, outline and share the levels with students, parents, and other participants. Then, create digital or physical badges or trophies that award students for their achievements.
• Track fundraising progress. Publicly tracking your fundraising progress can motivate all of your supporters, from parents to teachers to donors, to keep pushing toward your goal. Double the Donation recommends using a fundraising thermometer to depict your campaign’s progress in an easy-to-visualize format. Embed the thermometer on your website and share it on all your communication channels so participants stay updated.

No matter which option you implement, clearly communicate the “rules” to your participants well in advance to avoid confusion and boost success for students, parents, and your fundraiser.

Offer incentives for participating

Think about any of the times you’ve received a promotional email from a business—what motivated you to engage? Perhaps you were truly passionate about the company or its products. Or, maybe there was something in it for you, like a discount or free item.

You can replicate this strategy for your school’s fundraisers. Use the gamification tactics we explored above, enter participants in a raffle, or simply give prizes to anyone who engages with the fundraiser. Some ideas students and parents might like include:

• For students: Homework passes, snacks, pizza or ice cream parties, watching a movie during class, branded school merchandise, or specialty school supplies.
• For parents and guardians: Gift cards, school merchandise, tech accessories, family experience packages like movie tickets, and coupon books to local businesses. You might also offer items or services that will benefit their child, like a free tutoring session before a big test.

Consider offering similar gifts to donors as a token of your gratitude. When it’s time to disperse the gifts, you may need to use donor segmentation tools to divide supporters into the correct groups. This can streamline the process and ensure each donor or participant receives an item that aligns with their level of support.

Engaging your students and their families in your fundraising campaigns helps them better understand the purpose, value, and effort that goes into your fundraisers. This makes them more likely to give and even volunteer their time in the future, growing your school’s network of loyal supporters.