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One of the oldest tactics that people use with school fundraisers to try and get students to sell more and boost their profits is to offer fundraising prizes. The thinking has typically gone that by offering some kind of incentive program, the students will naturally sell more. But does it really work? And is it possible that these prize programs can actually hurt your results?
Based on our experience with thousands of schools all over the country, school fundraising prizes do little to help you raise more money. In fact, because the money to pay for these prizes has to come from somewhere, the almost always mean a lower profit percentage will be earned by the school. And when it comes to the tradeoff between offering prizes and earning a better profit percentage, the choice should be fairly easy to make.
One of the major issues customers have with fundraising prizes that they have shared with us over the years is that the prizes tend to actually drive sales down, rather than up. The reason for this, they tell us, is that there are typically a few students who have well connected or wealthier parents who will naturally sell more than the other students. And when the other students feel like there is absolutely no way they can get the prize because Max’s mom always buys 100 candles to give as gifts, they are much more likely to just give up altogether.
So if not fundraiser prize programs, how are you supposed to motivate students to sell as much as they can? What we have found to be the most effective motivation technique is setting a worthwhile, tangible, and attainable goal and then communicating that goal with every single student and their families. Raising money for something important and immediate is an amazing tool for getting people to work.
For example, instead of telling families that you are having a fund raiser and some of the money will go to help buy some stuff for the playground, you should tell participants that you need to raise $3,000 by December 1st and that if you do that a new playground will be built by the start of the next school year. You need to be clear and descriptive about reaching your goal. And reaching an important goal is the only kind of fundraising prize that ALWAYS motivates students and their parents to do their best.
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