A shortlist of fundraising ideas. Many of them I have witnessed and were very successful.

• Cow Plop Contest - A field is divided into a grid, like a giant bingo board. People buy a square. You place a cow in the field and where it poops is the winner. This takes a bit of organizing since someone has to keep track of the sales, grid the field and get a cow to the location. Usually done in conjunction with a popular sporting event at the school. WARNING: It can also take hours for the cow to poop.

• Serve a meal - cheap or expensive. Expensive meals make more money but are harder to deal with (Prime Rib, Crab Feed). Cheap can be pancakes or pasta & salad.

Crab Feeds, in my experience, make the most money - especially in California. People will pay the highest dollars for seafood. Steaks have been the second most successful, especially in Beef Country. Chicken, pancakes & pasta all come in last. For the Crab Feed, you must have a good chef. 

• Pancake Breakfasts is an easy one, but you need many griddles and lots of electricity.

• When you have dinner, have an auction and raffle at the same time. Have both a silent auction and items sold in a public auction. Successful business owners or managers like to be recognized for the donations they make when items are raffled off in a public auction. If you also have entertainment at this event, it makes it the most successful.

• Steaks cooked on pitchforks on an open fire - I have not seen it, only heard about it.

• Penny Socials - People donate 100 "Yard Sale-like" items ~ and they are displayed on tables around the room with a box or bowl in front of each item. People pay a $ amount to come to the event, and they get a limited number of tickets with the admission. They can also purchase more tickets. People walk around and put 1/2 of the double raffle-style ticket into the bowls or boxes in front of the items they want to win. Items are drawn throughout the evening. Don't wait till the end to draw all 100 items. Let people win as the night goes on. Both children and adults love these and people buy extra tickets. You give them 10 tickets with admission as seed tickets, then sell them more tickets. Items can be raffled in groups, also.

• Take 5-gallon Water Cooler Jugs and place them outside school classrooms. People drop their change into the jugs. You put Pennies in your own jug and silver in other people's jugs. Pennies count as positive; silver makes them subtract that amount from the pennies collected. (i.e., a jug is counted and it has 200 pennies, but you find a quarter, nickel and dime in the jug, so the tally is $2.00 minus 25¢, minus 10¢, minus 5¢ = $1.60 total) This is a contest to see who can get the highest total count in their water jugs over a given time period. The winning group gets a pizza party.

• Collecting old electronics and charging people to deliver them to a recycling place is also lucrative. I have paid to have old TVs, Computers, Printers, Toaster Ovens, and microwaves collected for recycling at one of these fundraisers. It takes a small staff, with a large truck or trailer to move the collected items.

 Text Marketing - very underrated. Whatever you are doing, having students sit and text as a group, all the numbers in their phones, advertising any event is the way to go.

• January - April is a perfect time to do shredding of tax docs fundraiser. Weigh the boxes of papers and charge by the lb. to shred the docs. Have students there shredding them using shredders. (Have oil to lube the shredders). Then take the shredded docs to a recycling facility. You will need cardboard boxes, trash bags, and trash pails to transport the shredded papers. Filling the pails, boxes and bags must be done somewhere there is no wind, and you can vacuum up afterward. Renting a U-Haul Box truck for this works great!

Always have a Raffle - have five prizes to raffle off as door prizes no matter your fundraiser. This won't make you more but makes the event more exciting. Everyone likes raffles, even the wealthy.

A pail of booze and alcohol will always make you money as an auction item.