PTA Fundraising Ideas: Our Top 25+ Events and Strategies
We know that busy parents add PTA fundraising to their already busy schedules because they want to support their local school and children. But let’s face it. As a parent, you’re tired.
Securing funding to enhance your school’s activities, provide student resources, and maintain essential services can be a struggle. You need quick, realistic school fundraising answers.
Since your PTA members are busy parents and teachers, your fundraising efforts should be easy, quick, and also impactful. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of more than 25+ top PTA fundraising ideas that you can easily adapt for your school’s needs.
We’ve broken the ideas into these categories:
- Our Favorite PTA Fundraising Idea
- Community and Event-Based PTA Fundraisers
- Product-Related PTA Fundraising Ideas
- Competitive PTA Fundraising Ideas
- Digital and Online PTA Fundraising Ideas
With creative PTA fundraising ideas that inspire support from your community, you’re sure to meet your funding goals.
The Real Problem with PTA Fundraising (It’s Not Motivation. It’s Math)
When parents and PTAs do fundraisers, it’s not because they love spreadsheets (although they might!). Typically, they’re fundraising because schools have needs that don’t fit within budget line items, and because “extra” experiences (e.g., field trips, clubs, playground upgrades) still cost money.
Most families don’t realize it, but educating each child costs a lot of money. For instance, and to give you context, NCES reports that public school systems spent $16,280 per student in 2022-2023 dollars, the latest reporting as of this article. Despite the amount, the figure still doesn’t close the gap in providing students with a comprehensive education.
That’s why PTA fundraising is essential. It helps bridge the financial gap for educators at the classroom or school level. PTAs do essential work to ensure that students have opportunities for extracurricular activities, enrichment programs, or even the basics in the classroom that federal or local governments do not provide due to budget cuts.
1. Our Favorite PTA Fundraising Idea: Shoe Drive Fundraisers
Shoe drive fundraisers are an impactful choice for PTAs and schools of all sizes! They’re a fast and easy way to raise money while uniquely engaging your community. These initiatives make a lot of sense for schools because:
- Kids are constantly outgrowing their shoes!
- Parents appreciate the chance to declutter and support your PTA.
- Everyone in your community has a pair or two that they never wear.
- Families can support your PTA without opening their wallets.
- Shoe drives can be easily combined with other fundraisers, allowing you to earn revenue from multiple sources simultaneously.
- Donating gently worn, used and new shoes is an easy way to repurpose footwear, a difficult-to-recycle item.
- Shoe drive fundraisers enable you to educate students about small-scale global philanthropy.
Here’s how a shoe drive fundraiser works:
- Your school partners with a shoe drive fundraising provider, such as Funds2Orgs.
- Your provider sends you the shoe collection and fundraiser marketing materials.
- You set out the collection materials and let your community know that you’re collecting gently worn, used and new shoes.
- When your fundraiser ends, you’ll ship all the shoes you’ve collected back to your provider.
- Once the provider receives the shoes, they’ll send you payment based on the pounds of shoes you collected!
At Funds2Orgs, we take care of your shoe drive fundraiser from start to finish! This video explains what it’s like to work with us for your next fundraiser:
We’ll help you raise more than ever in a unique, engaging, and easy way. Best of all, there are no out-of-pocket costs for your PTA! Simply contact the Funds2Orgs team, set your fundraiser’s time frame and goals, receive your free fundraising materials, and start collecting shoes.
Once you start your shoe drive fundraiser, remind students, teachers, and parents to bring their shoes to every event, sports game, and meeting. You’ll reach your goal in no time!
Community and Event-Based PTA Fundraisers
2. Drive-in Movie Party
Does your school have a large paved blacktop or an open field? Borrow some projection equipment for a night, choose an age-appropriate movie or two to screen, pop some popcorn, and create your own retro drive-in movie theater!
Go all-in on the retro theme for maximum effect. Plenty of schools and PTAs offer movie nights to their students and families, but a themed party like this will kick it up a notch!
Charge for admission, speaker rental, and concessions. Or ask attendees to bring a few pairs of gently worn, used and new shoes in exchange for a ticket!
3. Quiz Bowl Challenge
Everyone loves a good trivia night! Promote your event, collect trivia questions, organize them into categories, and recruit a volunteer host for the night.
Have teams pay a sign-up fee, charge admission at the door, or simply sell concessions to participants and audience members. Think of a fun twist for the competition, like kids vs. parents or kids vs. teachers.
Incorporate other fundraising elements into your trivia night, like a community supper, raffle, or school auction. Just be sure to offer great prizes for the night’s winners!
4. Fall Festival
Fall festivals are another classic event for elementary school PTA fundraising. What better way to celebrate the start of autumn and the beginning of a new school year than a fun festival for the whole community?
Solicit in-kind donations of equipment and concessions, and take your time planning the entire event. Fall festivals can be scaled up or down based on your available resources and time, but a festival with many activities will attract more donors!
Consider selling tickets to the festival, refreshments, or crafts to meet your fundraising goals. Plus, it’s easy to incorporate other fundraising elements. Promote your shoe drive fundraiser, hold a rummage sale, sell raffle tickets, and take photos!
5. Fancy Auction Night
Help your school host its own fancy gala and auction night! Kids and parents will have a blast dressing to the nines and placing bids on unique prizes. Add a unique theme to inspire greater attendance, such as “The Roaring Twenties” or “The Black and White Ball.” And don’t forget to research school auction software to find a provider that works for your school’s needs.
Solicit in-kind donations of items or services from local businesses to auction at your event. The items you procure should cater to your attendees’ interests and budgets to drive bids and make your fundraiser a success.
6. School Picnic
Spring and early summer are the perfect times to organize a school picnic PTA fundraiser!
Work with your school to organize a picnic event for students and parents. The event can be held on school grounds or in a nearby public park. To liven up the experience, plan activities like kite-flying contests, photo booths, and potato sack races. Be sure to recruit volunteers to help you manage each activity.
There are a few ways to raise funds with a picnic. Your PTA can sell packed lunches that you make yourselves, or you can solicit in-kind food donations from a local restaurant to sell to attendees. This is a great opportunity to promote your other fundraising drives as well!
7. Parents’ Night Out
Hosting a parents’ night is a classic PTA fundraising event. Depending on your resources and fundraising goals, you can make your parents’ party as elaborate or as simple as you want.
For instance, you can organize a cost-effective networking or community mixer for parents to be hosted in your school cafeteria. Ask a local restaurant for food and drink donations to sell, or simply ask attendees to make donations using a giving kiosk.
For an even more engaging parents’ party, partner with a local restaurant or bar to host your event and share a percentage of the night’s profits. Busy parents will especially enjoy this opportunity to support their PTA if you offer childcare back at the school, maybe by hosting a kids’ movie night at the same time.
8. Direct Mail Campaign
Never underestimate the power of a letter, postcard, or invitation! Donors enjoy being reminded that you value their support, especially when you take the time and effort to do so through a letter.
Generate a mailing list of your donors and email recipients. Communication is the goal here, whether you’re asking for donations or explaining new initiatives.
- For example, you could send letters that:
- Request a donation
- Welcoming the parents of new students to the community
- Invite parents to join your PTA or otherwise pledge their support
- Celebrate a special holiday or the summertime
- Explain upcoming fundraising drives or invite families to attend fundraising events
Product-Related PTA Fundraising Ideas
9. Popcorn Fundraiser
Students of all ages will be excited to participate in a food fundraiser, especially when they’re selling a snack they already love: popcorn! Your school can let students take the lead in teaching valuable skills and raise money with a popcorn fundraiser.
Work with a product fundraising partner to provide order brochures and a custom online store for students, families, and community members.
Launch this campaign alongside a drive-in movie party, another fundraiser we’ll discuss below, to help your school raise even more essential funds.
10. Custom T-Shirt Design Contest
Selling custom merchandise is a school fundraising staple for good reason! Donors love receiving a tangible item in return for their contributions. And when you work with the right service provider, these campaigns are easy to promote and build school spirit at the same time.
To engage your community and get them invested in your fundraiser, hold a t-shirt design contest. Here’s how this works:
- Select a custom t-shirt service. First, choose a custom merchandise service. Look for providers that offer discounted fees for schools and nonprofits and don’t require your school to place large orders of merchandise in advance. Instead, opt for a print-on-demand service that will create and ship orders as they’re placed.
- Create contest guidelines. Set a deadline for entries and outline key parameters. For example, the designs must include your school’s name, colors, and logo.
- Collect submissions. Have teachers encourage students to create designs and submit them to the contest. To broaden community involvement, you might have students create designs for the kids’ shirts and parents do the same for adult sizes.
- Hold a vote. Chances are, you’ll get dozens of design submissions. Work with your team to narrow down the strongest designs or those that best encapsulate your school’s spirit or the campaign theme. Then, have your school and community cast their votes.
- Recognize the winner. Highlight the winner in school announcements and on your website. Show off their design to get your community excited about purchasing the t-shirt.
- Promote the t-shirt. Work with your print-on-demand partner to finalize the design and list it on your online spirit wear store. Drive support by sharing links to the shop on your website, in social media posts, and in email newsletters.
Additionally, cap off the contest with a fun event. Encourage everyone to wear their shirts to celebrate the winning designer.
11. Holiday Pie Sale
Parents know all too well how stressful the holidays can be! They’ll be grateful for any opportunity to save time or reduce stress, particularly if it supports your PTA.
Have members of your PTA volunteer to bake classic holiday treats, like pumpkin and pecan pies, then host a special bake sale event for parents. Offer them frozen pies that they can quickly reheat just in time for their holiday dinners.
Promote your pie sale through your newsletters and with printed materials (like order forms) sent home with students. Create special offers, too! For example, one donation to your shoe drive fundraiser in exchange for a 10% off coupon.
12. Discount Card Fundraiser
Discount cards and coupon books are among the most effective and reliable fundraising ideas out there! Plus, they allow you to capitalize on essential partnerships and relationships your school has across the community.
Get in touch with popular local businesses and ask them to create special offers to be featured in your fundraising card or coupons. Businesses are often eager to get involved since a successful fundraiser represents a major source of advertising for them. Once you’ve compiled plenty of great offers, start promoting and selling your coupon books!
Services exist to create and print fundraising coupon books for you, but try your hand at it first! Your PTA will need to cover printing costs, but the excitement that a great discount card generates (for the whole community, not just parents) easily makes the effort worthwhile.
13. Percentage Night
Get in touch with a local family-friendly restaurant to organize a special percentage fundraiser! This can be an especially easy PTA fundraising idea since many restaurant chains already have percentage fundraising programs in place to partner with local schools.
Be sure to get creative, too! Offer your students special rewards or tickets to boost attendance and the effectiveness of your percentage fundraiser.
For example, you might get permission to sell ice cream and desserts at a booth in the parking lot, or you can give out coupons to the restaurant in exchange for pairs of shoes for your shoe drive fundraiser.
14. Photo Sales
This is an excellent strategy for PTA groups of all sizes, particularly as an elementary school PTA fundraiser. Parents of young students will love the chance to purchase candid photos of their children!
Rent one or two nice, professional-grade digital cameras for an extended period, then assign PTA volunteers to attend school events and take photos. Field days, graduation ceremonies, and plays are all great examples. Next, offer digital or printed copies of the pictures to the parents of the students in the photos for a reasonable price.
Parents are used to purchasing yearly school portraits, but high-quality candid photos from school events are sure to catch their attention!
Competitive PTA Fundraising Ideas
15. Lip Sync Contest
Add your own special twist on the classic karaoke night while tapping into the popularity of lip sync competition TV shows and viral videos!
Plan your event similarly to how you would a talent show, with concessions, speakers, and seating. Open up registration to students and parents, recruit guest judges, gather prizes for winners, and prepare for the big night.
You might ask registrants to provide a song they’d like to perform, so you can approve it and prepare the music ahead of time, or you might feature a themed twist to the competition. For instance, choose songs from the 60s, 70s, or 80s, then let registrants sign up to perform one. Themes also make it easy to include the best costume or celebrity impersonation prizes!
16. Guessing Game Challenge
Here’s another easy classic PTA fundraising idea: the guessing game. The traditional version involves marbles or beans in a jar. Students pay a small fee to enter their guesses, and at the end of the fundraiser, the closest guess receives a prize.
These fundraisers are a great low-cost option for PTAs of all sizes. Create a guessing game challenge for your school cafeteria, front office, or individual classrooms.
Get creative and involve parents, too! Offer an exciting prize for adults and feature a guessing game at your next festival, holiday party, raffle night, or sports game! You might be surprised by how excited parents will be to participate in simple, straightforward fundraisers like these.
17. Straw Draw Fundraiser
The straw draw is a classic PTA fundraising idea that works wonderfully with other fundraising events and strategies. Here’s how it works: print a special prize certificate, roll it up, and insert it into the bottom of a plastic straw. Fill a large container with other plastic straws, then jumble them all up.
Charge students a small fee to pull one straw and test their luck! The prize might be a donated gift card, a free ice cream party, or anything else that will excite students.
These fundraisers work great with other events and drives. For instance, offer one free straw draw in exchange for a pair of donated shoes, or feature a straw draw booth at your next fall festival!
18. Board Game Tournament
Host a fun, relaxed, and cost-effective fundraising event by gathering students and parents together to play their favorite board games.
Gather board games from your school’s collection, choose a date and location (such as the school cafeteria), and then promote your event. For best results, choose accessible board games and offer exciting prizes for all the winners!
You can charge attendees a small registration fee, or ask a local restaurant for in-kind donations and sell concessions instead. Parents will appreciate the chance to take their kids out for inexpensive entertainment while supporting your PTA.
19. Neighborhood Tour of Homes
Here’s a unique PTA fundraising idea: host a themed neighborhood tour! Parents will be excited to get to know each other, learn more about their neighbors, and support their local PTA.
Take your time planning and promoting this event. Ask for volunteers who want to invite tour guests to their homes or gardens, then organize a route. Pick a theme, like “Holiday Light Extravaganza,” “Spookiest Halloween Displays,” or “Springtime Garden Showcase.”
Raise money by charging for tickets, route maps, and refreshments. Let attendees vote on their favorite entrants in the neighborhood tour. Offer a fantastic donated prize to the top winners to ensure parents will be excited to volunteer!
20. Field Day Olympics
Field days are a classic school event across the country, and they’re also a perfect opportunity for PTA fundraising!
Work with your school to organize additional competitions and activities for your students and their parents. Then, promote your Olympics and ask teams of students and their parents to register to compete for the gold, silver, and bronze medals!
Think of other creative ways to raise money during field day, like refreshments, pack lunches, photo sales, or equipment rentals. This is a great opportunity to ask for donations of gently worn, used and new shoes in exchange for free concessions.
Digital and Online PTA Fundraising Ideas
21. Perfect Donation Forms
You need to offer your supporters an easy way to make donations even when you’re not hosting a fundraising event. Providing an online option can boost donations, as many parents may be unable to attend your events, but still want to support your PTA.
That’s where online donation forms come in. A donation form or page is easy to include on your website, social media page, or email newsletter. Promote it wherever your members and supporters regularly go to check for updates from your PTA.
You should follow a few best practices for designing donation forms. For example, make sure to include key elements like:
- A campaign headline or title
- A brief description or mission statement that outlines the purpose of the fundraiser
- Preset suggested giving amounts
- A recurring gift option (e.g., a check-box donors can use to opt in)
- Fields for donor contact and payment information
- Other optional engagement fields (e.g., “Join our weekly newsletter!”)
- Embedded branding and other visual elements
- Matching gift search widget
22. Matching Gift Drive
Some of your students’ parents likely work at companies that offer corporate giving programs, like matching gifts. Matching gifts are an underused source of funding for nonprofits, including schools. Essentially, when a parent whose employer has a matching gift program donates to your school, they can contact their employer to get their gift matched.
This means you can effectively double the impact of your supporters’ donations by simply asking them to check their employers’ matching gift programs!
For example, a few top companies that offer matching gift programs for K-12 schools include:
- Disney. Full-time, part-time, and retired Disney employees can have their donations to elementary schools matched. Donations must be over $25, with a $25,000 annual match limit per employee. This means if you have a particularly generous donor who works for Disney and gives $10,000, your school can receive a total of $20,000 through matching gifts.
- Texas Instruments. In addition to providing classroom technology, Texas Instruments will match employee donations between $25 and $10,000 each year per employee. Plus, if a Texas Instruments employee volunteers 20 hours with your school, they can apply for a volunteer grant of $250.
- The Home Depot. The Home Depot matches employee gifts to almost all nonprofit organizations, including K-12 schools. The online process allows employees to submit a matching gift request seconds after donating to your school.
You can hold a standalone matching gift drive or easily incorporate it into your other fundraising activities and campaigns, both on and offline. Simply add directions for how to get started with matching gifts to your regular communication materials.
23. eCard Fundraising Campaign
If your school already sells branded merchandise, eCard fundraisers are an easy extension of your pre-existing online efforts. With this fundraiser, you’ll sell virtual greeting cards alongside the rest of your school’s merchandise.
eCards are the virtual versions of physical postcards. You’ll design several branded eCards that students and their families will want to buy. Let them add their own personal messages to the eCards, and send them digitally via email or social media to their intended recipients.
eCard fundraisers can be hosted all year round, but are especially effective during holidays when your school’s community is in the mood for greeting cards. Create fun eCard designs for Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and the winter holiday season. For example, check out this Valentine’s Day eCard from the Pacific Salmon Foundation:
For high schools, you may even want to market this fundraiser to students. If so, set eCard costs at a reasonable price point for your average student’s budget, and make funny, cute, and eye-catching designs that are likely to appeal to your student body.
24. Online Shopping Fundraiser
Want another fundraiser you can run year-round? Online shopping fundraisers are a reliable way for your PTA to raise money, even when school isn’t in session. All you need to do is regularly remind your supporters to keep shopping!
First, your PTA will partner with an online shopping program. This partner will provide all the resources you need to get started, including marketing materials and an app and browser extension branded to your school.
Encourage your community members to download the app or browser extension and make their everyday purchases through it. Doing so will send your school a percentage of their sales totals at no additional cost!
Add regular reminders to sign up and continue shopping online through the app and browser extension to your newsletter, emails, and other usual communications to keep this fundraiser going all year. Plus, thank those who participate so they will continue to do so!
25. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaign
Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns are an excellent way to engage your community with your PTA’s fundraising!
Top volunteers in your PTA will host their campaign pages, which they then promote to friends, family, and coworkers on social media. This way, members of their network can give directly to someone they know and care about, increasing the chances they’ll give even if they are unfamiliar with your school.
Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns also make great additions to any major fundraising events you might be planning. For instance, you might launch a peer-to-peer campaign a few months before your fall festival. Volunteers will compete with one another (in a friendly manner!) to see who can raise the most. Then, at the festival, you’ll thank everyone who participated and hand out awards to volunteers who went above and beyond in their fundraising.
26. Text-to-Give Campaign
Mobile giving is on the rise, and studies highlight why organizations are focusing on this channel. SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, and revenue from mobile messages saw a 14% increase in 2023. To reap these benefits for your school, start by making sure your school’s website and donation form are mobile-friendly. Then, consider launching a text-to-give campaign.
Text-to-give works like this:
- Your text-to-give service gives your nonprofit a phone number supporters can text to donate.
- Choose a keyword for supporters to text to the number you were given. The keyword should be easy to type and remember, like YOURSCHOOL2024.
- Supporters text your keyword and a donation amount to your text-to-give number.
- The donation is billed to the supporters’ phone provider, meaning your school receives funding instantly, and supporters will pay for their gift on their next phone bill.
A great text-to-give service is an investment in your PTA’s fundraising abilities. For example, asking event attendees to pull out their smartphones and make a fast donation is easy. Imagine if half the spectators at your school’s biggest game of the year made a text-to-give donation!
27. Crowdfunding Campaign
Here’s another easy way to boost online donations to your school’s PTA: conduct an online crowdfunding campaign! These campaigns work especially well when targeted toward a specific project or goal.
For example, create a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for your upcoming school carnival! Promote it to your community, and raise some support to help you hold a more exciting event with more activities to engage more donors than ever. Other examples include raising funds for a new mural, a school welcome sign, or other specific projects.
If you hold a crowdfunding campaign, explore all the alternative platforms available. Some are designed specifically to meet the needs of schools or community-based groups.
What to Consider When Choosing PTA Fundraisers: Profit, Effort, and Equity
The PTA fundraising ideas in this article have consistent criteria, so your PTA board can compare options clearly. Still, before you commit to any school fundraiser, make sure you’re clear about what you’re signing up to do. In turn, that’ll minimize frustration and ensure as many people as possible are on board.
Net revenue focuses on what’s left after costs. Depending on your fundraiser, you may have to pay for auction software, venue rental, prizes, food, or merchandise inventory. A fundraising event that grosses $8,000 but costs $4,000 to execute isn’t the same as a shoe drive fundraiser that nets $3,000 with zero upfront investment.
Time and volunteer load matter enormously. Before starting on PTA fundraising, know how many hours you’ll need. Also, do you need one-time volunteers to help you in your efforts? If so, survey parents. Some parents can give you a Saturday. Others may only manage to do logistical runs.
Participation barrier addresses whether families have to spend cash, maintain flexible schedules, or possess special skills. For example, a silent auction with $50 tickets may exclude some families. A shoe drive fundraiser costs only the time it takes to clean out a closet.
Community-building value measures how much a fundraiser brings families together versus relying on transactional relationships. For instance, a trivia night creates memories, but a catalog sale mostly creates awkward conversations and sales pressure. Try to choose a PTA fundraiser that unites people with a common goal or fun experience!
What Shoe Drive Fundraising Success Looks Like
East Rutherford PTA in New Jersey collected 150 pairs of shoes during a single weekend event! Cox Elementary PTA collected 106 bags of gently worn, used and new shoes for their PTA, one of the best fundraising ideas for kids (and parents!). And, La Villita Elementary PTA in Texas collected 80 bags through a PTA fundraiser that ticked all the boxes for the 5 traits of effective fundraisers. You could be part of a fundraising success story too!
Explore More Fundraising Ideas With Funds2Orgs
Use these ideas to plan a full fundraising calendar of easy-to-run campaigns and events that will keep your school’s community engaged. Whenever you decide on a fundraising idea, consider extra revenue-generating ideas you can incorporate to maximize the event’s impact.
Certain events, such as shoe drive fundraisers, work well as standalone fundraising opportunities and as add-ons, making them extremely versatile and easily adapted to your needs! When you partner with Funds2Orgs, you get access to the materials, support, and expertise you need to make your shoe drive fundraiser a success. Learn how simple it is to get started today!
To expand your fundraising even further, check out these additional fundraising ideas and resources:
- How to Host a School Fundraiser to Supplement Your Funding. Not sure how to host a school fundraiser? Discover the steps to organize your next fundraising event in this guide.
- 75 Fun School Fundraising Ideas to Raise More Money. Check out our comprehensive guide to the most effective school fundraising ideas that any school organization can host.
- 20+ Easy and Creative Christian School Fundraising Ideas. Do you run a faith-based school? Discover creative fundraising ideas that fund your Christian school and connect your community to its faith.
