Fundraising

[notchole]

Hi, guys!
The way our school funds clubs has changed this year. Although Hunter Quiz Bowl's been around for a decade now, we've never had to do any serious fundraising before. Outside of the traditional but low-yield bake sales (and running tournaments, of course), what do y'all do to help raise money for your teams?
Thanks!

[bretthogan43]

You could try reaching out to nearby businesses; usually they're happy to support. GoFundMe pages are an option but the likelihood you'd get any yield from that is slim to none. In high school I got monetary help from a lot of my family members but for the most part my team was funded based on how I budgeted that week's paycheck. Best of luck to you.

[Couch's Kingbird]

You could try reaching out to nearby businesses; usually they're happy to support. GoFundMe pages are an option but the likelihood you'd get any yield from that is slim to none. In high school I got monetary help from a lot of my family members but for the most part my team was funded based on how I budgeted that week's paycheck. Best of luck to you.

On this vein, we've sent letters to potential sponsors before. You can also try stuff like a trivia night (if you have the time, manpower, and resources). Bake sales are great if you do them strategically (e.g. sports games, theater shows, other events that lots of people attend).

[Jack]

If your school lets you, sending mass solicitation letters to local businesses in exchange for listing them as a sponsor somewhere (or even just straight up asking them for $) can actually be very effective for the amount of time you have to put into it. Considering Hunter College HS is in NYC I assume there is no shortage of businesses to solicit.

[Santa Claus]

On Amazon right now, a box of 80 Welch's fruit snacks retails for roughly $12 with Prime. If sold for the modest price of $0.50 each, this generates $28 dollars of profit per box sold. Similarly, Kellogg's fruit snacks would generate $16 profit if sold for $1 each (they're bigger) and Annie's gets $25 in profit at $1 each (also they're delicious). There's also a fundraising case of larger Welch's fruit snacks that is sold for $1 each instead, but only yields $20 profit per box (and also the cardboard really digs into your fingers after a while).

I cannot say whether doing a fundraiser of this sort would be viable for you. It all depends on factors like how willing your schoolmates are to buy candy, how willing your team is to sell it, and whether you have the existing capital to make the initial purchase. However, I personally sold a couple thousand fruit snacks while I was in high school to fund the various academic teams I was on, which has included all of the aforementioned fruit snacks at one point or another, so I figured you might as well consider it.

Some caveats:

• I went to a school with over three thousand students, meaning there was a particularly large market.
• Our city had a large population of upper middle class families, which meant that it was possible for people to have the disposable income to participate.
• Each team that I fundraised with had a large number of students involved, not all of which would be attending nationals, meaning that we could raise large sums.
• Some of my teammates were sociopaths who sold ridiculously large numbers of fruit snacks, which buoyed up our overall numbers.
• There was the expectation that, if you failed to sell the fruit snacks, you would cover the difference, which may be unreasonable.
• We sold fruit snacks during a week that was designated to us by the administration, as multiple clubs and teams would run fundraisers over the course of the year and they required foreknowledge to prevent conflicts.

Oh yeah and our history bowl team would charge entry to a "History Bowl Smackdown" where the history teachers (who were all willing to participate with us) would play a team of students in an emcee'd competition that was based almost entirely on Jeopardy but with questions written by us. I don't actually know whether we've hosted that since I graduated, but that was fun too.

[tksaleija]

I've been considering running a tournament for fundraising (and also because of reasons noted in my bad questions thread) and I was wondering how much the average profit is (I know this varies a lot so just an estimate based on like 10-12 schools would be gr8) .

[Couch's Kingbird]

I've been considering running a tournament for fundraising (and also because of reasons noted in my bad questions thread) and I was wondering how much the average profit is (I know this varies a lot so just an estimate based on like 10-12 schools would be gr8) .

Darien has made around $600 (give or take; I'm not sure what the exact number is) from hosting smaller tourneys (10-12 teams, as you mentioned). Note that this does not count the cost of buying questions, getting stuff copied, etc.

[Nate714]

With our team, we’ve done successful fundraising through our annual “History Movie Night” that we host each year. It’s usually around February/March and helps the team with costs to NHBB Nationals. Last year I believe we made over 600 dollars in profit by selling $5 per student ticket. Also a good idea if you are thinking about this route is to try to get teachers/administrators to okay a “if you go to this and write something about it you get extra credit in class” plan so more students come. Just an idea, however, and you can mold it towards your circumstances if need be.