Time for new uniforms, or that trip to Florida, or you just need to replace the instruments or folders. No school can cough up the dough needed to keep a good secondary music performance group going, so directors are often called on to be PR people and sales managers, sending their students into the world of commerce. Before you swear that you never want to see another orange again, here are some ideas that might help.

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An idea that can also help with the PepsiNotes:Purchase cases of soda from a wholesale distributor, and set up soda sales after each choir rehearsal. The kids love it! (It's also a behavior incentive. The kids lose the soda sales if their behavior isn't too good during rehearsal!) You might be looking for a supplement or replacement for working with regular companies, especially if you don't need to raise a tremendous amount of money and want pure or almost pure profit.

Here are some ideas that take just a little work, but the money all goes to your group. The orchestra boosters in my district held a used-book sale. They asked for donations from each school, and also set up barrels at major businesses such as Wal-Mart. This was just like a garage sale, with an educational twist!

Speaking of sales, have your boosters organize a yard (or gym!) sale.

From K-8 Magazine: One elementary teacher in Missouri needed a new piano, so a "Pennies for Piano" campaign was launched. The students all brought in their pennies (what can you do with those anyway?) and deposited them in a special jar. The Student Council rolled the pennies when the containers got full. And yup, they got their piano! Another teacher put together a quilt pack, containing fabric markers that the kids could use to draw designs on paper. These designs were iron-transferred. (One note: if you do this, make sure the kids write their letters in a mirror image!). The quilt was pieced, and raffle tickets were sold. The group earned about $800.00.

If scheduling is convenient, put together groups of kids to deliver singing telegrams. Other idea contributions:

From Jennifer Pieschl: I had a very successful fund raiser this year. It takes a little leg-work the first year, but after that it almost runs itself. I sent a simple paper home with each child that listed several types of holiday plants (pointsettias, christmas cactus, ivy, amaryllis and others), their size, color, and price. I got them from actual GROWERS (greenhouses that sell them retail do not offer good prices). Because I didn't organize myself soon enough, the papers went out on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and had to be in by that Friday. My school has about 375 students, and most of them come from poor families. Not having done the sale before, I did not expect much of a response. To my surprize, I sold almost $900 worth of plants and made about $300 (at least). I know that doesn't really sound like a lot, but my goal was to be able to purchase an Orff instrument for class, and I met it. The flowers are being delivered to the school on the day of our concert and we are placing them on the stage for decoration. Parents take them home afterwards (I have a great organization for distributing them, as well). So they get the holiday plants they'd have bought anyway at school, we make the profit instead of the stores, our stage is gloriously decorated, and we get to buy STUFF. Next year I'll mark the prices up a little to create a higher profit margin, but I want to keep them low so that people get in the habit of always buying their plants from me. I'll distribute the order forms in late October next year, and allow two weeks before orders must be in. I'm sure that I will experience more and more success every year. I have PTO help, simply because they're wonderful. Because of my efforts and my excitement about this instrument, my principal volunteered to purchase another one for me, and the student council is also purchasing one for me. So, in a certain technical sense I raised over a thousand dollars.

From Nick Boerger: The band boosters of our local high school arrange to do work at a local Paramount Theme Park. They all work for an 8 hour shift, usually with food, or games... The money they make goes to the band plus the parents get a free pass.

Pat Boozer made and sold "Memory Tapes". Her steps are as follows: I obtained written permission for use of some accomp. tracks. (Rather not say where, lest they become inundated with requests.) However, I was going to just make some accomp. tracks of my own, using non-copyrighted folk and children's songs. I sent letter to parents explaining who, what, where, etc. I secured several people at my school to help cover my classes, keep "recordees" quiet while I was recording, help "dub" master copies for our school music library to have on hand in case someone's car stereo got hungry and ate their master! Took orders on forms with the money turned in up front. Used my own school's recording equipment (which has a built in mike in the tape deck--a nice JVC unit (Model # TD W318 --double cassette deck) Selected 5 song choices. Taught all 5 possible selections to the school during music classes. (except for Kind./1st grade. They only had 3 choices. The other 2 were chosen for the older kids.) Took the orders and the $$$ and gave the recordee a wordsheet to study. Set up recording dates (during special area times). I asked our other spec. area teachers if I could have all of the grade level kids during those days. As we finished tapes, those kids didn't have to come back the next day, so they went on to their normal special area with their class. Some kids were at the "end of the line" sotospeak, so they had to keep coming back. Some grades had a BUNCH of kids, so we had to keep them from a little of their classroom time, but, I let their teachers know upfront. We dubbed masters of the whole bunch. I made professional looking labels and cassette liners myself to save money. I left a blank line to put the kid's name and title of their song. The rest was in 2 colors from my HP printer. The label page took forever to line up correctly!!! If you have a program which makes a label template, use it! I didn't have one. We "gave them away" at $8.00 each. Next time I'll charge $10. (However, if they wanted 2 songs, we charged $15.) If they wanted an extra copy we only charged $3.00. That was hardly worth doing, except that it was good PR with the parents! I'm doing it again in the Spring for those who never got their parent letter home--or, were too chicken to do it! I now have a brand-new Yamaha keyboard because of the fund-raiser, with money left for some midi software! And, the parents loved the tapes. I got them out in time for Christmas presents, just as I promised!

From "Kelly": I had a friend who took all the OLD instruments out of the back rooms and turned them into planters! With the natural drainage ability it was a natural. They turned out to be really cute. They sold every one. You can only use it once, but who knows, maybe there's money to be made.

From Ken Taylor:marathon concerts: : When I did one(marathon concert) years ago, it was to raise money for new band uniforms. Each band member sold pledges of X amount per hour played. We planned to play 24 hours. My boosters set us up in a big tent, supplied two porta-johns, planned food and drink for the hourly 5-minute break (as specifies in the Guinness book of world records). They also brought in a telephone line to the site (in case of emergency). We started at 10:00am. on a Saturday, and finished at 10:15am. on the next day. During the night, we marched around the shopping center parking lot where our tent had been set up. The kids held up well, we raised over $2000 which was matched twice over after the local publicity we generated. So, we netted over $5K after expences, way back in 1974. This happened at Belmont High School in Dayton.

Along these same lines, an idea from Marcia Peteranetz : At our school, our P.T.O. sponsors a "jogathon." The kids go aout and get pledges for so much $ per lap that they run. We have about 700 kids; it reaises from $13000 to $17000. The only money spent is for prizes. Every child who raises $25 gets a t-shirt (about $6), and other prizes are added every $25 raised per child. I think you could somehow convert this to your music groups. You could use blocks of practice time in one week, number of measures played in one week, number of tunes learned in one day, have an all-day band or choir sing-along or play-along and see how many pieces they could sing or play, etc. With a little imagination, it could be pure profit and really benefit the group.

The nice thing is: on many of these fund-raisers, you can avoid the door-to-door, conflicts with other organizations trying to raise money, and net a nice profit for your organization.

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