8th Grade Class Trip - fundraising ideas? (lunch program?)

[mammom]

Hi Everyone,

Can you tell me what your Waldorf schools have used for fundraising for the 8th grade service trip? 

Our school's main fundraiser has been lunches.  At the beginning of this year, and I think for the last couple of years, parents of the current 8th grade have made burritos on Tuesdays and have sold pizza on Thursdays. 

There was a strong petition that went around at the beginning of the year to get rid of the pizza (it was pretty junky) and we discovered a great replacement - a company that does hot lunches for schools and offers relatively healthy menus with Whole Foods' standards (no artificial colors/flavors, no hormones/antibiotics in the meat/dairy, etc.).

We just found out last week that the company is changing its standards - lowering them.  The meat and dairy will no longer be certified hormone/antibiotic-free. 

It wasn't a huge money maker anyway, but we thought it would grow over the next year or two.  Now that this has happened, I don't think we'll be keeping it.  There is another lunch program that is more local and uses more local/organic foods, but the profit margin for fundraising isn't there because the quality is better and the company isn't as big as the one we were using.

My thought was that we could continue a lunch program with the local company at a smaller profit margin, but try to find other options for fundraising.

What has worked well for your school?  Are there any out there that aren't food related?

Thank you for any ideas!

[ecoteat]

I teach in a tiny public school and we fundraise every year for the 8th grade to go on their class trip. This year there are only six 8th graders, so it wasn't a ton of money, but these are things that have contributed to the goals for us over the years:

Bottle drive (Maine has a deposit for bottles and cans)

Silent auction at town meeting, when most of the town is there already.

Sell lunch and offer babysitting at town meeting.

Live auction during a PTF event.

Flower Power flower sale (flowerpower.com)

Kids host a school dance every two months and invite middle school kids from surrounding schools. They charge $4-5 admission and sell snacks.

Selling snacks at sport events.

Selling take-out dinners at sport events for families to take home so they don't have to cook after the basketball game.

Carwash

Sell dumb things like t-shirts, candles, wrapping paper (but not on years that I'm in charge of fundraising!)

Dinner events

Another school was very successful in hosting regular Saturday morning breakfasts.

[firefrenzy]

Sorry- I'm crashing here but I have done a lot of fundraisers for church.  Here are some things I've used in the past.

Silent Auctions with donations from community businesses 

Basket Auctions (can be used in a silent auction format)- people put together "themed" baskets and donate them for the auction (my ladies group is about to do another one... I'm doing a "summer fun" basket filled with sidewalk chalk, jump ropes, kites, etc)

Karaoke-  We host a monthly karaoke that is free but sell homemade bbq sandwiches and desserts 

Chili Cookoff (great for fall and winter months)-  charge an entry fee to enter and a small fee for people to taste chili and get a bowel of their favorite kind  (this was combined with our karaoke this year and our small church raised 2,000 for the Mexico Orphanage we support)