Fundraising Ideas for AOTPAC's Student Challenge
Compiled by Justin Young, OTD Student, Creighton University
- Hold a Raffle—If parking is at a premium at your school, try purchasing a space and raffling it off to fellow students. Better yet, see if a faculty member would donate his or her parking space for one month for the raffle. Other raffle ideas: Dinner for two, movie tickets, spa gift certificates.
- Penny wars—Have class competitions on who can collect the most pennies. If one class is winning, put some silver coins into their bucket to take them down a notch. At the end, pennies count toward the positive and silver coins toward the negative. The class with the most pennies at the end wins the prize.
- Take four jugs and label a jug for each class—"1st year," "2nd year," "3rd year"—and one for "Faculty."
- Set a time frame for the competition with clear start and stop dates. Pennies are positive points and silver coins are negative, based on worth (a nickel is minus 5 points, a dime is minus 10, a quarter is minus 25). So, you could have 13 pennies but if someone put in a quarter, your score would drop to minus 12! At the end of the competition, points are tallied. The team whose jug has the most points (or the least negative) is the winner. Award the winning team with a pizza party!
- Host a date auction—Invite the other disciplines in your school and watch the sparks fly.
Date auctions are a whole lot of fun, but they do take some work and planning. You have to ask restaurants, movie theaters, ice cream shops, miniature golf courses, etc., to donate free coupons or gift cards, so your school can actually make money on the date auction. When you auction off the person, you will present the person and say something like, "Meet Kelly, she is currently working for [this company]. Her interests are golfing and sports. If you choose to go out with Kelly, you will enjoy a wonderful dinner for two at …." You could also have the auctioned-off dates be in charge of making lunch or dinner, which would save money. Make sure you put together a contract for the auctioned-off date and the bidder. This way, the bidder will pay up front, and the person will be obligated to go out with him or her. This method will avoid problems with auctioned-off dates who do not want to go out with the bidder, thus causing the bidder to ask for a refund. With safety in mind, do not give out too many details about a person's address or phone numbers; e-mail is best. Meeting somewhere neutral on the date is most likely the best option for everyone involved.
- Make My-Space work for the profession—Use it to sell occupational therapy T-shirts between fellow students. The catchier the slogan, the better.
- Sponsor a fun student–faculty dinner. Have a contest between classes, with the winning class receiving a dinner cooked and served by your faculty.
- Compile recipes and put together an OT cookbook. Make it general, or focus on a specific area such as cooking with kids. Then sell, sell, sell.
- Hold a bake sale, or sell cups of coffee or juice to fellow students. Do not let them spend all their money at Starbucks!
