Fundraising For Your School That's Simple and Effective - Color Run

Hi everyone! It's Amy from Learning Lessons With Mrs. Labrasciano.  I'm here today to tell you about easy fundraising for your school.  When our school district upgraded our operating system we found ourselves with less than one computer per classroom.  Our computers that had been handed down from a local high school were too old to work on the new system.  This is a huge problem! A group of teachers met over the summer to brainstorm different ways to earn money for new computers.  I suggested that we have a color run.  My personal kids had been begging me to sign them up for one.  After researching a dry color formula and a wet color formula on Pinterest, I submitted them to our PTA for the final decision.  The PTA voted on the wet color formula because they thought the color could be controlled more and wouldn't get in the student's eyes.

We chose to use our school colors for the run.  The ingredients were simply:  water, food color and vinegar.  The color was completely washable.  We had no complaints about skin irritants or such.

For 900+ students we bought:

10 boxes of 1 oz food color

1 large jug of vinegar 

10 spray bottles

The cost was under $50.  If you have parents donate the items, it could be free for you!

We put 100 drops of food color in each bottle.  This was approximately half of each food color bottle.  We put a couple of ounces of vinegar in each bottle to bring the color out on the shirts.  No need to measure.  Then we filled the bottles with water.

Permission slips were sent home to allow students to be sprayed.  We tied a ribbon around each child's wrist who had permission.  This way the sprayers knew exactly who was allowed to be sprayed.  The volunteers who were spraying were stationed around the running area.  We explained to the students that they wouldn't be sprayed by each person and they weren't to stop in front of the sprayers.   We didn't want the kids soaking wet.  We also wanted to preserve the spray so that we could keep our budget down.  Each group was given 30 minutes of running time.  We split the school into 3 groups.

Each child was given the task of raising donations for the run.  Most children brought in about $5 a piece.  Of course we had our top fundraisers who brought in more.  The grand total for fundraising was over $6,000.  The best part was that it was easy to set up and when the run was over, we were done.  There were no products to be organized and dispersed.

The parents that spoke to me had a lot of positive feedback.  They loved that they didn't have to buy anything.  They were thrilled that the students were having a great time, building memories and exercising!  If you have any questions about how we ran this, stop on by my blog and email me.