15 April Fools Fundraising Ideas For Schools

Flock The Yard

Ever heard of “flocking”? This is an activity where patrons can have their yard or a friend’s yard filled with 10-20 plastic flamingos. 

To get started, you’ll need to collect the birds (or whichever animal the PTO/PTA wants to use), a list of volunteers to act as bird wranglers, and a few volunteer houses to start the event. Once you have everything collected, your bird wranglers can place the flock in an area thats easy for the family to see with a note either dropped off at their door or placed on the flock somewhere. The note should read something like:

“Congrats you’ve been FLOCKED! We can persuade the birds to move on for a $10 donation, but for a $15 donation you can tell the birds where to FLOCK to next! Our bird wranglers can be reached at (insert phone number here). Passing is an option as well! Just give us a call at that number and we’ll come shoo the birds away for free.”

Patrons can even purchase Flamingo Insurance for $10, which prevents their yard from being selected as a landing place for the birds. Some schools do “sneaky flocking”, where the wranglers try to sneak the birds onto the yard without the family noticing until the note is delivered. Feel free to have fun with it! 

See also: 15 April Fundraiser Ideas

Donut Seeds

Bag and sell donut seeds (a small baggie of cheerios), complete with a full label and instructions, to the students to prank the younger siblings and gardeners in their lives.

Stairway To Balloons

This prank is for the parents to pull on the students with the help of the janitors and the administration. To set this up, have the Booster Club send out an email to all of the parents letting them know about the fundraising goal. Ask them to either donate themselves or to secure donations from nearby businesses. 

Once the goal has been reached, the Booster Club fills all of the school stairways (or just the major ones) with balloons and saran wrap. The student’s faces will be priceless when they come in on a sleepy Monday morning to see the chaos of brightly colored balloons and saran wrap EVERYWHERE.

Gender Swap Day

Collect donations from the students to have a gender swap day! The kids will really get a kick out of seeing all of their friends dressed as the opposite gender. 

Sanctioned Pool Day

Turn the school’s courtyard or parking lot into an impromptu pool party space for your seniors, complete with an inflatable pool filled with water and all the music, pool noodles, and floaties they could need. The Booster Club can either accept an entry fee to join the party or use the party like a reward after reaching a donation goal.

Sticky Desk

Donate to have your favorite teacher’s desk/classroom covered in sticky notes! Because a pack of 400 sticky notes run less than $3, this could be a pretty lucrative prank depending on the donation requirement.

#twinning

Collect donations to allow the students to have a dress alike day with their friends! This activity should be relatively inexpensive as the students are the ones supplying their own costumes, but if the PTO/PTA wants to include any special treats or activities for the day, they absolutely can!

Trick Socks

The Booster Club can sell trick socks for the students to prank their friends and family. All the PTO/PTA will need are several packs of socks (varying sizes to capture the biggest audience) and access to a (or several) sewing machines. 

To create the prank, sew across the middle part of the sock, essentially sealing it shut about halfway down. The students will really get a kick out of watching their poor victim struggle against the stitches until they figure out that they’ve been pranked.

Egg The Yard

With this event, have the students donate to have eggs hidden in their friend’s yard. There are varying degrees of difficulty but either way you hide the eggs really well and you tell the victim how many eggs have been hidden.

For a more friendly approach, use plastic eggs and feel free to hide candy or other prizes inside. For a prank with a little more oomph, hide real eggs that were purchased from the grocery store. If all of the real eggs aren’t found, they’ll stink as they decompose. Offer option two with discretion!

Spilled Nail Polish

Sell a prank set up to look like someone spilled nail polish on the carpet or in a parents car. 

To create this prank, grab a few cheap bottles of nail polish in varying colors from the dollar store or your area’s equivalent and a roll of wax paper. Pour the nail polish on the wax paper and stick the bottle and brush in it as well so they all dry stuck together. Once the polish has dried, either peel it off of the wax paper and bag it individually or leave it on and bag it so its ready to sell!

Meme Day

Collect donations to allow the students to dress as their favorite memes for the day. The Booster club can even pair this with an event like a meme show, where the students are allowed to act out their meme choices (provided that its school appropriate) and allow the other students to vote on their favorite!

Dunk Tank

This event isn’t specifically an April Fools prank but it definitely carries the same spirit and is a silly way to make extra money for the school. This set up might require a little carpentry work from the local dads, but once your tank is constructed you’ll just need a willing principal, favorite teacher, or other key school or local official to take their seat on the trap door. Then let the games begin!

Zip Tied Lockers

If the parents reach a private donation goal, the Booster Club goes through the school and zipties all the students lockers together! All they have to do is loop a zip tie in the hole where the lock normally goes and then zip tie the loops to form a chain that stretches from one locker to the next.

Outrageous Costume Day

Have your students donate to have an outrageous costume or silly hat day! 

Forking The Yard

Not to be mistaken with “Flocking the yard”, forking the yard involves stabbing several plastic forks into the ground of a family’s front yard. This prank is a little deceptive: while it is both silly and harmless, its actually good for aerating the yard after pulling the tines out of the ground. Charge a fee to place the forks, to remove them, or both.