Celebrate birthdays for students while raising money for causes that benefit them! A birthday board fundraiser is easy to create and can bring in lots of money for your school group. Here’s how FutureFund can help you run yours from start to finish.
Updated July 24, 2024
Here’s a list of 20 ways you can fundraise for your school throughout the fall season! From hosting a haunted house to marshmallow roasting, these ideas will create memories for your community as well as generate funds to support your school groups, clubs, sports teams, and more.
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Run Your School Fall Fundraiser with FutureFund
Our platform comes with powerful tools that can help you fundraise for your school more effectively this autumn. These include:
- Ready-to-go campaign templates so you can sell tickets or items for different events.
- A built-in messaging system you can use to announce your fundraisers and provide details.
- Opportunity to create volunteer sign-up lists to optimize parent and community involvement.
- Powerful financial reporting tools to help you track your earnings, stay compliant, and plan future fundraisers more effectively.
Get started with FutureFund today or book a demo to see how it can work for you.
Donation Campaigns
Donation campaigns make it easy for parents and volunteers to donate directly to your school group. Run a donation campaign alongside any of your in-person fall fundraising events so that you can expand your reach by collecting funds online before, during, and after the event.
Learn how to run a donation campaign with FutureFund here.
Tip: Use FutureFund’s messaging system to announce the fundraiser and include a link to the online campaign so that people can still donate even if they can’t attend the event.
School Supply Fair
Back-to-school is one of the busiest times of the year for shopping, second only to Christmas. Every parent will be looking for school supplies, clothes, and more for their children.
Make things easier for parents and teachers with a school supply fair. Parents can donate items that no longer fit their child’s needs and pick up new items all at once. All the proceeds will go directly to your school. In tandem, run a donation campaign through FutureFund and display a QR code at the school supply fair for visitors to easily make direct donations.
Marshmallow Roasting
Roasting marshmallows over a bonfire is a great outdoor fundraiser as the weather gets cooler. Selling snacks like marshmallows, smores, and hot chocolate gives you an opportunity to fundraise. You can also take cash donations throughout the event by setting up buckets, as well as displaying QR codes linking to your donation campaign so supporters can donate any amount they want online.
Purchase Campaigns
Any kind of fundraiser where you sell physical items or event tickets is a purchase campaign. Add each item type to your school’s online store in FutureFund by creating a specific purchase campaign for it.
Learn how to run a purchase campaign here.
Tip: Always run Purchase campaigns alongside physical events where there will be items for sale since this allows you to make sales 24/7 and lets people make purchases even if they can’t attend the event.
Back-to-School Breakfast
Get families excited about heading back to school and fundraise all in one go. A back-to-school breakfast with easy-to-make foods is a simple and effective fundraiser.
Things like pancakes and breakfast sausages are easy to make in bulk, so you can generate a profit by charging a few dollars per plate. For an even more successful fundraiser, work with local suppliers and grocery stores to see if they can donate items for the breakfast.
Haunted House
This is another event that you can sell tickets for in advance and sign-up volunteers on our platform to really make the experience run smoothly. Halloween brings tons of fall fundraising opportunities, and a haunted house is a quintessential Halloween activity. While a haunted house does take a bit of planning, it pays off as you can charge a higher ticket price than other fundraisers.
Your school’s gymnasium and hallways can work great as a haunted house. Round up a few volunteers to dress up, add some decorations, dim the lights, and you’re on your way to a spooktacular haunted house.
See Also: 15 Halloween Fundraising Ideas for Schools
Pumpkin Carving Contest Contest
A school-wide pumpkin carving contest is a great opportunity for students to show off their creativity while improving parent engagement! You can make it interesting by offering prizes in categories like best overall, funniest, scariest, and by different grade or age groups.
You can either sell tickets for the event or have participants pay by the pumpkin. Reserve part of the money raised for winners’ prizes, and the rest goes directly to your school group. Make sure to put a call out for volunteers to help the event run smoothly and to promote the event early through social media and use our shareable links to get the most attendance!
Pie-Eating Contest
A pie-eating or baking contest is another great way to celebrate the fall harvest. Either way, you just sell tickets to everyone interested in trying the goods. The only difference with this pie-eating content is who wins the prize–the person who made it rather than the person who ate it!
For added excitement, you can have an MC and judges at the event. This will really help get the crowd involved and make either event a success.
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Get StartedPumpkin Smash
For this fundraiser, all you need is a few pumpkins and prizes. Try and schedule this event after Halloween, so families and local businesses can donate unwanted pumpkins.
Each pumpkin will have a prize inside (make sure you put the prizes in a plastic bag, or keep the actual prizes to the side). At the event, participants can buy raffle tickets for the pumpkin they have their eye on. Whoever wins the raffle gets to smash the pumpkin and claim the prize!
Chili Cookoff
A chili cookoff is another friendly competition that makes an engaging fundraiser. You can sell tickets to both the competitors and the attendees. Attendees get a chance to try the chili, and competitors get a chance to win the grand prize.
You can make things interesting too, with multiple categories like spiciest, vegetarian, and best overall, or by incorporating other activities like games, entertainers, and food and drink vendors.
Thanksgiving Dinner
Hosting a ticketed event for a Thanksgiving or harvest dinner is the perfect fundraiser for November. There are a few different ways to organize this fundraiser, so you can pick what works best for your school.
You can keep the dinner more casual and run it as a potluck-style feast. Or you can make it into a formal event by partnering with a local restaurant to do a private dinner. Either way, this fundraiser is a great opportunity to get sponsors involved and increase your donation fund.
Fall Baskets
A fall basket raffle is a simple fundraiser that’s perfect for fall. You can fill each basket with cold-weather essentials like hot chocolate, mittens, or candles. You can also do themed baskets like a movie night basket, baked goods basket, and more.
Host the raffle as its own event or tack it on to another fundraising event as a silent auction. It’s a great way to add another fundraising avenue to an existing event.
Oktoberfest Pub Crawl
While this might not involve everyone in the family, it’s tons of fun and a great fundraiser. Work with local breweries and pubs to participate in the pub crawl. Look for establishments that typically have an Oktoberfest menu.
Participants will buy tickets to participate in the crawl, which will be your main source of donations. You can also ask the pubs if they would consider donating a portion of food and drink sales from the crawl to your school.
Football Tailgate Party
A tailgate party is the perfect way to celebrate the start of football season, which just so happens to be in the fall. Simply invite families to set up their tailgate in the parking lot and sell tickets to anyone who’d like to attend.
You can make the event even more fun with a flag football tournament or other ideas from this list, like marshmallow roasting!
Fantasy Football League
Fantasy football has become a fall staple for many people, but it can also be a fundraising opportunity! Just like a regular fantasy football league, participants will pay a fee to join the league and draft their players.
At the end, you can split the money between the school and whoever wins for the season. The best thing about this fundraiser is that it’s all done online, as there are tons of websites and apps designed for this very purpose. Just make sure you double-check the rules in your state about sports betting beforehand.
Corn Maze
While you will need a local farm (one that already includes a corn maze) that is willing to partner with you, this option will be easy to execute. Work with the venue to choose a day for your attendees to visit the corn maze and receive a portion of the ticket sales profits. Promote the event through the FutureFund messaging system, on social media, and in the morning school announcements.
You can also arrange some fun, fall-themed food and drink options for the event as well.
Apple Picking
Similar to the corn maze idea, reach out to a local farm and see if they’re interested in partnering with your school for a fundraiser. This mutually beneficial option will drive traffic to their farm while also benefiting your school when you receive a percentage of their revenue.
Apple picking or an orchard walk allows you to do some outdoor fundraisers before the weather is too cool. For an extra fundraising opportunity, you can sell apple goodies during the event, like apple cider, candy apples, and apple pies. You can accept direct donations online as well by advertising to guests.
Turkey Raffle
By using a site like Future Fund, you can organize a raffle for your school! Source donations from various businesses or private individuals and then use our messaging system to help communicate and coordinate the event.
All you need to do is buy or get a few turkeys donated. Then, sell raffle tickets to interested families. The larger the better, as a 30 or 40-pound turkey is a much more enticing prize than a 10 or 15-pound one. Make sure you get more than one turkey, too, so people feel like their odds of winning are higher.
Pumpkin Patch
A pumpkin patch fundraiser works just as well as an apple-picking event if you don’t have an orchard nearby. Work with a local farm to create this fundraiser. The farm benefits too since you can split the ticket sales.
Again, this is an event pretty much everyone can enjoy, and it’s a great chance to enjoy milder weather before winter. You can also add tons of additional fundraising ideas to this event, like family photos, pumpkin pies, picnics, and more.
A-Thons (Pledge Campaigns)
An “A-Thon” fundraiser is a special kind of pledge campaign you can run in FutureFund. Once you create the campaign for the event, students who sign up to participate each get a link they can use to collect donations from family and friends.
Find step-by-step instructions for successful pledge campaigns here.
Tip: The link you’ll share when you create the campaign is what you’ll use to sign up student participants. When they register for the event, they’ll each get their own unique link that they can use to raise money from members of the school community.
Halloween or Thanksgiving Run
Another fun fall fundraiser is a walk or run. For a fall twist, you can make it Halloween or Thanksgiving-themed. Have participants wear their best costumes for a Halloween fun run or organize a “turkey trot” on Thanksgiving weekend. Both options will work the same way as your typical walk-or-run fundraiser: participants pay an entry fee and then ask for donations from their friends and families.
Want more inspiration? Explore our whole list of A-Thon fundraisers.
Hike-A-thon
An alternative to a walk or run is a hike fundraiser! Participants register to take the scenic route on a pre-planned hike through the fall foliage. You can work with sponsors to provide extra incentives to join like goodies and t-shirts.
National Take a Hike Day is November 17th, so you can plan the hike for that day or the closest weekend date. Just make sure you plan it a few months in advance, as people’s schedules can fill up quickly around the holidays.
Rake-A-thon
Yard raking, or a Rake-A-Thon, works really well to engage the whole community. Gather a few volunteers to rake yards during the event. You can run this as an A-Thon with registrants beforehand or as a simple donation campaign.
Anyone who needs their leaves raked can donate to the school. Charge a flat rate based on yard size or let donors decide how much they want to give. It’s going to a good cause, after all!
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I use FutureFund’s messaging system to promote my fundraiser?
FutureFund’s messaging system lets you:
- Send messages to every parent in your school community or filter your audience to reach specific groups.
- Create unique sender profiles to make sure the message is always coming from the appropriate party.
- Use customizable message templates to save time when broadcasting updates or announcements.
Should my school fundraiser be a Purchase or a Donation campaign?
Use Purchase campaigns to sell event tickets or physical items (like baked goods, pumpkins, or Thanksgiving dinner tickets).
Use Donation campaigns to collect money from community members in support of a specific goal or cause (like a school supplies drive).
How do I sell sponsorships with FutureFund?
FutureFund displays sponsors on your school group’s online directory once they have agreed to make a contribution. You’ll be able to set the price for sponsorships on your own—but our team can provide guidance and support if you’re not sure what to charge.
How can I use FutureFund to track my fundraiser’s success?
FutureFund gives you the ability to generate financial reports for fundraising campaigns in just a few clicks. To do this, navigate to Store and click the Reports tab near the top of your screen. Then choose Campaign Summary from the drop-down menu and click Generate Report.
