Food focused fundraisers have been a successful way of fundraising both online as it is in person for years. People love food and have to eat to live, so marketing food as a booster club fundraising idea is always fun.
Some food fundraisers are so popular that they become synonymous with the group or organization that sells them. For example, Girl Scouts are known for their cookie sales every spring and Boy Scouts have popcorn. Your booster club could easily become famous for a particular food product if you find the right one.
With so many different food fundraisers out there and different ways to run food focused fundraisers, it can take a while of trial and error to find the right fundraiser for your group. You may find that one outsells the other and that some practically sell themselves because they’re in such high demand.
Finding these fundraisers may not be an easy task, but hopefully, this article will help to make the task that much easier by offering up some great ideas for fundraising with food.
Food Focused Fundraiser: Cookie dough sales
Cookie dough sales are great because it’s a product that doesn’t have to be eaten right away. People can choose to keep it in the fridge, freezer, or portion it out for a few cookies here and there without the effort of making a batch from scratch.
Some premade cookie dough even tastes better than homemade so this is a food focused fundraiser that could do well. While people can no doubt make their own cookie dough for cheaper, you’ll see that buying it is often a plus for those with busy lives or without baking skills as not many people enjoy getting messy in the kitchen.
Some cookie dough fundraising companies even offer up to 80% of the profit from the fundraising sales! Not only that, but this is one of those fundraisers that you can do online and in person. So if you do it, make sure to advertise everywhere you can to help get the word out!
Food Focused Fundraiser: Donuts
Krispy Kreme is just one example of a donut fundraising place that you can choose from. With them, you would sign up and buy X amount of discounted donuts and then sell them for a markup price. This means that your booster club can see profits of 50-60% per dozen donuts and get to control the price to sell them at, so if you want to offer a discount, you can! Not all fundraisers give you this much freedom.
Unfortunately, this food focused fundraiser is not good for online fundraising as you will have to buy the donuts upfront and hope that they sell. You can, however, post online to gauge interest, promote and get a headcount on how many donuts people will want so that you don’t have too much unsold product on your hands.
You could even offer a markup price if you offer delivery! This is a great way to get additional money as long as you aren’t driving too far. People love donuts and convenience and will gladly pay extra for that luxury. If you offer delivery you could pre-sell donuts online before going to pick them up and then make the drive around town to deliver them.
Food Focused Fundraiser: Pizza kits
Pizza kits are another great food focused fundraiser that everyone can enjoy. What makes it even better is that you order it in advance and it gets delivered to the group before being distributed.
Thanks to Little Caesars Pizza, these pizza kits can be a huge hit with your booster club supporters. Everyone loves how affordable their pizza is, but these kits offer stuff that they don’t sell in stores such as DIY pizzas and dessert cookies. Each kit comes with everything you need and it’s prepackaged so that it’s easy to store and you can leave off anything you don’t want to use!
There’s about a $6 profit for every product sold, and the prices are just as reasonable as you’d imagine. Prices for products range from $19-$25 and each kit makes enough for a family with either 5 personal sized pizzas and cookies or 3-4 large pizzas you can watch as these kits practically sell themselves.
Other great selling points for these kits include that the baking instructions are included and that the pizzas can be made in as little as 10 minutes. They’re freezer friendly and fridge friendly too. You can let people know that even if they don’t feel like eating pizza on the day their kits arrive, they can be safely stored “for a rainy day” or be the base of an upcoming party.
Selling cookbooks
If you’re looking for a food focused fundraiser that you can sell whenever you want, online or in person, and that has a low overhead cost- a cookbook could be the way to go.
Selling cookbooks is great because you can offer up page space to recipe contributions made by friends, family, school facility and the community. Allowing everyone to contribute a recipe gives the book a personal touch and people will want to buy it simply for that novelty factor.
You can sell your cookbooks in digital or physical format. Digital format means that you can compile everything on a Word or Google doc online and then save it as a pdf. Send ti to emails of those that buy and you’re good to go. In fact, you can set it up to sell and directly ship to emails as instant downloads using websites like Shopify, Etsy, or another storefront added to your website.
To sell the books in physical format could also be a huge draw for those wanting the actual feel and look of a cookbook. You can use publishers to help achieve this look, whether it’s a small DIY publisher available online or a bigger and more well-known one.
They can work with your nonprofit organization to create a good pricepoint and look as well as formating to create a unique cookbook that looks great and that will be more desirable to the community.
With food focused fundraisers there are a lot of options available and all come with their own benefits, price points, target audience, and difficulties. But, with a great booster club team of volunteers, you can create a fun edible fundraiser that makes a great profit.
