Bake sale fundraisers are a wonderful way to engage your local community over a common goal, all while enjoying the comradery of baking traditional and ethnic sweets. Regardless of whether you are an athletic, music, drama, academic, high school, middle school, or elementary school booster club, bake sale fundraisers can be a profitable way to raise needed funds for booster club’s enriching experiences. While bake sales have a proven track record, not everyone successfully hits their booster club fundraising goals. Often times a lack of planning, a lack of support, or poor marketing and promotion can negatively impact fundraisers. Booostr has compiled some tips that will help you ensure that your community invests the necessary time and energy needed for a successful booster club bake sale fundraiser.
Even Booster Club Bake Sales May Have Legal Guidelines
There are an infinite number of ways to raise funds for your booster club and bake sale fundraisers are just one option. Many booster clubs are creative with their fundraisers and have held everything from barbecues to bingo nights, artwork sales, 5k runs, talent shows, raffles, and many unique and successful fundraising events. This fundraising creativity is partially in response to controversies around food and health concerns, allergies, and to some extent the obesity crisis. For example, New York City’s public schools, have instituted strenuous restrictions on the operation of bake sale fundraisers. In some cases, administrators only allow homemade goods to be sold, while others only allow foods within a certain range of sodium content and calories to be sold. In other cases, states even have health codes that dictate each sold item must be individually wrapped. Because of these newer changes, it is important to check local, state, and federal laws to ensure that you are following all enforced health regulations. In the event that restrictions do not let you host a booster club bake sale fundraiser, Booostr has published an article on fundraising that explores the details of a successful fundraiser, examples of fundraising events, and stories from real booster clubs and their fundraisers for further inspiration.
How to Organize a Sweet Booster Club Bake Sale Fundraiser
Your booster club bake sale fundraiser should have a clear leader to oversee the event from start to finish. In most booster clubs, fundraisers are usually organized and led by the treasurer and the operations coordinator, if one has been appointed. No matter who your event leader is, make sure they have excellent organizational skills and are able to assign responsibilities to the most qualified booster volunteers.
Volunteers Are Critical to Your Bake Sale Fundraiser Success!
Behind every successful bake sale fundraiser is your booster club team of volunteers working together cohesively. First and foremost, you will need several people to bake and bring in goods to sell. You should also plan on assigning some volunteers a focus on the marketing and promotion of the sale. Finally you will need volunteers who will be responsible for setting up the table or booth, selling the goods, collecting money, and clean up.
A Bake Sale Sign Up Sheet Helps!
A great way to manage your team is by creating a sign-up sheet where each individual will provide their name, their contribution to the bake sale fundraiser, and a contact number or email. For the baked goods donation sign-up, be sure to provide a space where volunteers can specify what they plan on donating. You might also consider providing a list of what baked goods and baked goods categories will be needed along with instructions regarding how they should be packaged. If there are any restrictions on ingredients, make sure you provide a list that are not to be present in any donated item.
Pricing The Bake Sale Baked Goods
When it comes to sales, the rule of thumb is that no item should be sold for more than $2.00 unless you are absolutely sure that your buyers are willing to pay $5.00 for an item. If an item has to be sold for more than $2.00 to make a profit, it may be too expensive and a cheaper item should be considered.
Clearly Label Baked Goods & Consider Cross Selling Other Merch!
When you are setting out the items for sale, consider making an index card for each dish. This index card should display the dish’s name and any outstanding ingredients (such as nuts, gluten, dairy, and other common allergens) that the buyer should be aware of. Most importantly, make sure that your volunteers know when and where to bring their baked good donations and that they are clearly labeled. Even though the focus is on baked goods, you might also consider selling other items as well. If you are at a school sporting event, providing bottled water may be a good additional item. Coffee, juice, school apparel, booster club apparel, tickets to a show or another fundraiser, and anything else you think might sell are all good additions to the bake sale.
Your Booster Club Bake Sale Location Is Key to Your Success
About a month before the day of the bake sale, you must also identify a high-traffic, highly visible location and time for your event. While school events are ideal locations, some other places you should consider for your booster club bake sale are craft shows, community events, and retail stores in your area that may be happy to support your cause. The one thing to remember is that asking never hurts, and even if you end up with multiple location options, you can always host more than one bake sale around town!
Promoting Your Booster Club Bake Sale
Promotion is as important as location! We highly recommend creating flyers and posters advertising your bake sale to increase traffic. You should also consider investing in decorations and tablecloths for your booth or table, as well as catchy signage to draw attention to the booth and better showcase the baked goods. On the day of event, bring extra knives, spoons, napkins, ribbons, plastic wrap, and whatever else you may need to serve or package the items. Finally, don’t forget to create a box or have a cash box where all the money can be placed, and have 3 to 4 volunteers available to sell. If you want to get a little more advanced, consider opening a Square account for your booster club so that you can accept credit cards at your booster club bake sale as well as other fundraising events!
When undertaking a booster club bake sale, be sure to give yourself enough time to plan and execute the event. Bake sale fundraisers are not meant to be stressful or difficult. With organization, planning, and enough support, you will have surely have fun baking and selling sweets all while knowing that the money being raised is benefitting a good cause.
