What are yearbook staffs' favorite fundraisers?
Every yearbook program needs some extra revenue. Whether it’s to pay for travel to workshops and conventions, extra equipment, new software, a cool cover effect or pizza, most staffs seek opportunities beyond candy sales and holiday grams to bring in some extra cash.
Your book sales and ad sales income may not cover the extras that make yearbook interesting or more fun. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make things happen...
Here are some tried and true examples that have worked for staffs around the country. In most cases, we’re talking about your staff having the chance to earn hundreds (if not THOUSANDS) of dollars in a relatively short period of time. As you’ll see, some involve sales, some involve producing publications and others simply require a little inspiration and creativity.
Last year, I came across some $11 flash drives that our tech department was able to order for us, and we sold them to the students for $15 each. This is a great price for the kids, and we made $100 on every 25 we sold. We ordered 25 drives each time, and never had any trouble selling them.
Linda King, Yearbook Adviser
Rockdale High School, TX
For the last five years, our staff has used the canteen where refreshments are sold during basketball games to sell coffee, muffins and other drinks for 30 minutes each day before classes begin. School Grounds is managed by five staffers who serve as daily managers and manned by pub staffers who work one shift every three weeks or so. Last year, we made $5,000. The profit helped fund color in our self-sufficient newspaper, kept the price of the yearbook down and provided flexibility for other publications spending.
Dennis Brown, Yearbook Adviser
Huntley High School, IL
Instead of throwing in a bunch of candids on an empty page to fill pages at the end of the year, sell the candid space. Charge students not per-picture, but per-person. If you put 10 pics on a spread, each pic having 5-10 people in it, and you charge $5 per person you’ve made at least $250 for a page that previously would have earned nothing.
Sage Hedges, Yearbook Adviser
Manchester Regional High School, NJ
A great fundraiser is the “Index Letter Auction”. The way this works is that students and staff have the opportunity to “buy” a letter in the index (highest bidder wins). The winner gets to place a picture of their choice along with a certain number of words next to that letter in the index. It can get very competitive and fun — and it provides another way for staffs to broaden their coverage and for students not involved with yearbook to feel included.
Jessica Savage, Herff Jones Representative, CO
One to two weeks before the final deadline for ads, we have a “Personal Ad Night” in my classroom. It’s an “open house” that runs from 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. where parents can come in and work with a staff member to design their child’s ad. We show the parents a sample sheet with the different ad sizes along with sample yearbooks, and then they can sketch out what they want their child’s ad to look like! We split the evening into shifts for the students, and we ended up making more than $3,000 in three hours!
Erinn Harris, Yearbook Adviser
R.E. Lee High School, VA
A great fundraiser is selling footers to the teaching staff. Teachers love to add their own words of wisdom to a yearbook. Sell space for $5-$10 at the bottom of the pages for the staff to leave parting thoughts to a graduating class.
Kara Sterner, Herff Jones Representative, PA
Last year we purchased a new digital camera and the students and I had a great time taking photos. Because of the talent in front of and behind the camera, we wound up with tons of great photos...many of which will never make it to the pages of our yearbook. Knowing what great pictures we had, I decided to make CD’s of each event and load them full of photos. We sold the CDs to make extra money for the yearbook staff.
Leah Guthrie, Yearbook Adviser
Pleasant Hill High School, IL
A cool fundraising project that we did this year was to make the program for our football team. It was a great way for us to raise money at the same time promoting our community and practicing the skills needed to create a yearbook. We sold advertisements, took team and individual photos, designed layout spreads, wrote copy and generated folios. Not only did this project allow us to raise over $1,000, but also allowed for priceless hours of hands-on training.
Amber Goings, Yearbook Adviser
Aberdeen High School, WA
Each year, I take extra pictures of homecoming candidates, prom candidates, athletes and other students when photographing the event for the yearbook. I load those pictures onto the Dotphoto.com Web site and sell the pictures to parents and students. Dotphoto is free and it allows me to set my price for the pictures. I create a database of interested parents and students and e-mail them a link to our Web site when a picture of their student is available. We make a commission per-picture sold and it is an easy way to get rid of all those “extra” pictures that are taken, but never make it into the yearbook.
Michele Moore, Adviser
Monrovia High School, IN
TIP - Peruse the HJ Collection for fun pens that can be sold to students at your yearbook signing party.
Great Fundraising Tools from HJ
Selling those extra photos you couldn't fit into the yearbook is an easy fundraiser.
HJ Image Catalog makes it even easier! This InDesign plug-in will organize your digital images and print contact sheets to make it simple to select photos and track used images.
Make "Personal Ad Night" a breeze by using the ad page templates and pop-ins available in GO! Design! Parents can select from dozens of different designs that are already created in InDesign.
Parents can't come to "Personal Ad Night"? Send it to them! The Ads Sales Stationery and Templates are quck and easy to use to create professional looking mailers to send to potential personal ad buyers.
Contact your Herff Jones Representative for details about these products or go to our Products section.