May 16, 2025

15 Spring Fundraising Ideas for Your K-12 School 

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April through June is a busy time at schools, especially Maycember! This time of year includes concerts, field days, end-of-year celebrations, plays, recitals, and spring fundraising.  

With so much going on for students, teachers, and families, it might be surprising that nearly 40% of overall K-12 school fundraising happens during these three months. 

 

Schools raised $82 million via GiveSmart from April to June 2024.

Looking for fresh fundraiser ideas for your elementary, middle, or high school? With better weather, end-of-year celebrations, and spring events, there are many opportunities to raise money for your school!    

Elementary School Fundraising Ideas

Easter Egg Drop 

Offer families pre-filled Easter eggs that they can either pick up to hide or offer to be the Bunny’s helpers to hide eggs in the yard. For $40-$50 per family, parents can save time and sleep in! Offer local high school students service hours to help fill and organize.   

Offering the eggs as a take-home fundraiser rather than a morning hunt makes your planning and volunteer logistics more manageable.   

Parents’ Night Out 

Offer babysitting at school, in the gym, or as a movie or game night. Local high school students can receive service hours, and you can consider asking staff to donate some time. For $25-$40 per family, parents can get an affordable babysitter in a safe place they trust. Your younger kids will likely LOVE “hanging out” with their older junior high and high school buddies.   

Teacher and Principal Dare 

Students are motivated by having their beloved teachers and administrators do silly things. 

Things like duct taping a teacher to the wall, silly stringing them, pie in the face, asking them to dress in their rival team/school’s spirit wear, and more are great fundraisers to pay per opportunity or do as a voting competition. Families will pay $1 per vote to pick a teacher for the daring activity!  

These also make a great incentive to motivate fundraising or participation in any of your school initiatives!   

Middle School and High School Fundraising Ideas

Tournaments 

Any bracket-style tournament is a perfect spring event for a fundraiser for your school. Students can create teams for the sport of choice, you draw teams, and let the play begin! You can offer prizes to the winner and the best team name, costume, and more.   

This is an excellent option for basketball, dodgeball, volleyball, roundball, and more! 

Sports Clinics 

Have your teams offer sports clinics for elementary and middle school students for any sport you have at school. Clinics are not only a good fundraiser but also an entry point for any summer sports camps your teams may host.    

Spring Clean-Up 

Spring is the time to prune flower beds and yards, mulch, edge, seed, and plant. Have students be extra hands to families who are willing to donate for spring clean-up helpers. You can coordinate sign-ups via online forms and encourage teams or arts groups to own the fundraiser.   

 

School Fundraising Resource Hub

This resource hub offers the expertly curated webinars, guides, success stories, and school fundraising ideas you need to achieve your goals, support your teachers, and elevate your students!

All Ages School Fundraising Ideas

5K/Color Run 

A neighborhood 5K or color run is a fun way to bring your community together. For a registration fee, students and families can run or walk your course, spend time together outside, and celebrate and support your school!   

Coffee/Tea Cart 

Offer parents, teachers, and high school students a weekly or monthly coffee or snack cart in the morning. For a nominal purchase price, people can get their morning caffeine fix right at school.    

Buy-a-Brick/a-Bulb 

If you are beautifying a part of your school with a new garden or grotto, offer people the opportunity to get naming rights via engraved brick. For something a bit less labor intensive, consider offering people the chance to “adopt” a bulb or flower as your school does its own spring refresh.  

Movie Night 

Bring students together for a movie night at school, either in your auditorium, gym, football field, or projected elsewhere outside. Consider offering concessions, too! This is also a great “Parents’ Night Out” alternative for an elementary school.   

Out-of-Uniform Pass Sale 

Uniforms can lose their luster by spring. Sell out-of-uniform passes to allow students to dress down. Take payments online, $20 for five passes, and move closer to your spring fundraising goals.   

Paint and Sip 

Do you have an art department that can teach a Paint and Sip class for adults? Parents can bring their own food and snacks, as well as BYOB, and create a masterpiece, or at least try.    

Plant Sale 

Partner with a local nursery to host a plant sale at school. You have the space, and with the right online platform, the ordering, reporting, and fulfillment can be very manageable for your staff and volunteers.  

Selfie Scavenger Hunt 

This fundraiser is an all-ages hit! Provide registered students with a list of places or items that participants must find and take a selfie with. They then upload their photos and tag your nonprofit, giving you some promotion, too!   

Consider setting this up as a peer-to-peer fundraiser, giving mulligans or a head start for top fundraisers.   

Teacher Wishlist  

Teacher Appreciation Week is in May. Honor your hardworking staff with a teacher wishlist campaign, where parents, community members, alums, and other supporters can give to fulfill specific teachers’ needs. Set up your wishlist as items within your fundraising software and share it with your network.    

Looking for engaging donors and community in your school fundraising?

Don’t miss these best practices for engaging your donors and community through spring school fundraising. Learn more about segmenting your donor list, donor entry, giving buckets, and more!

As the school year winds down, April through June offers a prime opportunity to bring your community together, celebrate student achievements, and boost your school. From Easter egg drops and bracket tournaments to movie nights and plant sales, there’s something for every age group—elementary, middle, and high school alike.  

With warmer weather and end-of-year enthusiasm, your spring fundraisers can be as memorable as they are impactful. Choose the ideas that best fit your school’s culture, rally your volunteers, and watch your spring fundraising season bloom. 

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What our clients say

We needed a platform to make sales online and to track and display ads for our sponsors. GiveSmart was perfect. We ended up making close to $15,000 more than we had hoped for. Definite better ROI than we anticipated. The interface is easy to use and provides plenty of options to get help if needed.

Michelle M.

The Rotary Club of South Whidbey Island

Using GS has created ease in auction bookkeeping, payments, and generating post-event thank you/tax letters. While we were online during COVID, our interactions with our GiveSmart via phone, email, and zoom were seamless. A representative always got back to us within the day. I would recommend GiveSmart to anyone doing a large online event.

Julie G.

MicroFinancing Partners in Africa

GiveSmart is highly flexible - you can use it for [a] simple registration and check-in, to full-scale galas with complex order forms, onsite upsells, live auctions, seating management, and more.

Jamie F.

Hope Chest for Breast Cancer

GiveSmart is easy to use and ideal for virtual events and can be used for in-person events to manage the silent auction, seating charts, and check-in to the event. Being able to use the platform for unlimited events within the contract year is very useful and being able to add other users and volunteers for different levels of access is helpful as well.

Dawn L.

Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County