The Penny War: An Easy Fundraiser for Your Charity

Almost every group could use a new fundraising idea! Here's something that could work for your church youth group, a school band, a sports team, or a troupe of boy/girl scouts. It's called the Penny War. It can also work for small non-profit charities like animal shelters, if you can find a large group of kids to partner with you. Our animal rescue organization partnered with a local middle school to use the Penny War idea for a very successful fundraiser.

Here's how it works. Divide the kids into teams: you can group by teacher, by wings of the school, by ages, boys vs. girls, etc. Each team is competing with the others to raise the most change for the charity.

Make a game of it! Have the kids in each team decorate a large jar for the fundraiser. Every day, kids bring their change and drop it into their team's jar. Here's the twist: Any paper money in your jar counts against your team. So, to "sabotage" the other team, kids can drop bills into the other team's jars. This can cause some teams to have "negative" totals during the Penny War (since change counts positive, and bills negative), but of course all the money is positive for the charity! At the end of the week, the team with the biggest total -- change minus paper money -- wins the Penny War.

Make it fun and educational. During the week, arrange to do a presentation about your charitable organization for the kids. The kids will be thrilled to gain a personal connection to your group. The chance to ask you questions and the first-hand experience with you will make them want to help!

Involve the kids in other ways. For example, during our animal rescue fundraiser, some kids in the audio/visual classes made a short video about our dogs to show on the morning announcements. We've continued to use this video to show during our other festivals and events. For younger kids, you can hand out themed coloring sheets and word-finds. And be sure to bring business cards to pass out, so that kids can go home and look at your website with their families.

Give the kids a reward. Our winning team wanted to have the honor of giving a name to one of our newly adoptable dogs. The kids felt like they were helping her get started in her new life. Avoid using a reward that costs money; you're trying to raise money, not spend it! Often things that cost the least make a bigger impact. If you are raising money for a school band, for example, maybe give the winning group of kids a private concert. If you are fundraising for a homeless shelter, perhaps the winning group can come tour your shelter and serve a meal.

All you really need for this fundraiser is a willing group of kids and some volunteers to organize it. With pretty minimal effort, it can make a big impact for your group. We are grateful that our school kids raised over $1000 for our animal rescue in just a week! Not only that, but the kids who got to meet and hug our dogs will remember them forever, and they learned that helping others can feel great.