Walk-A-Jog: How We Make Money

For an overview of this large Spring fundraiser, please see my previous post.***

How do we make money at Walk-A-Jog? Let me count the ways:

1. Sponsors I. We solicit family sponsorships, which are basically straight donations with two small perks: the family name or child's name also appears on the official Walk-A-Jog t-shirt and the event banner. Plus you get to show off your school spirit. Business sponsors receive excellent advertising at a great price, plus they receive community props for supporting public education. Last year, Smalltown was one of our featured business sponsors.

2.Sponsors II. The kids are responsible for asking their friends, family, and neighbors to support their morning of walking/jogging around the course. Participation isn't required, by the way, since strong-arm techniques would kinda defeat the purpose of, you know, an actually FUN day.

3. Silent Auction. Room parents and teachers work together with the kids to create gift baskets or special items to be auctioned off at the event. Baskets filled with students' favorite books, along with bookmarks that explain their choice; arts and crafts baskets; the ever-popular "thumbprint" flower pot filled with gardening tools; and many other types are bid on aggressively by parents.

4. Raffle. Every teacher comes up with an idea for spending some fun off-campus time with the raffle winners. An afternoon of arts and crafts, for example, lunch at the teacher's favorite restaurant, bowling, even manicures!

5. Admission. Families must purchase "bracelets" for entry into the carnival. We offer a sibling discount and, in the past, have created a fund to help pay for anyone who requests it. For the price of admission, kids can enjoy the carnival games, jumpy obstacles, cakewalk (limit 2 cakes per kid!), tattoos, facepainting, and more.

6. Food. Um, I believe this one is self-explanatory.

I think that covers it. As you can tell from this list, Walk-A-Jog requires a boatload of volunteers. I'll talk about how we round 'em up in my next post. Meanwhile, here's one to put in your "fundraiser DON'T" file (please note that this is in no way a judgement on Senator McCain; it's just the best link I could find to the story):

Do not, under any circumstances, hold a slave auction to raise money.

So sick.



***Speaking of my previous post, I noticed I referred to Walk-A-Jog as "ancient," but that I claim this blog is for the modern parent. What can I say? As Whitman put it, "I contain multitudes." *rolls eyes*