Parent's Club Fundraising Ideas

The best seasons to hold a Children's Sale are early spring and early fall. These are the two times of year when people are looking to buy a new wardrobe for their children. It is suggested you allow a miniumum of 6 weeks to plan your sale with 8 weeks being optimal. Your first sale will require more work with creating fliers, brochures and establishing guidelines.

Step 1 Establish your criteria. For Children's sales, each consignor will receive a unique number and will use this number on each price tag. Each consigner is responsible for tagging their own items. The tag is made using a 3x5 index card. The card should have their consignor number, item description and price. You also need to create a consignor agreement. You can perform a quick internet search for other sale consignor forms as a guideline. The agreements should include these details:

• The consignors receive 60% orf sales, club receives 40%. Club is responsible for costs of renting space and advertisement.
• The club is not responsible for lost, damaged or stolen items
• The consignor is responsible for hanging and preparing items. Items should be in great to excellent quality.

Step 2 Find a location. You will be surprised at how many items you can accumulate for a sale. A group of even 20 people selling items can easily fill up a 1500 square foot space. You will also promote this sale to the public, so hosting the event at your house is not advised. Have all members make a joint effort to locate a space. Contact churches, recreation centers, fairgrounds or for members who live in condos or apartments, see if there are neighborhood rental facilities.

Step 3 Begin to promote the sale. Create a flyer and brochure. The goal is to get other people who are interested in selling items, as well as those who are interested in coming to shop at the sale. Find local discussion forums for parents, drop of flyers with local daycares or businesses, pass out flyers to local schools, churches, neighbors, co-workers, post details of the sale on free sites like Craigslist. You want to spread the word of the sale as much as possible and all members of your club should participate.

Step 4 Assign consignor numbers to anyone who signs up to sell items. Keep track of the consignors name, number assigned, address, telephone number and an email address on a spreadsheet.

Step 5 Send each consignor who signs up an email with all the requirements of the sale. Remind them they cannot sell any items that are not in great to excellent condition. List the general items you can accept such as: clothing from newborn to size 12, all infant to children furniture, toys, books, games, strollers, swings and so on.

Holding the actual sale will require several volunteers from your parent's club. You will need people to set up the sale, cash-out customers, help customers on the floor, check consignors items in and set them up and many other odd tasks.

Step 1- Set up the sale space. You can rent tables if your space does not provide tables. Have parent club members bring their laundry baskets or plastic tubs to hold items such as socks, small toys or any other groups of items that can be placed in bins. Have racks to hang items. You can build or rent these.

Step 2- As the consignors begin to drop off items, assign someone to review the items to make sure they are in good condition and collect the consignor agreement. If you choose, allow him or her to sell items as well.

Step 3- Allow club members to shop once the consignor drop-off time has ended, but before the sale opens to the public.

Step 4- Use either small desktop calculators or a register if available. As the customers come through and purchase items, remove the tags and place in a box. These tags will be what is used to calculate what each consignor sold.

Step 5- Complete the sale and add up all tags. Divide them by consignor number and total up for each consignor. Send the consignor a check for 60% of the sales and the club retains 40%.

The size of your sale should grow with each event. Your sale could grow to earn the parent's club thousands of dollars each year if the club will put in the time and effort to promote it. Children's sales are very popular and are a great way to meet the needs of so many people. Some of the larger children's sales are earning over a hundred thousand dollars per sale, while your clubs sale will likely never grow that large, it is nice to know the possibility does exist depending on the size, structure and involvement of the particular club. Whether the sale grows to bring in a large amount of money or if it is kept small enough to pay for one event, a children's sale should remain on your list of ideas for fundraising for a parent's club