The Dance-a-Thon is not an original idea, but using it as one of your primary fundraisers might be. Kids love it, especially at the middle school and high school level. Whether your group holds many fundraisers throughout the year, or relies on one large fundraiser, this might be a good solution.
A Dance-a-Thon is probably most suited to school fundraising, but it could also be adapted to other groups as well. If you are investigating a Dance-a-Thon for a school fundraiser, a word to the wise, do it early in the school year.
That is, within the first three months of the school year. If you go too late in the year, apathy can set in not only with students, but with the volunteers you’ll need to pull it off.
The main expense for a Dance-a-Thon is the DJ. It’s best not to use live music with a band since you will want to have a variety of music and it’s hard to do that with a live band. Don’t skimp on the DJ!
 Choose one with good references, a large music collection, and good equipment. This will be the primary focus of your event, so don’t cheap it out.
The profits will come from ticket sales and concessions. To make sure your event is well attended, publicity is the key. Publicize the event well in advance, and keep the push on until the day of the Dance-a-Thon.
To make concession sales a big part of your profits, have the good stuff. Give ‘em what they want! Pizza, popcorn, candy, bag chips and not the cheap kind, even fast food brought in from a nearby eatery work best.
Additional profits can also come from having a raffle at the event. Tickets can be pre-sold and sold at the event for prizes that people really want.
Depending on the size and age of your group, small electronics work well. Raffle off a CD player, DVD player, MP3 player, and so on. Local businesses may be willing to donate prizes or sell them to you at cost.
Another way to make sure you get the most profit from your Dance-a-Thon is to sell Shout-Outs for about a dollar. A shout out is a message that is read by the DJ to the crowd between songs.
For example, “Here’s a Shout Out from Kimberly to all her soccer team buddies. Wildcats Rule!â€
You’ll need to have slips of paper pre-printed so the Shout Outs can be submitted that include:
To:
From:
Message:
Give a few to every teacher about a week before the Dance-a-Thon and ask them to distribute them to deserving students. Once the first few Shout Outs are done, everyone will want a piece of the action. Be sure to have lots of volunteers working the Shout Outs table after that!
One last note about Dance-a-Thons; they can be pretty labor intensive so be sure to line up your volunteers early. One middle school in North Carolina had a Dance-a-Thon and the promise to the volunteers was this:
We hope to make enough money with the Dance-a-Thon that we won’t have to have another major fundraiser for the rest of the school year! That’s right, no wrapping paper, no magazine sales, no selling fruit baskets.
Watch the volunteers clamor to help and watch your groups profits soar.
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