Product sales
Tips & tricks
Many people jump straight to product sales for fundraising since it requires little planning; what you sell is what you earn. You can certainly make a fair profit with product sales, so here are a few tips to make it profitable.
- Choose a product your community needs and wants to buy.
- Don’t put people in the position of buying out of obligation; consider polling a sample audience on what they would be most likely to buy.
- Don’t saturate the market. If there are already a lot of sales going on at your school, maybe right now isn’t the best time to add one more.
- Take and deliver orders whenever possible so you aren’t left with excess product to unload.
- Look for products with a large profit margin.
- EF Group Leader, Alicia Chapman of Maine sold Yankee Candles at a 40% profit margin! Her group of nine students raised $1,560 in three weeks.
- One tour group sold school T-shirts with a unique logo created by one of the students. The shirts cost $5 to produce and were sold for $10 for a 50% profit margin. The group raised $5,000 in one month, sold out of shirts and are still getting requests for more!
Scrip
Money up front: $0
How it works: Partner with corporations to purchase gift cards to well-known stores at a discounted rate and sell them at full value.
Food sales and concessions
Money up front: Varies
How it works: Most concession-stand food is affordable when bought in bulk, which means you can turn a large margin. Consider these opportunities to run a concession stand:
- Contact your athletic boosters to get on the schedule for the concession stand during large sporting events.
- Consider selling an ethnic dish of the region you are traveling and take orders in advance so you aren’t left with extra product.
- Contact nearby universities and minor/major league stadiums since many allow fundraising groups to work their concessions and share a portion of the profits.
- Keep an eye on the community calendar for other events (flea markets, car shows, county fairs) that you can contact to help run concessions. For further information, read our post on EF’s blog, Following the Equator about concession sales.
For more fundraising ideas, download our
Product Sales Fundraising Guide(PDF)