I am the chair of our high school band's annual fruit sale fundraiser. For the past several years we have given cash prizes to the top sellers, but the same kids seem to win every year (or their siblings).
I would like to change the rewards to gift prizes that everyone has a chance to win (lottery style) with no more than 5 prizes to be won.
Question 1: With 130 kids in the band, some selling one box of fruit and others selling 200, and everything in-between, what is a fair way to compete for the prizes? (Assuming the prizes are of somewhat varying cost levels.)
Question 2: What prizes will motivate high school students? iPads came up, but we could only afford one of those. What else can you suggest?
Thanks for the help.
By Melody Bressler-Hay from Oak Ridge, TN
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Categorize the prize. For everyone who sells 1-20 boxes, a 10.00 prize. From 21-39, a 20.00 prize and so on. No one who sells 200 boxes should compete against someone who can only sell 1.
Having had some experience with this sort of fundraiser, it is my opinion that a lottery type, where the kid who sells one box wins the prize and the kid who sells 200 doesn't, you will find that your sales go down. Some kids like to sell, and others don't. It is very difficult to motivate those that don't and taking the incentive away from the kids who do sell will not help. You will have far fewer sales in the long run.
Something that works fairly well in schools is to offer a prize, like an ice cream cake or pizza lunch to the class who has the top sales. Perhaps you could modify this if you have some sort of groupings or split them into sales teams. Some groups such as bands simply assign a quota to everyone, especially if everyone will benefit, such as for a trip. High school students are motivated easiest by cash. You could offer a percentage of the sales for everyone who sells over a minimum.
Eg. Let's say that you think that everyone should be able to make $200 worth of sales (I'm just randomingly picking numbers). Then you say they get a 10% prize - so $20. Sell over $500 and you get 12% - $60, and so on. If you don't get the minimum, you don't get the prize. However, whatever you do, DO NOT take away the prizes from the kids who are doing all of your sales for you.
Here is what we did with our 50 person band fund raiser prizes. We didn't announce how the prizes would be given out before the fund raiser but did say what thye were: an iPad mini, $50 cash (X2), $10 iTunes gift card, homework pass, etc. After the fund raiser we totaled the amount of money raised and found about 1/200 of that. Then we did a lottery style drawing for the iPad, cash, and homeowrk pass.
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