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Candy Fundraiser to Help Kids in Need

by Kate
(Minneapolis, MN, USA)

I teach 7th graders at an inner city charter school in Minneapolis. In a writing unit, we were talking about challenges that life throws at you. The kids did a journal entry about this topic as a preview for reading The Diary of Anne Frank. One of the students wrote a really emotional journal entry about his little sister, whose birthday was coming up and wouldn't have much for her birthday. The student shared this informally with other students in the class who were both empathethic and fired up. This led to a talk about justice, equity, and when you start to grow up. The kids were hot about this topic so we started to brainstorm about how we could help. The kids came up with the idea of starting a birthday bag bank.

When students at our school had a birthday, the school would present them with a bag of the following: candles, a "just add water" cake mix, frosting, balloons, and a small gift/gift card. Basically all the trappings for the kids to celebrate their birthdays in style. But these things cost money so we decided to sell candy. We went to local businesses who generously donated candy for our sale. Then the kids marketed this. They sent home flyers, went to businesses and asked them for help, and started an e-mail campaign.

Since the kids are mostly from pretty poor areas of the cities, we had a "donate what you can" attitude. And we branched out. We talked to the Mall of America who generously allowed the kids a day to set up a booth to sell their candy.


In the end, the kids raised enough money to cover birthday bags for all 95 students. (By shopping at the dollar store, we figured $5/bag and that covered each bag in 2005.) Through a lot of hard the kids raised $475. Since some local businesses preferred to donate items rather than money, that helped cover the costs of what has become an annual project.

The 21 kids in my class learned a lot about giving back through this project and they worked really hard because they were connected.

Here are my tips:

1. The donate what you can strategy works well, you get some people who give a lot, and some a little, but everyone feels good about giving what they can.
2. Find other ways to sell besides door to door, or standing outside of Wal-Mart. If you do sell in places like this, have literature or signage to help identify the cause to people who walk by.
3. Try to find ways to motivate the kids intrinsically rather than with prizes.

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