Some of the best ways for schools to raise money are by getting the students to do something creative. I bet that if you asked most young kids what they like best about school, they would say that they like to draw or paint. When our kids are good at something and our parents and grandparents are willing to spend money, we have a winning combination.
How do we put all this creativity into something that shows off our kids' artistic skills to as many people as possible? You put it on gift wrap paper and print it out. Themes can be anything, but parents' wallets aren't, so selling gift wrap at a couple of events a year should be fine. The ones that stand out the most are the Summer Fair or Fete and Christmas.
Have the kids make their art on A4-sized sheets of paper. They can be written on white paper, or for a more interesting effect, you can give each student a few different coloured papers. 500mm x 700mm is about the size of a typical sheet of gift wrap. When the size of the children's drawings is shrunk, you can fit anywhere from 72 to 288 images on a sheet. What you do will depend on what you want to happen. Most of the time, the white background works best for the lower numbers, while the multicoloured papers work best for the higher numbers. Make as many copies of images as you want or need to make up the numbers.
The pictures of the children are scanned and put together using design software. A printing company should do the printing. How much of the work of making the gift wrap the school does will depend on how much the school can do. But it is recommended that professionals put the pictures together and do the final printing. For this kind of gift wrap to be printed, you need at least 1000 sheets. After printing costs are taken out, the profit on this amount should be at least 100%. If there were more of them, the school would raise even more money.
Another way to raise money at Christmas is to have greeting cards made with pictures from the gift wrap. The good thing about these ways to raise money is that they can be done every year with a new group of children. Seeing the kids' faces when they see their work in print is almost as good as the money they raise.
