Easy Fundraising Ideas | Fundraising Event Ideas | Successful Fundraising Stories | Charities & Non-Profit | Group Fundraising | Church Fundraising Ideas | Donate to Charity | School Fundraising Ideas | Unique Fundraising Ideas

100+ Successful Fundraising Ideas

Are you keen to make money on your own and do not know how to reach your destination, trapped in confusion and lagging for ideas for raising money? We have made your life easy, check out our 100+ do-it-yourself creative, easy, workable fundraising ideas.

You have decided to work on fund raising project and have no time but passionate to work on some great cool ideas, check out our indispensible “100+ Do-It-Yourself Fundraising Ideas” below, with tips on how to raise money for starters in fund raising.

Over 100 ideas are listed below that should give you plenty of ideas on how to choose a fundraising idea, action plan and how to run a successful campaign. The list also gives you ideas depending on the specific occasions and your need to raise funds.


Whether the fund raising activity is for you, your church, charity, PTA, middle or high schools, Christian kids groups, non-profit group, scout troop, youth ministry or sports club, make good use of this guide and, using the knowledge of this resource, I am sure you will succeed in what you are doing.

Guidelines for New Fundraisers

Deciding and working on fund raising is a noble cause and it makes a person feel good about themselves because they're contributing to a good cause, but there are many other reasons. You may be raising money for your favorite charity, your church, your school, a business or any number of other things. Make sure to have clear goals with the money you have targeted to raise from your fundraiser.

You should also have a clear time frame for achieving this monetary goal. Some fundraisers only last a day, but there are plenty of others that are ongoing, over a period of time.
  • First and foremost question yourself and decide and be sure to know why you want to become a fund raiser. Just as important as the cause, what will you get out of the fundraising?
  • Write down your goals and have a vision to know how much money you want to raise with your fund raising.
  • Make an action plan to set clear deadlines and a vision plan to achieve your monetary goal
  • Take lots of preparation time for yourself
  • Organize and plan everyone’s action plans to best achieve your goal
  • Plan your expenses. Being a 'professional' fundraiser, it is better to figure in the costs ahead of time. Many people fail simply because they didn't take the time to calculate what the costs were going to be beforehand.
  • Being a fundraiser you have to run your campaign with a business mentality, so create an income and expenditure budget and try and stick to it.
  • Remember it isn't how much money you make. It is how much money you make after expenses are taken out of the total.
  • Checkout all your costs including maintenance costs, advertising costs, material costs bnecause what you are left with after spending is as important than getting the funds.
  • Print the fundraising ideas list below to plan and start working on your fund raising ideas.
  • Get motivated and make sure you reward yourself and the people who are helping you in the fundraiser, so that they work at beating the other members' totals
  • Don't ever treat your fundraiser as a job. Think of it more as having fun.
  • Competition is necessary in any oraganisation, helping team members to compete between themselves without hurting anyone leads to a successful and more interesting fundraiser.

There are many ideas and we think we can help by sharing some of our ideas. Please feel free to share your unique fundraising idea that you'd like us to add to the list - Feel free to with details of your suggestions.

100+ Do-It-Yourself Fundraising Ideas

  1. Annual Dinner Dance or Party
  2. Annual Event – dance/fireworks/New Year party, etc
  3. Annual Subscription/Membership
  4. Art Sale or Auction
  5. Auction of Promises
  6. Bad Hair Day
  7. Balloon Races
  8. Balls & Dances – mid-summer, Valentines Day, New Year or Christmas
  9. Barn Dances
  10. Beetle Drive
  11. Bingo
  12. Boot Throwing Competition
  13. Bucket or Street Collections outside stores and in shopping malls
  14. Burns Night Celebrations (Scottish population)
  15. Cake Bake
  16. Car Boot sales
  17. Car Wash
  18. Carol Singing
  19. Celebrity Speaker Event
  20. Challenge Events
  21. Charity Stall for Sales of Second Hand items
  22. Cheese & Wine Evenings
  23. Chess Competition
  24. Christmas Card & calendar sales
  25. Christmas Fair
  26. Clay Pigeon Shoot
  27. Clothes Swap
  28. Coffee Morning
  29. Concerts
  30. Cookery Book
  31. Cookery Demo or Themed Food Evening
  32. Country Walk or Ramble
  33. Craft Fair
  34. Crazy Golf Match
  35. Disco
  36. Donations
  37. Duck Races
  38. Easter Egg Hunt
  39. Face Painting
  40. Family or Portrait Photo
  41. Fancy dress party
  42. Fashion Shows
  43. Fetes
  44. Fifty Fifty Sale
  45. Film Premiere – sponsor or show a new film
  46. Fireworks Display
  47. Flower Arranging Demonstration
  48. Football Match or Tournament
  49. Fun Runs
  50. Garden Parties
  51. Generous Giving from Wealthy Individuals
  52. Gladiators - It’s a Knockout
  53. Golf Events
  54. Grants from Fundraising Bodies & Trusts
  55. Helping Hand service – offer to cut peoples grass, walk their dogs or look after their home whilst they’re on holiday, asking for a donation in return
  56. Horse Racing evening
  57. International Evenings – themed evenings, Italian, Indian, Australian, etc
  58. Just Giving – use Facebook to let your friends and family know all about it
  59. Karaoke Evening
  60. Litter Picking (Sponsored)
  61. Love Grams for Valentines Day -take orders in advance, on the day deliver a card & candy or card & single rose to each person's dorm room. People may order these for that special someone in their life, but also sometimes for friends. You can make a reasonable amount of $$ , just make sure that you buy the cards and candy in bulk and charge a fair price
  62. Mile of Pennies
  63. Mufti, Dress Down or Non-Uniform Day
  64. Murder Mystery evening
  65. Music Quiz
  66. Mystery Tour
  67. Open Garden Events
  68. Paintballing
  69. Pancake Day party
  70. Parachute Jump
  71. Plant Sale
  72. Playstation party – get your mates to bring their PS2 & PS3’s round and charge everyone to play the different games
  73. Poetry Competition
  74. Pub Tournaments – e.g. darts, Skittles, darts, pool, cards
  75. Quit It – give up chocolate /smoking / etc for a week / month
  76. Quiz Night
  77. Quizzes
  78. Raffles. A fifty/fifty raffle is where tickets are sold and half the proceeds go to you. All you have to do is sell the tickets and the winner of the raffle splits the total amount with your group. The lucky winner receives 50% of the amount of ticket sales and your group gets to keep the other 50%. Most people are happy to buy raffle tickets, most ages are happy to sell them.
  79. Rambles
  80. Readathon - ideal for primary schools, students get sponsored for every book they read or just a flat donation for pupils that just need to be encouraged to read
  81. Run a Marathon
  82. Salsa Night
  83. Santa Letters writing
  84. Santa's Grotto
  85. Scavenger Hunt
  86. Sell Christmas Gifts
  87. Seventies Night / Disco
  88. Singing Telegrams – ideal for birthdays or as a one-off fundraiser for Mothers Day. Ideal for students, call your mother and sing the song of your choosing for a small charge.
  89. Sponsored Anything
  90. Sponsored Head/Hair shave
  91. Sponsored Silence
  92. Spring clean your wardrobes and sell unwanted contents on eBay
  93. Spring Flowers & Hanging Baskets – Demonstration & Plant Sale
  94. Stocks (ancient stocks with people paying to throw sponges soaked in water at the miscreants. Great if you can get the mayor and a few other personalities to take part)
  95. St Patrick's Day supper (Irish population)
  96. Strawberries & Cream Tea party – at Wimbledon time. Also how about hand dipped chocolate strawberries as a student graduation or end of exams event
  97. Talent Show
  98. Ten Pin Bowling
  99. Tennis tournament
  100. Treasure Hunts
  101. Trips & Outings
  102. Unwanted Gift Sale – perfect after Christmas
  103. Used Stamps
  104. Wine Tastings
  105. Salsa Night