I have been away from the site for the last week or so because I was in the final stages of preparing for my school's TRIATHLON fundraiser. I organized this school-wide, student event and it was held on Thursday, Feb 4th. I have been a stress maniac over it, but I'm so happy to announce that we raised just over $9,000 for our school. We are donating $1,000 to the American Heart Association. It was a great day! The kids had a BLAST! (The local paper came out to take pictures and interview kids so I hope to post that next week.)

The basics: Students would train for and participate in 3 events: dancing, jumping and walking. They would spend 15 minutes involved in each activity at stations and conclude at a snack station of water and orange slices.

 I began "training" my classes as soon as we got back from winter break. Depending on the grade level, we worked on hurdles, jumpbands, hopscotch, SkipIts, long and short rope and double dutch. All of those activities were available during the jumping portion of the triathlon.  I also reviewed dances we learned earlier in the year and taught every grade level a new dance. (The dance portion was structured with only one song of "free dancing.") Every week we have a "Mileage Club" at lunch recess that walks laps around a preset course. This was the walking course used for the triathlon, so that was familiar to all students.

In the 2 weeks prior to the event they were encouraged to seek sponsors who would pledge "flat fee" donations for their efforts.  To encourage students to bring in pledges we set up a prize structure. $25 in pledges= a jumprope, $50 = entry in a raffle + jumprope, $75 = participation in an "Activity/Pizza Night" at school on a Friday night (drop-off so parents get a night out) + raffle entry + jumprope. The class with the highest amount of pledges wins a frozen yogurt party (donated from local merchant).

We wanted to keep the overhead as low as possible so we set the budget at $500. We solicited donations from markets, amusement parks, pizza joints, etc. The water and oranges were donated as were tickets to Disneyland, Six Flags, and other prizes. We will purchase gift cards for itunes, Borders, movies, etc for the raffle. The rest of the budget will go towards to the Activity Night for pizza, a DDR rental, and other incidentals.

I have a file of flyers, schedules, timeline, etc. If anyone wants more details or is considering doing this type of fundraiser at their school.