Every year at Camp Mini-Yo-We we host school groups for various types of class trips. These experiences add incredible value to the lives of students as they get a chance to be away from the typical pattern of school life and enhance their learning with some outdoors experience. Here some examples of the types of school trips that we host at Camp Mini-Yo-We:
- A Fall Grade 8 Trip to help the “big kids” at school gel together and set the pace for the entire year
- Leadership class getaway where high school students apply what they are learning in our living laboratory
- Winter camping trip for a Grade 7 class to help them enjoy the outdoors and apply lessons from the curriculum in the midst an incredibly beautiful Muskoka winter
- Senior Class trip for students finishing Grade 8 or Grade 12 as a perfect way to wrap up their school experience
These experiences are incredibly valuable for the students who get to come to Camp. However, we also know that some families might have a hard time funding the extra cost for these experiences. Here are five examples of fundraising ideas for class trips that we loved!
- Gift Card Sales // Some schools have seen great success with online gift card sale services like FundScrip. These services allow schools to sell gift cards from leading retailers that people are often already using. Your school is given a percentage of the sales of these gift cards towards whatever project you’d like to fund. Imagine, your school trip receiving 2% of the fuel sales of parents connected with your child’s school. Or how much of a difference it would make if your trip received 3% of all the money spent at the grocery store by the families in your class?
- Test Drive-A-Thon // Parents from one particular school approached a local car dealership and asked if they could receive a “bounty” for every person who test drove a new vehicle at the dealership. What ended up happening was a fun Saturday event of parents from the school test driving new cars at the dealership, and the school getting a sum of money towards the trip for each parent who jumped into the car. The dealership just asked for the addresses of each participant, and the school was happy because they generated so much funding for their trip!
- Sell Merchandise // How many people in your broader community would purchase a school branded shirt? What if they knew that a portion of those sales were going to send kids on the school trip? As simple as it sounds, selling school merchandise can be a great fundraiser for your school. Talk with our friends over at Portage Promotions, and they can give you all kinds of ideas about merchandise that you could sell to the broader community with your school’s logo on it!
- Principal Challenge // How much would kids get out and fundraise if their favourite principal offered to dress as a clown for a day at school? Or how much more would they fundraise for their trip if the principal offered to shave their head or legs if they raised their goal? For a school with a fun-loving principal, this sort of “challenge” can be a great way to have some fun while raising funds!
- Screen-Free Challenge // It’s staggering how much time some kids spend in front of screens these days! Whether it’s playing games on their iPad or texting their friends on the bus, pulling a student away from a screen is tough! That’s why Screen-Free Challenge Fundraisers, where kids are sponsored for spending time away from all devices, are a great way to both raise funds and to get students doing other things like connecting with friends and family or playing outdoors. Floreat Park Primary School fundraised over $3,200 in their Screen-Free Challenge in 2015. The best thing about this challenge is that it’s so easy to organize. There’s minimal setup, and if you organize it all online, it’s incredibly quick and easy to take care of the logistics.
We know that the group leaders who come to Mini-Yo-We want to make their trip to Camp as accessible for as many kids as possible. We do too! Why not reach out to Anita in our office to talk about planning your upcoming trip? She chats with dozens of group leaders like you and has lots of great ideas to make your experience with us fantastic. Contact her today:
Anita Broadbent
Year-Round Registrar
anita@miniyowe.com
705 385 2629