Raising money for my class

A week ago I found a Functional Skills program that comes in the form of 20 iPod touch that I want for my classroom. However, the cost seems out of reach, $3500. It is hard to do fundraisers with my students--they are not big salesmen and often the parents don't have the desire to try to see things. I already had two small fundraiser planned to raise money for transportation to our Special Olympic events. The idea of trying to raise that much money seemed a bit overwhelming.

I made a post about this program on Facebook and a friend of mine encouraged me to send out private messages asking each of my friends to donate $10.00. After giving it some thought, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try. I spent Friday evening and part of Saturday morning sending out private messages to 20 people at a time.

Saturday evening I went to my favorite venue for live music and by the time I went home I had $150 toward the project. The following week I received a $50 dollar check in the mail from a friend who is not on Facebook ( I assume some friends who are shared the info with him), $15 dollars from another and then a $100 dollar check from a lady I shared mutual friends with. So within a week time, I have raised $315 dollars. It will be interesting to see if any comes in this week! I may post a link to my blog on Facebook, so those who have donated can see where we are in the process.

Also, some musician friends, Gary and Jane Morris (also known as New Rain) contacted me with an interesting proposition. The will be playing in Birmingham the weekend of December 10th. The 10th they will be playing at a place in Hoover called Up Top. They were planning on charging a $5.00 cover that night. They have offered to donate $2.00 of each cover charge to my class. So, I encourage EVERYONE to come out and hear some good music and contribute to this cause!!! They will also play the next night at my favorite venue, Daniel Day Gallery. Personally, I encourage people to come to both shows!!

This past Saturday there was an all day event at Daniel Day Gallery and I had my class make buttons to sell at this event. We made $69.00 at this event and the gallery wants more buttons.

Today we started selling Alabama and Auburn buttons at school and are also doing a coin drop for the Iron Bowl. (people drop coins into the jars for each team and my class will graph the amounts each day, showing which team is getting the most support from our school). Today, being the first day, we only raised 24 dollars. We will be doing this every day for the next two weeks.

I have some other ideas for fund raising and I plan to apply for some grants. It may take a while, but we will get this program!!!