Birthday parties don’t have to involve a depressing influx of cheap, unwanted (at least by parents!), commercial toys. If you can convince your children that family gifts suffice, you might be able to turn that excess of birthday party gift generosity into birthday giving generosity.
I really believe that children are charitable by nature. They just need to be taught about the needs of others and encouraged to engage in charitable work and giving. My hope is that this will help create more sensitive and socially conscious adults.
My 9 year-old daughter has enjoyed charity birthday parties for many years now. I already wrote about her first Humane Society birthday party (she has had several of these and one of her friends is doing it now too). After a few more years of charity parties, I now have more ideas to share with you.
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Today’s idea is the Kids-in-Need Stuffed Animal Party.
One year my daughter had a birthday party where she asked the guests to each bring one, new (tags on) stuffed animal to take to our local hospital Emergency Room. They give them out to very sick or injured children who come in and need a little extra comfort.
I am such a proud mama when I say that she came up with this idea entirely on her own. My sister is a physician in our local Emergency Room and having visited her aunt there, my daughter knew that they handed out stuffed animals.
In keeping with the stuffed animal theme, our party craft was stuffing our own animals with easy and inexpensive kits
that I bought on Amazon. The kids LOVED this! My intention was that they add their animals to the donate basket, but this proved to be very unpopular and every single child elected to keep their animal (including my children). That’s OK, at least they had fun and went home with a much-loved party favor.
TIPS:
- Make sure you check with your local Emergency Room first to see if they would even want stuffed animals, and if so, what kind. Ours wanted tags on and no buttons or other things that could be pulled off to become choking hazards.
- Police and Sheriffs also sometimes carry stuffed animals in their cars to comfort any children they meet in accidents or other bad situations. See if your local law enforcement departments might be interested, and what they would want.
- Based on experience, I recommend that the donated animals “disappear” after the party or younger family members might start falling in love with them!
(More ideas to come!)
$1,350.03
That’s how much a class of thirteen 6 to 9 year-olds raised for
with a simple Book & Bake Sale!
If they can do it, you can do it too!
How they did it:
Two weeks ahead of time:
- They hung a sign on the school door asking for donations of books and baked goods for our Haiti fundraiser.
- They placed an empty box in the school entryway for collecting the books.
- They also put a sealed box in the lobby for any impromptu donations.
Day before, set-up:
- The day before the sale they accepted baked goods.
- After school they sorted the books into children and adult piles.
- They organized the children’s books into separate boxes and baskets based on level (picture books, readers, chapter books).
- Everything was set up on tables in our tiny school entryway with a simple pricing system posted.
The Sale:
- The morning of the sale, they set up the baked goods outside the door on a table (it was so cold and snowy that there was no danger of spoilage!).
- The school is on a side street, so they put out a sign on the main road nearby. They also put signs in the grocery store and the library. All signs said clearly that proceeds would be for Haiti.
- The sealed box went to a prominent location on the book table, with a basket nearby with a few small bills and coins for making change.
- They hung a Haitian flag and also posted some information about Partners in Health so any interested people could read more about where their money would be going.
Post-Sale:
- I helped them sort through the leftover books and we separated the ones that were fairly recent and looked pretty new.
- We took these “good” leftovers to our local bookstore so the owner could buy any that would work for her used book section. She ended up buying almost all of them, and even gave us more than her normal cash price since we were doing this for Haiti! (Be sure to let a bookstore know that you are selling for Haiti)
- The kids packed up the other books and we put them in storage for our annual school yard sale.
Counting:
- Practical math lesson: The children counted the cash and were SO excited, especially when they found a $100 bill in the box!
- Their teacher counted the checks for privacy reasons (NOTE: For ease of accounting, we made sure people made their checks out directly to Partners in Health and not to our school).
- I took the cash to the bank and traded it in for a cashiers check made out to Partners in Health.
And voilà! Not a whole lot of effort really, but now we have a nice donation to send off to Partners in Health and the kids feel GREAT!
Why not try it with your school?
For more fundraising ideas, please read Help Your Kids Help Haiti.
Do your kids have questions about Haiti and the relief effort there? Do they want to know more about how to mobilize their schools and communities to help?
Then they might be interested in participating in (or even just watching) an online discussion tonight with Dr. Jim Yong Kim, physician, president of Dartmouth College, and one of the founders of Partners in Health (PIH), a leading aid organization in Haiti.
My good friend (and the most well-informed person I know) Wishy, just let me know about this great opportunity for students of all ages (elementary through grad school). It will take place tonight at 5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Students can even send in questions ahead of time by email to sdhr at dartmouth dot edu. The subject line should contain the words: “JYK TALK: Your name, your school”.
The talk will happen via live online video stream at the PIH website:
5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
LIVE VIDEO STREAM LINK
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PS. Our “Book and Bake Bonanza for Haiti” is scheduled for this Thursday. I’ll let you all know how it goes! If you are interested in some ideas on how to get your kids involved raising money for Haiti, please read my post: Help Your Kids Help Haiti.
My children’s elementary class is organizing an emergency “Book and Bake Bonanza” to take place next week. They are frantically trying to collect books and baked goods to sell in order to raise money for Haiti. Obviously money is needed NOW, so they must act quickly and there is no time for an elaborate fundraiser.
Will used books sell? We don’t know, but we need to try something and one of the kids came up with the idea. Anything we can earn will help, no matter how small.
(UPDATE: The result of our little fundraiser? A whopping $1,350.03!! Read here for more details about how we did it.)
Why not organize a speedy fundraiser for your children’s school? If you homeschool, then combine a quick study of Haiti with a smaller scale family-style fundraiser.
Here are some quick and easy fundraising ideas:
- Bake sale
- Lemonade or hot chocolate or cookie stand in your driveway
- Garage Sale (if you can put it together fast, yard sales can be very time consuming)
- Used book sale
- Raffle something off
- Car wash (or an interior car detailing day if it is too cold for a car wash, or you don’t want to use water)
- A simple donation box in your school or workplace
- A penny drive in your children’s school (Thanks very much to Jen for this simple yet effective idea!)
And here are a few less obvious ones that could possibly be put together fairly rapidly:
- Board Game Competition: Charge an entry fee for each team or individual. If you want, give a small portion of this as a prize, or give a donated prize.
- Dog Wash (if you can do it indoors or you live somewhere warm).
- How Many in the Jar?: Fill a jar with M&Ms, marbles, rocks, anything small! Have people guess how many objects are in the jar. Sell guess forms for $1 or $2 a piece and split the earnings with the person who gets the closest.
- Show Up in Your Jammies Day: (For schools) Sell tickets entitling the purchaser to wear your pajamas to school for a day. Encourage teachers and administrators to join in also. Sell donuts and bagels before school for breakfast.
- Traveling Hobo Band: I can’t really explain this one, but it is pretty funny and spontaneous. Read more here.
- Windshield Washing
Who to give to?
The NPR website published a list of aid organizations that are helping Haiti during this disaster.
Remember, even a small amount of money can make a big difference!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Don’t underestimate the power of even a simple bake sale. In December, my children’s Montessori School class raised over $870 for Heifer International with a one day bake sale!
A big thank you to Lisa of Over the Crescent Moon for informing me that yesterday, the Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC) unanimously voted to delay enforcement of certain testing and certification requirements.
The new requirements were scheduled to take effect on February 10, 2009 but enforcement will now be delayed for one year (February 10, 2010). This will give the CPSC time to finalize four proposed rules which could exempt certain products from testing and provide more guidance on when testing would be required.
From the press release:
The stay of enforcement provides some temporary, limited relief to the crafters, children’s garment manufacturers and toy makers who had been subject to the testing and certification required under the CPSIA. These businesses will not need to issue certificates based on testing of their products until additional decisions are issued by the Commission. However, all businesses, including, but not limited to, handmade toy and apparel makers, crafters and home-based small businesses, must still be sure that their products conform to all safety standards and similar requirements, including the lead and phthalates provisions of the CPSIA.
Hooray! This issue is not over yet, but at least Etsy and quality handmade and foreign toys have one more year of life. It seems as though the vocal public outrage has produced a step in the right direction.
Thanks to all who let their voices be heard!!
Let’s hope that the CPSC will stay on this more reasonable path and narrow down the overly broad Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
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LINKS:
Here is a link to the full text of the press release:
CPSC Grants One Year Stay of Testing and Certification Requirements for Certain Products (from the CPSC website)
And the full text of the CPSIA is here.
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