How to Make a Back-to-School Fun Run Fundraiser

School fundraisers support sports, theater, art, field trips, and other important parts of a K-12 education. When tax dollars aren’t enough, community fundraising can help you find more revenue for these programs.

Creating a fun run or a 5k fundraiser is a great way to bring your community together and have a school fundraiser.

We’ll cover everything you need to know to create a successful school fundraiser fun run:

1. Planning & Permits
2. Online Sign Up Form
3. Marketing Plan
4. Fundraising Software

1. Fun Run Planning & Permits

Start by creating a team to help you organize your fun run fundraiser. Get volunteers from your school’s PTA and keep the school principal updated on your plans. Keep your planning as simple as possible, particularly in your first year. You need to keep your costs low. You don’t need to do participant shirts or participant medals – you want the focus to be on the school fundraiser and its success. 

Next, make your race a family-friendly event. For an elementary school, a 1 mile fun run is a great distance for everyone to enjoy. And, you can make it fun with a costume theme. For middle school and high school, consider a 5k for a little more of a challenge. 

Once you know what direction you’re going, determine where you’re hosting the run. It may be easiest to host it at the school, especially if there’s already green space or a track. You can also consider other spaces, like a park.

You’ll also need to figure out which permits you need for your race. Start this process at least six months before your race. All races need a mass gathering permit. You may need others depending on where you’re hosting your school fundraiser race.

Of course, you also need to determine the date for your fun run.

For more tips on organizing a race, check out: How to Organize a 5k

2. Fun Run Online Sign Up Form

As soon as you start planning your fun run fundraiser, get your registration form online. You want to give people time to get excited for and sign up for your race.

You don’t even have to have your pricing figured out before getting your form online. Let people sign up for an email notification when registration opens from your closed signup form. Race Entry’s registration form offers this feature and the email notification is automated through our system.

Race Entry’s fun run registration forms are customizable:

• Add your own photo
• Choose colors
• Create questions
• Write a message at the top
• Write your own waiver

You can create your fun run signup form in minutes and make it match your purpose and school.

Race Entry’s form is also designed to make it easy to register:

• Simple one-page form, then payment
• Signup multiple people in one order
• No account creation required 

With this form, parents can sign up their whole family in one order quickly without having to think about creating another account and password. Instead, they can manage their registrations from the links in their confirmation emails.

3. Fun Run Fundraiser Marketing Plan

As you’re preparing everything for your school fundraiser race, you’ll need to have a good marketing plan so you can draw a crowd to your start line.

Race Entry offers built-in marketing tools that helps you tap into your school’s whole network:

• Referral Program – Set a refund amount for every person your participants get to sign up for your race. Once set up, our system tracks and manages the refunds automatically.
• Social Discount –  Offer a $1-2 discount to parents who share about your school fundraiser race with their Facebook friends.
• Group Discounts – Determine how many registrations will qualify for a group discount. Once created, it will be advertised on your registration form and automatically apply to qualifying orders. Your parents can save money and don’t have to remember a special code.

Race Entry also sends automated abandoned cart emails to idle, incomplete registrations after 30 minutes. From the link in the email, people will be taken straight to the payment page. They don’t have to re-do the whole form.

4. School Fun Run Fundraising Software

Perhaps the biggest consideration you’ll need to make is how to collect donations for your school fundraiser.

Luckily, Race Entry makes gathering donations and fundraising easy with built-in fundraising tools:

• Stand-alone Donations Page – Collect donations from a dedicated, customizable page. Add photos and display your fundraising goal with a progress bar.
• Donations on Registration Form – Make it easy for people to make donations while they’re signing up for your race.
• Fundraising Teams – Help people get excited about supporting your fundraiser by letting them create sub-fundraisers and fundraising teams with their own goals. Alternatively, you can also require people to create a fundraising team when they sign up for your race.
• Run for Free – Offer free registrations to people who help you fundraise. Set the minimum fundraised amount, then people who hit that amount won’t have to pay for their entry. If they don’t hit the target, then their card will be charged for the registration fee.

These tools help you expand your reach from just your school’s families to their broader networks – friends, extended family, and work.

With Race Entry’s software, you’ll have the tools you need to create a successful fun run school fundraiser.