Here’s a fun way to celebrate the ending of a school year and raise money for your school by creating student crafted autograph books and selling them for $10.00 apiece. All you’ll need is construction paper and a way to laminate the outside covers and spiral bind them.
Kids love getting their friends and teachers to sign things and leave little notes for them at the end of each school year. Not everyone can afford to purchase a yearbook, so these little autograph books will allow more to participate in something that will be a memento of their school year.
Each student will have the opportunity to create an autograph book which will then be bound and put aside for sale. The fun part of this fundraiser is that each student wont know which autograph book they’ll get, could be their own or could be one someone else created.
Each autograph book will be pre-bought so that when they are bound and spiraled the funds will be available. Too you’ll have the opportunity to set aside those extra ones which weren’t purchased for sale and not have the added expense of bounding and spiraling non purchased books.
Each autograph book should be about 4 x 8 size and have about ten sheets of the same size paper inside for the autographs. The outside covers wouldn’t be included in that, so in all there would be twelve pages to be bound together. The pages can be made for construction paper. Most times the school already has this type of paper on site for art class. If not it’s fairly cheap to purchase and can be bought, in bulk, at more craft stores or mass merchandising stores.
Encourage the kids to be creative, but not sloppy in designing the front and back of the books. Have each student sign their names to the bottom of the front cover in small handwriting before being bound. They’ll love having their name attached to their creation. Suggest the art be fairly generic, that way if a boy gets one a girl created or a girl gets one a boy created they’ll not be offended if it caters to one gender or another; or have a parent or teachers chip in if the balance between boys and girls isn’t even and the children insist on putting either pink ribbons or monster trucks on their covers!
Be sure to send home a flier to the parents letting them know their child will be creating an autograph book for the end of the year autograph exchange. Perhaps this will encourage them to make a purchase for their child. You can distribute books randomly, or if teachers /parents pitched in so there are some extras, you can hold a table sale in the library one weekend and sell the rest through take home flyers. That’s the fun part of this fundraiser, you could end up with your own or you could end up with one someone else created.
Make arrangements ahead of time for all those who purchased autograph books to meet in the school auditorium at the end of the school year to exchange autographs with their friends and teachers. This is sure to be a fun fundraiser the kids will remember for a long time.
