Penny Drive for your Scholastic Book Fair

Hi friends!

Are you having a Scholastic Book Fair this fall? I’m gearing up for our fall book fair next week.  I’m trying a new fundraising idea that my colleague, Dawn Fontana, shared with me!

Scholastic Book Fair

Penny Drive

Here’s the idea. Each class in your school competes to raise the most money, to try to win a prize. You buy the prize with your Scholastic Dollars. I’ve ordered a kinetic stool to be the prize at our school because our students LOVE the Hokki stools we have in our library!

Hokki Stools in Library

Because I ask for pennies and coins, every student feels like he or she is contributing to the cause, by bringing a few pennies from around the house.

Books For Teachers

Whatever amount each teacher raises will go to buy books at the book fair for that classroom. So the teacher is motivated to remind students about the penny drive so that he or she can build the classroom library. The students are motivated because they want to win that “wiggly chair,” as we sometimes call them. Win-win!
Scholastic Book Fair

Simple Flyer to Print

Here’s the simple flyer that I sent home, with blanks in it for you to fill out, if you choose to do this fundraiser.

Scholastic Book Fair Flyer

You’ll notice in the fine print at the bottom, Scholastic will match our donations by making a donation to national, non-profit organizations dedicated to helping children, families, and teachers acquire books and educational resources. Our pennies go even further!

I’m expecting to earn at least an additional $500 for our book fair with this fundraiser. I’ll get more books into classrooms, books to families in need, and on top of all that, we’re building excitement for the book fair and reading!

Have you tried anything similar with your school book fair? I’d love to hear about it in a comment!

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    3 Comments

    1. I do something similar. I do a boy vs girl competition. Monday they bring pennies, Tuesday nickel, etc. each day a winner is announced during lunch as to who gets “special privileges” until lunch the next day. This means they get to line up first, go to recess first, some teachers have special things in their class s has raised over $2000, which buys new books for teachers classrooms. The kids get so excited to come in the library during recess to see the buckets of coins to see how close it is. The best part is that 100% of the money goes to teachers since the prize costs me nothing!!

    2. As a former Scholastic employee and a current chairperson, I would love to point out that the money donated has three rewards: first, you ring it up as a “sale” which counts toward your total earned at the Book Fair; secondly, you purchase books with the amount directly from your own book fair, which also counts toward your total earned (So, if your kids donate $500, you will end up with a total of $1,000 more counted toward your book fair total – and you earn Scholastic Dollars on the entire $1,000.) And lastly – like Cari pointed out – Scholastic matches the amount contributed and donates it to some great charities that provide books to kids.

      All for Books is an AMAZING program! Ask your field rep about it if you are not already doing it. We have done penny wars at our school and the kids love it. I give out Book Fair gift certificates to the winning team.

      1. I’m a little confused by your ‘sale’ comment for the donation $. I thought we just reported what we collected for All for Books as part of our reporting. Does it really get counted double?

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