On Thursday Natalie and I had a bake sale to raise money for New Sanctuary Coalition. Natalie and I made such a great team and raised SO MUCH more money than I ever dreamed of. We had the idea Monday to have the bake sale and had been emailing and coordinating since then. I thought it would be cool to sell snacks as well as baked goods. So Wednesday night my mom and I took a trip to Costco and bought tons of bulk snacks. I bought Pringles, assorted chips, Rice Krispies, and Fruit Rollup. Natalie baked all night and so the two of us literally had hundreds of items to sell.
I got to school early on Thursday which is a big deal for me because I never come to school any earlier than 8:25. Natalie and I set up the bake sale, we made signs and set up the table. Our first customer was Adria who bought two pringles! Throughout the day at the high school, we sold food to all the students. I thought we would sell the most snacks during lunch but we actually sold the most during snack.
Then we went to the lower school at set up outside. We wanted to catch all the parents as they came in to pick up their kids. We also discovered a trick to make more money. Since all snacks were either $1 or $2 most people would hand us a larger bill like a $5 or $10. What we did was we would take the large bill and then say “would you like change?” This guilted the person into giving us the full bill haha.
Some things I noticed:
- Adults are way more giving. The students at the high school just would pay exactly the amount of their snack nothing more. A lot of the parents or teachers would buy snacks and give extra money or just give money without taking any snacks.
- Adding Venmo was a great idea. Last minute I had the idea to also offer a Venmo option. We would call out to people to donate and they would respond with “I’m sorry I don’t have cash” to which we would reply “we also take Venmo!” Adding Venmo raised us an EXTRA $40 that otherwise we would not have raised.
- Some people are really generous. A lot of parents donated a $20 without taking snacks. Special shoutout to Manjula and Margaret and the random guy on the street who donated $100!!
- Selling on the street is much better than selling inside. We got a lot of passer-bys who ended up buying snacks or donating!
All in all we raised 632.19 which is wayyyy more than I ever thought we would raise. Wednesday Night I took the total number of snacks we had and saw that if we sold everything we would raise approximately $300. Furthermore, we had so many snacks I never thought we would sell them all. On that note I was correct, we did not end up selling them all but somehow we raised SO much money!