100+ fundraising ideas

Whether you’re running a school, a sporting club, a charity, or a community group, fundraising is part of the job. This guide brings together more than 100 ideas – from five-minute coin drives to full-scale movie nights – organised by effort level, audience, and setting so you can find what works for your situation.

What are easy fundraising ideas that need minimal planning?

These need minimal planning and almost no budget. They work well as add-ons to existing events or for groups with limited volunteer capacity.

Food and drink stalls

• Sausage sizzle – a fundraising classic in New Zealand too. A BBQ outside a venue, at a sports match, or on election day is still one of the most reliable earners. Keep it simple: sausage on bread, onion, sauce, gold coin or tap to pay.
• Bake sale – parents and community members bake at home, you set up a table. Works brilliantly at school pick-up, market days, or footy matches.
• Lamington drive – ask your network to pre-order, bake in bulk, deliver. Low effort for volunteers, and lamingtons travel well.
• Kiwifruit fundraiser – if you’re in the Bay of Plenty or another fruit-growing region, pre-selling trays of kiwifruit, avocados or citrus to families is a genuine earner with low overhead.
• Coffee morning – set up a simple morning tea at the office or community hall. Donation jar, homemade biscuits, done.

Coin and cash collections

• Gold coin donation day – charge a gold coin to wear casual clothes, a costume, or participate in a themed day. Works at schools and workplaces.
• Penny drive – competing teams or classes collect loose change over a period. The competitive element drives more donations than a plain collection jar.
• Donation boxes – place jars at local business counters. Ask permission, label them clearly, and collect regularly.
• Desk fundraiser – at a workplace, employees pay a small amount to do something minor (dress casually, decorate their desk, bring their pet to work).

Online and low-touch

• Crowdfunding page – set up a simple page, share it via email and social media, and let people donate in their own time. Works for personal causes and community projects alike.
• Online auction – collect donated goods and sell them via Facebook Marketplace, Trade Me, or a dedicated auction page.
• Online yard sale – clear out storage, photograph items, and list them. Proceeds go to the cause.
• Social media challenge – create a simple challenge with a donation hook. Straightforward format, easy to share.

What fundraising ideas work with a weekend of planning?

These need some organisation but don’t require a venue booking or major logistics. Good for established groups with a few reliable volunteers.

Ticketed events

• Trivia night – one of the most consistently popular fundraisers in New Zealand. Book a pub or hall, write or buy a question set, charge per team, offer a prize. Adding a meat raffle or sausage sizzle on the side lifts your total take.
• Footy tipping competition – season-long engagement for sporting clubs or workplaces. Collect entry fees upfront, award a prize at the end. Runs itself once set up.
• Karaoke night – low barrier to entry, reliably fun. Venue hire, a karaoke setup, entry fee, food and drinks on the side.
• Talent show – works well for schools, community clubs, and corporate groups. Students, staff, or community members perform, audience pays to attend or votes with donations.
• Bingo night – suits community clubs, aged care connections, or any group where participants want something relaxed. Charge per card or per session.
• Murder mystery dinner – guests solve a “murder” over a three-course meal. Ticket price covers dinner and entry, and the theatrical element means people talk about it afterward.

Challenges and participation events

• Fun run or walk – participants collect sponsorships per kilometre. Works at any scale: school oval, local park, river path.
• Themed costume run – same structure as a fun run, with costumes. The glow-in-the-dark variant is particularly popular for evening events.
• Read-a-thon – students pledge to read a number of books or pages and seek sponsors. Runs over a few weeks with no event-day logistics.
• Dance-a-thon – participants pledge to dance for a set period and collect sponsorships. Suits schools and youth groups.
• Dodgeball tournament – teams pay an entry fee. Fast to organise, high energy, works for sporting clubs and schools.
• Obstacle course race – can be run on an oval or park with minimal equipment. Entry fee per participant or team.

Raffles and auctions

• Charity raffle – collect donated prizes from local businesses, sell tickets over a period, draw live. Adding a prize draw to an existing event is the easiest version.
• Reverse raffle – tickets are drawn and eliminated. The last ticket standing wins. Creates sustained tension throughout an event.
• Silent auction – donated goods displayed with bid sheets. Runs alongside another event or as a standalone evening.
• Sports memorabilia auction – for sporting clubs, signed jerseys or equipment from local athletes can fetch good prices.
• Mystery box raffle – boxes of unknown contents, revealed at the draw. The surprise element drives curiosity and ticket sales.

What are high-impact fundraising events worth the extra effort?

These are bigger productions. They need venue hire, promotion, ticketing, and usually a small committee. The payoff is proportionally larger.

Ticketed performances and dinners

• Gala dinner or charity ball – formal venue, guest speaker, live auction. High overhead, high return. Works for charities and large community organisations.
• Charity dinner party – smaller scale than a gala. Local chefs or volunteers cook, attendees pay for a seat.
• Comedy night – partner with local comedians or a comedy club. Ticket sales plus bar share, with a donation bucket at the door.
• Charity concert or music festival – local musicians, ticketed event. Can range from a backyard acoustic night to a multi-stage community festival.
• Silent disco – hire wireless headphone sets, guests dance to music only they can hear. Novel enough to sell out.

Community events

• Movie night fundraiser – book a cinema group session or set up an outdoor screen. Select a film with broad appeal, package in food and drink, offer ticket tiers. Add a donation step in the booking process to lift the average per head.
• Outdoor cinema – hire a projector and screen, find a park or oval. BYO blankets, food stalls alongside, ticket price for entry.
• Community cook-off – teams compete to make the best dish (BBQ, desserts, chilli). Entry fee for competitors, ticket price for the public to taste and vote.
• Block party or street festival – community-wide event with stalls, entertainment, and activities. Significant logistics but strong community engagement.
• Charity sports day – relay races, tug-of-war, egg-and-spoon. Entry fee or gold coin donation. Works for schools, sporting clubs, and community groups.

School-specific events

• STEAM fair – students showcase projects in science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths. Charge entry for families.
• School fete or carnival – the classic. Stalls, games, food, entertainment. Major undertaking but often the biggest earner on the school calendar.
• Around-the-world food fair – classes or groups represent different countries with food and activities. Entry by donation or food ticket.
• Parents vs teachers – sport, quiz, or obstacle course match between staff and parents. Crowd-pleasing format, low logistics once the format is set.
• Teachers’ talent show – staff perform for students and parents. Students pay to watch or vote for their favourites.
• Flashback day – students and staff dress in a chosen decade. Gold coin entry, themed music and activities alongside.

Business and corporate

• Corporate golf tournament – entry fees, sponsorships, silent auction alongside. Popular with business networks.
• Office Olympics – quirky workplace challenges (chair races, paper plane competitions). Entry fee per event, sponsorships from management.
• Charity auction with company perks – employees bid on experiences (lunch with the CEO, extra leave, reserved parking). High engagement, zero cost for prizes.
• Corporate match challenge – business matches employee donations for a day. The matched element usually doubles the take.
• Dress for a cause day – employees pay to dress casually or in themed outfits. Simple, recurring format.

What fundraising ideas work best for different audiences?

Schools

Best-fit ideas: gold coin donation days, read-a-thon, bake sale, school fete, fun run, lamington drive, talent show, parents vs teachers, around-the-world food fair, STEAM fair, kiwifruit fundraiser.

The most reliable school fundraisers are ones parents can participate in from home (baking, selling kiwifruit, collecting donations) or ones that double as a social event for the school community.

Sporting clubs

Best-fit ideas: sausage sizzle, trivia night, footy tipping, sports memorabilia auction, obstacle course race, dodgeball tournament, fantasy league, meat raffle, fun run.

Sporting clubs have a natural advantage: a recurring audience who attend regularly. The sausage sizzle at match day and the trivia night mid-season are staples for good reason – they fit the existing community rhythm.

Charities and not-for-profits

Best-fit ideas: gala dinner, charity auction, crowdfunding, comedy night, charity concert, corporate match challenge, online auction.

Charities can leverage their mission to unlock corporate sponsorship and media attention in ways that smaller groups can’t. A compelling goal – “we’re raising $20,000 for [specific thing]” – creates urgency that drives both ticket sales and spontaneous donations.

Community clubs and groups

Best-fit ideas: trivia night, outdoor cinema, community cook-off, talent show, community photo contest, bingo, swap shop, community art auction.

Community groups often have access to halls and ovals at low cost, which reduces the main overhead of high-effort events. The outdoor cinema and community cook-off work particularly well because they generate community pride alongside the fundraising goal.

What are some classic New Zealand fundraising ideas?

A few ideas that travel particularly well in the New Zealand context:

Sausage sizzle – hard to overstate how embedded this is in New Zealand fundraising culture. Election day, hardware stores (Bunnings and Mitre 10 sausage sizzles are a fixture), sporting matches, school entrances. The format is universally understood: a couple of dollars, sausage on bread, onion optional. If you can run a BBQ, you can run a sausage sizzle.

Lamington drive – pre-sell lamingtons to your network, bake or source in bulk, deliver. No event required, no venue needed. Particularly popular with school PTAs and sporting clubs.

Trivia night with meat raffle – combining a trivia night with a meat raffle (drawn throughout the evening) is a classic pub-style format that maximises revenue from a single event. The meat raffle adds a low-effort income stream without extending the evening.

Footy tipping – season-long engagement for minimal setup. Entry fee, weekly tips, end-of-season prize. Works across rugby union, NRL and netball depending on your community.

Gold coin days – the casual dress day or theme day format is second nature in New Zealand schools and workplaces. The barrier is so low (most people have $2 on them) that participation rates are high.

What tips help make a fundraiser successful?

Set a specific goal. “We’re raising $3,000 for new training equipment” is more motivating than “we’re raising money for the club.” Specificity creates urgency and gives donors a clear sense of impact.

Start planning earlier than you think you need to. Venue bookings, print materials, volunteer coordination, and promotion all take longer than expected. Six weeks is a realistic minimum for a medium-sized event.

Promote across multiple channels. Email your existing contacts, post on social media, contact local Facebook groups, put up flyers at local businesses. The audience for most community fundraisers is already nearby – it just needs reminding.

Combine income streams. A trivia night with a sausage sizzle, a raffle, and a table booking fee will always outperform a single-income-stream event. Each addition is low complexity once the main event is running.

Thank participants clearly. Send a follow-up message after the event sharing how much was raised and what it will fund. This closes the loop for donors and makes them more likely to support you next time.

Accept multiple payment methods. In a cashless environment, the ability to tap to pay significantly increases per-person spend at food stalls and door entry. Coin collections and cash-only events leave money on the table.

How can TryBooking help with my fundraiser?

TryBooking handles the ticketing and payment side of most formats here – from movie nights and trivia evenings to school fetes and fun runs. You can set up multiple ticket types, add a donation step in the booking process (so attendees can contribute beyond the ticket price), and use the Box Office app to take contactless payments at physical stalls like a sausage sizzle or bake sale. That means cards, tap-to-pay phones, and smartwatches – no EFTPOS terminal required.

Even for donation-led fundraisers, you can collect contributions alongside a free registration – supporters reserve their spot and give in the same step, so everything stays in one place with no separate platform to manage.