Whether you’re on the PTA or you know someone who is, fundraising ideas are critical for the Parent Teacher Association. This group of parents and teachers works hard to gather the community around their school and raise funds for a wide variety of needs. With a photo contest, you can show off your school spirit with contest themes like:
PTA Fundraising Ideas
- School Events
- School Spirit
- Educational Topics
- Seasonal Themes
- Student Talents
- Teacher Talents
- Parent Talents
- Field Trips
- PTA Heroes
While the PTA raises money on a regular basis, it can be a challenge to find new, interesting, and inventive ways to raise funds year after year. With a photo contest, you can take this unique fundraising idea and run it each year with different themes to tailor it to the club, need, or special event for which you’re raising funds. When it comes to PTA school fundraising ideas, running a photo contest is one of the best there is.
What Does a PTA Raise Money For?
The PTA raises money for a wide variety of needs—everything from school field trips and sports uniforms to faculty salaries and school club funding. They might raise money for classroom supplies, playground equipment, or musical instruments. The needs of a school are endless, which is why great PTA fundraising ideas are so important.
The best PTA fundraising ideas have the potential to bring in funding for important needs across the landscape of an elementary school, middle school, or high school and make a huge difference. That’s why we’re so excited to share how photo contests work so you can take your PTA fundraising ideas to the next level. With a photo contest, you’ll have a chance to run a fundraiser that everyone enjoys. Raise enough, and your school will finally get to purchase those new art sets, deck out the football team in new jerseys, and ensure the music teacher gets paid for all their hard work and dedication.
Top 9 Best PTA Fundraising Ideas for Photo Contests
Not sure what type of photo contest to run? Consider one of these nine ideas to get the entire school community involved in your fundraising project:
1. School Events
A photo contest is one of the best PTA virtual fundraising ideas that enables the entire school and community to participate without having to be on site. It also gives you the opportunity to schedule the contest during any timeframe you’d like. The benefit of virtual participation and flexible timing is that you can easily center the photo contest around school events that correlate with the fundraising need.
For example, if you want to raise money for new football uniforms, you could choose home football games as the theme for your photo contest. If you need to supplement funding for music education or the drama department, choose a contest theme that focuses on a major musical or theatrical production. Other events, such as dances, class trips, and field days, also provide excellent opportunities for photo contest themes.
By focusing the school and community on a specific event, you’ll get timely pictures and wider participation as excitement is drummed up for the specific school event. Fundraising ideas for PTA groups like this generally see wider participation from the school community since everyone is already focused on the event.
2. School Spirit
Every good PTA fundraiser should be a school fundraising idea that allows anyone to participate who wants to do so. That’s why photo contest ideas like this one are so helpful. School spirit is an easy contest theme that anyone can get into. This involves shooting pictures of things that encapsulate a demonstration of school spirit. You might get submissions of school and class rallies, spirit week, or spirit day when students are encouraged to dress in certain ways or decorate their classrooms in school colors.
Photo fundraising ideas like this are ideal for the Parent Teacher Association since they provide natural opportunities for photo ops and don’t require any extra setup, specially scheduled events, volunteers, staff, or overtime. It’s simple and straightforward school fundraising at its best.
3. Educational Topics
If you’re looking for a school fundraiser idea that promotes the need of a specific department, classroom supplies, or salary for a staff member, consider creating a photo competition around educational topics.
For example, if you need to raise money for art supplies, create a photo contest that captures students and staff hard at work in the art room. If you need to raise money for the music program, encourage participants to snap artistic photos of musical instruments, kids practicing, and the teacher working with students. The options are endless.
This theme gives you a unique ability to tailor your contest to a specific educational topic or theme. You’ll find that an educational topic photo contest has the power to rally the school community around a specific need much more than a traditional discount card fundraiser or a bake sale.
4. Seasonal Themes
Choosing a seasonal theme is another fun PTA fundraising idea that is ideal when you’re looking for season-specific fundraisers. Fundraising is never a one-time event, so choosing seasonal themes can provide you with a PTA fundraising campaign fit for every semester or quarter.
A summer photo contest could include unique student and teacher photos from vacation or summer training for baseball, cross country, and swim teams. A fall fundraiser might include “back to school” photos, fall sporting events, and school events, such as a fall festival. Winter could include holiday pictures, and spring could feature graduation, spring formals, and other end-of-year events.
Many of these seasonal themes are already on the radar of high school photography and newspaper clubs. These clubs could be encouraged to snap photos and submit them to the contest, since they’ll already be taking pictures of seasonal school events. This is one way to jump-start your contest and get the photos rolling in.
5. Student Talents
Whether your PTA group is looking for a fundraising event for elementary school, middle school, or high school, a photo contest centered around student talents will encourage a high amount of participation. Everyone loves a good talent show, but this contest can be carried out whether the school has a talent show planned or not.
Showcasing student talents is an easy fundraising idea that allows participants to showcase their unique talents and skills from any location. You could receive submissions from student gymnasts on the mat, soccer players on the field, jugglers with 10 balls in the air, and everything in between.
6. Teacher Talents
Let’s not forget the teachers! Students love getting to know their teachers outside of the classroom. Run a photo contest that highlights teacher talents for a fun fundraising activity that involves teachers in a unique way.
Give teachers an opportunity to demonstrate their special talents and skills by submitting photos of them performing. Then, the school community can vote for their favorite. The students might find out that their quiet, reserved math teacher plays the electric guitar in a band on the weekends, that their science teacher can juggle, or that the drama teacher can complete a full 360 on the slopes.
7. Parent Talents
While this theme might not work for everyone, if you want a way to include the parent population in addition to the students and teacher, consider running a contest that showcases parent talents. Parents, after all, make up half or more of the PTA group at any school. So, consider a PTA fundraising opportunity that highlights the students’ parents and gives them an opportunity to be in the limelight.
Any parent can participate, from a PTA member or room parent to parents that might not be able to participate in on-campus activities due to travel limitations or work hours. This is one of the best virtual PTA fundraising ideas that opens participation to everyone who wants to be involved. It’s an easy way to increase parental involvement in your fundraising efforts.
8. Field Trips
Centering a photo contest around the topic of field trips can be an excellent opportunity when you have a specific fundraising goal in mind. When voting for their favorite field trip photo, donors can see that their money is going toward something specific, such as gas money for the bus, salaries for the bus drivers, or providing extra funds for kids unable to provide the small fee toward the cost of the field trip.
You can even gain the involvement of a local business or two, such as the apple orchard you visit each fall or the science center where students get to learn about space travel in the spring. Encourage the local business where the field trip takes place to submit their own photos to the contest for a PTA event that involves the outside community.
9. PTA Heroes
When it comes to school fundraising, there’s no group like the Parent Teacher Association for brainstorming fundraising ideas, gathering donations, and bringing awareness to a special school fund that needs help. Why not highlight the wonderful people that make up the PTA with a fundraising theme that involves each PTA member?
You could go in several directions with this photo contest, such as showcasing members of the Parent Teacher Association at work during rallies, fundraising events, and other places. You could also add a fun spin and encourage PTA members to dress up as their favorite superheroes or take a picture in full regalia to submit to the contest. Whether you show them in action or have fun with the theme, it’s an opportunity to highlight the people who work hard for the school they love.
Benefits of Photo Contests for PTAs
As a fundraising company, we understand how important it is to raise as much money as possible through community involvement. That’s why we love providing everything you need for a successful photo contest. The method is simple, requires no extra setup, and allows the entire school community to get involved. It’s virtual, covid-friendly, and taps into the power of crowdfunding.
You’ll love incorporating this contest idea into your lineup of PTA fundraising ideas, and we look forward to adding your event to our growing list of photo contest success stories.
Put the ‘Fun’ in Fundraising
Photo contests are perfect for general or specific fundraising needs at any point in the school year. Students, teachers, parents, and every community member can get involved by participating and posting photos, becoming a donor, or both. It’s simple, easy, virtual, and has the potential to raise a lot of money without the extra time, labor, volunteers, or staff members in-person events require.
If you’re ready to learn more, we’d love to talk with you. Feel free to request a photo contest demo today!