Before you pick a catalog cover, pick a shape. Order-taker packets, in-hand items, online checkout so the treasurer never touches cash, or a combo. Those are labor and money-handling choices. The theme on the brochure is not.
This page is for schools, teams, churches, PTAs, scouts, and similar groups that have a dollar goal and a date the money is needed. It is a worksheet in prose. It is not a donation page. It is not for one family covering a medical bill; that belongs on a dedicated crowdfunding platform. GoFundMe owns that job. Product fundraising is a roster of people asking friends, family, and neighbors to buy something.
If you already know you want packets, a window, and a sort night, read how to organize an order-taker fundraiser. If you have not decided the shape, stay here. The calculator on this page asks the same two questions a committee should vote on: what a buyer would pay, and how you want to run it.
Shape first, cover second
Committees argue covers. Covers do not staff a gym. Covers do not decide whether cash sits in a classroom. Covers do not move the last-safe-order date. A group that picks “the chocolate one” and then discovers nobody can sort boxes has chosen a picture, not a program.
Shape is the work the adults actually do. Who collects the order. Who handles money, if anyone on site handles money. Whether product arrives in bulk and has to be matched to names. Whether a seller can show the item. Whether a grandparent can check out from a phone without an envelope coming back to school. Answer those, then look at what sits in the catalog. The affiliated programs this site writes about include items in three shelf-price bands — $1–$3, about $15, and $20–$22. Those numbers are what the other person sees at checkout. They are not profit. Profit is a smaller number, and until verified economics are on this site, the calculator’s dollar rows stay labeled as a draft worksheet.
The four ways to run it
Order-taker packets
A packet goes home. A seller writes orders — paper, a cart, or both — during a published window. The committee consolidates. The group places one order. Product arrives in bulk. Someone sorts it and families pick it up. That last sentence is the part a vote-yes-on-the-cover committee forgets. If you cannot name a room, a crew, and a night before you launch, you have not chosen order-taker. You have chosen hope and a hallway full of boxes.
Order-taker is the familiar elementary catalog and the familiar booster packet. Familiar is not the same as automatic. You still need named sellers, not enrollment. You still need a last-safe-order date that works backwards from when money or product must be in hand — never a printed delivery lead time. You still need a cash procedure if any money comes through the building. Students do not collect. Teachers do not make change. Customer service for a wrong item belongs with the program, not with a coach who did not volunteer to be a help desk.
Pick this shape when you can staff the window and the sort, when families will actually take a packet to people they already know, and when the calendar has enough open days after testing, holidays, and the other sale already in the building. If any of those is missing, keep reading. Another shape exists so you do not have to pretend the gym is a warehouse.
In-hand items
The seller can show the thing. A neighbor sees it, decides, and pays. Product does not wait in a gym for a matching night. Ship-to-home programs live here: the order is taken, the item goes to the buyer’s address, and the committee is not running a distribution line. Some in-hand programs put a small quantity with the seller so the item is physically present. Either way, the labor you are buying out of is sort night — not the asking. Someone still has to ask friends, family, and neighbors. An item in a hand does not sell itself to a stranger in a parking lot, and this site does not write that script.
In-hand is the honest pick when the building cannot store cases, when the crew you can name is two people, or when the last-safe-order date is tight enough that a bulk arrival would miss the event you are funding. It is also the pick when the product only makes sense if someone can see it. A catalog photograph is not the same as a jar on a table at a meeting.
Do not call ship-to-home an order-taker just because there is a booklet. If boxes will sit on a tile floor, you are running an order-taker. If they will not, say so in the motion so the next committee does not rebuild a sort night you already decided against.
Online — no cash handling
Checkout is a link. The treasurer does not collect envelopes. Families do not send cash to school with a child. That is the point of this shape, and it is a real point. Cash handling is policy, liability, and labor. If your building’s procedure is already a burden, or if you cannot staff weekly deposits, do not add a tote of bills because the brochure looked traditional.
Online is not “set a link and disappear.” Sellers still have to ask. A share to a feed is not a roster doing work. The committee still names who will actually sell, still publishes a last-safe-order date, and still closes the books on profit dollars after fees. What you are not doing is counting cash on a card table. What you are not doing, if the program is structured that way, is buying inventory before orders exist. That cash-flow choice can be worth fewer dollars per participant. It can also be the only honest option for a small group that should not float a case minimum.
Online is the wrong first step when the buyers who will actually spend are people who will not check out on a phone — some grandparents, some workplaces with a paper culture, some church lists. Then you need paper in the mix, which is a combo, not a pure online program. Do not print “just share the link” and then act surprised when half the roster never opened it.
Combo
Combo means you intend to run more than one path on purpose. A packet and a cart. A link for families who will not handle cash and a paper form for the household that will. In-hand for the meeting table and a catalog for the rest of the window. Combo is allowed. Combo is also how groups lose orders in two systems.
If you vote combo, write the rule that prevents double orders: one path per buyer, and a named person who looks for duplicate names before the last-safe-order date. If the cart is the system of record, paper has to be keyed in. Assign that job by name. “Someone will enter them” is how a form stays in a tote over a weekend. If only a handful of households need paper, collect those centrally — a labeled envelope the committee empties — rather than making every classroom a drop box. Office staff did not volunteer to be a mailroom. Ask before you print the office as a return address.
Combo is not a way to avoid choosing. It is two shapes with two labor plans. If you cannot staff one shape, adding a second does not create capacity. It creates a second failure mode. Use combo when your buyers actually split, and you can name the extra work. Otherwise pick the one shape you can run cleanly.
What buyers would pay is not what you keep
The worksheet asks for a shelf-price band because that is the question families actually understand. A $1–$3 item is a different ask than an item around $15 or one at $20–$22. People decide in those buckets. The affiliated catalog includes items in each band, so the band is a preference, not a dead end. What it is not: a profit figure, a “we keep most of it” claim, or a number you should print on a flyer as the raise.
Profit per item is cost, freight, fees, and the program’s split — none of which belong as invented figures on this site. The calculator still has to show dollars, so it uses placeholder profit per item and labels the output as a draft. Read those rows as a format check: if the “items each” line is a volume your sellers will not move through friends, family, and neighbors in the weeks you have, the plan misses whether the shelf price was $2 or $22. A pretty percentage on a $20 item does not rescue an impossible count.
Do not mix the two numbers in a parent letter. “Buy a $15 item, we keep $15” is a lie even when you do not mean it. Say the goal in dollars. Say what the money is for, in one sentence. Say the last-safe-order date. Leave the split off the flyer until you have verified terms in the motion, not a guess from last year’s rumor.
Labor, cash, and the calendar
Three constraints kill more programs than a weak cover. Labor: who consolidates, who deposits, who stands in the gym, who keys paper into a cart. Cash: whether money enters the building at all, and which written procedure it follows if it does. Calendar: open days of asking, not weeks on a committee slide. Testing, holidays, games, and another sale already in the halls are closed days. A four-week window with a week of closures is three weeks of selling, and the last-safe-order date has to live in the real calendar.
Order-taker spends labor on sort night and often on cash. In-hand spends labor on showing the item and skips the gym. Online spends labor on the ask and skips cash. Combo spends labor twice. Match the shape to the constraint you actually have. If cash is the problem, do not pick a shape that fills envelopes. If the gym cannot be a warehouse, do not pick bulk arrival. If nobody will ask, no checkout method will save the goal.
The date the money is needed is not a shipping guess. Work backwards to a last-safe-order date the committee can still meet after counting and placing the group order. If that date is already behind you, do not force a catalog. Shrink the goal, pick an event you can staff, or wait. A missed season is recoverable. A promise you cannot keep is in the minutes forever.
Draft worksheet only. Shelf price is what a buyer pays. Profit per item is a placeholder — do not promise either number to your group until verified economics are on this site.
Email me this plan
How to use the worksheet
Group type is not decoration. A twelve-person scout unit and a sixty-family elementary school do not fail the same way. Headcount is people who will actually sell — names, not enrollment, not last year’s roster, not the email list. Goal is a dollar figure with a date attached. “As much as we can” is not a goal. Weeks until the money is needed sets the last-safe-order date.
Then the two questions this page exists to force. What buyers would pay: $1–$3, about $15, or $20–$22. How you want to run it: packets, in-hand, online with no cash, or combo. The closest-fit card is the shape that matches how you said you want to run it, then whether your headcount and weeks clear that shape’s floor. All three dollar columns still show, because a committee should see the other rows before they pretend there is only one brochure in the world.
Lead with total profit dollars and profit per participant. Then read items each at the placeholder profit — not at the shelf price you selected. Share of goal is smaller type on purpose. Email is optional and comes after the numbers. There is no gate to see the result.
A sequence you can vote
- Confirm school, district, church, or league rules allow the sale and the money handling you intend.
- Name sellers. If you cannot name them, you do not have a headcount.
- Put sellers, goal, weeks, shelf-price band, and shape into the calculator. Read profit dollars first.
- Vote the shape for labor and cash reasons, not for the cover.
- Set the last-safe-order date from the date the money is needed, with slack for counting. Do not print a delivery lead time.
- Write the packet or the share instructions so a buyer uses one path. Put customer service on the page, not a teacher’s personal email unless that person agreed and policy allows it.
- Run the window. Remind with dates and the dollar goal, not a guilt script. Close on the printed date.
- Do only the labor the shape requires: consolidation and sort, or none. Close the books on profit dollars after freight and fees.
When not to start here
- The ask is for one student or one family. That is personal crowdfunding.
- Policy forbids the sale or the money handling, and you were going to ignore it.
- The last-safe-order date does not fit the date the money is needed, and you will not shrink the goal.
- You cannot name sellers.
- You want order-taker and cannot staff consolidation and distribution — pick in-hand or online instead of hoping for a crew.
USA Fundraising writes independently in voice and is affiliated with a product fundraising company. We may benefit when a group chooses a program we describe. If another option is the better fit — including a platform we do not sell — that is the honest line on the page. The footer repeats it. The disclosure page is the full wording. This how-to does not invent averages, participation rates, or a typical raise. Put your own sellers and your own goal into the worksheet.