Additional Revenue at a Car Wash Fundraiser

Car wash fundraisers are great money-makers indeed. Well why not enhance this years car wash fundraiser with a couple of extra revenue makers? After all you have a captured audience and you are a business minded individual right? You do care about your kids and you want them to succeed and do well at all their activities, you also know that the more money the fund raiser events make the less money dear old dad and mom have to kick into the program. Let’s face it kids are getting to be quite expensive and anytime you can off set some of these costs it makes sense right? Here are some additional revenue enhancement ideas for your annual Car Wash Fundraiser.

HOT DOGS

If you choose to sell hot dogs you will definitely have a captured audience. If you intend to feed your group you should charge them at least fifty cents each to cover costs otherwise they will eat up one hundred percent of your profits. People get hungry washing cars and burn up a lot of calories. If you offer free hot dogs to your washers and let’s say there are twenty of them, they will devour sixty hot dogs, three a piece. This may sound funny but not when you’re trying to make cash for your group. If you charge for them you will need an average of 1.5 hot dogs per washer and you will cover your costs on them. Guestimate how many hot dogs you will sell and add 1.5 times the number of washers to this number. This will give you an approximation of supplies needed. Remember to buy slightly more buns than hot dogs, half a pack or so. Some people will want a hot dog and no bun and some like the bun with no hot dog. Plus you will drop a few or squish a few buns and then no one will want to eat them. Be careful when selling hot dogs. When it gets busy at your car wash you want people to stay in the cars otherwise they will disappear to the hot dog area while their car blocks your production.

A hot dog stand should also have a parent if this is a kid’s group to manage the hot dogs and the money. Kids burn hot dogs, undercook them or give them away to friends. They will also forget to turn off the propane on the BBQ. This will really screw up sales if you run out of propane. No one will want a cold or uncooked hot dog.

BAKE SALE

This is the hardest type of extra activity to have at a car wash fundraiser. Try to find someone in your group who has run a successful bake sale before – one which actually made money and sold out. If they’ve been through this a couple of times you should use their experience and put them in charge. Have them run the bake sale event separately with different volunteers, monies, etc. Give them a really good location and let them take trays of goodies to people in line or in the drying area. Don’t allow sales in the wash zone. If you allow people to get out of their cars to purchase baked goods have them leave their keys in the car. You’ll need an extra supervisor moving cars, watching for hoses and people moving from the wash area to the drying area. This will allow customers to browse the bake sale layout. It’s OK to have a bake sale and hot dog stand. They work well because someone who wants a hot dog and soda will want a brownie. The bake sale volunteers should be given the utmost courtesy so tensions stay low and everybody works as a team.

PANCAKE BREAKFAST

If your fundraiser is at a school or church with a cafeteria, you may want to consider a pancake breakfast. The most important thing to remember is to keep the keys for the cars when the people walk in to eat. Then make sure there is plenty of parking for the cars that have been washed otherwise they will stack up and the lot will be full.

CASH

You should have the person in charge count the money with another person so in case anybody thinks there might be missing monies, the exact amount can be verified. Keep donation can money, hot dog money and car wash ticket money separate from drive up customers money. Also keep the stack of tickets received from the customers attending your car wash fundraiser and a count of the number of cars washed. Subtract the number of tickets received from the number of cars washed. Multiply that number by the price of the car wash for the day of the event. This should equal the total money made from car washes. This way no one can accuse anyone of any impropriety.

Think of how you will organize this additional revenue enhancement sales during your car wash fundraiser. As long as you have the volume you should be good to go with whatever great additional value items you sell this year; think on it.