Plenty of dance and ballet studios turn to fundraising from time to time to fund costume purchases, travel expenses, or tuition payments for low-income families. As a parent of a dance or ballet student, you probably have the desire to help support your child and the studio they love, but you may not know the best way to get involved.
As the CEO for DanceStudio-Pro, I work with dance studio owners to connect them with the studio management tools they need to thrive. Because of this, my team and I work on a one-on-one level with many dance and ballet studio owners, and we’re familiar with their needs and concerns. With this background, we’ve compiled this guide to provide advice for supporting your child’s passion and lending a helping hand with dance studio fundraising efforts.
Here are our top six ideas to support your studio’s fundraising efforts, or start a fundraiser of your own:
How to Support Studio-Led Fundraisers
- Promote the fundraiser to your family and friends.
- Encourage your child to get involved.
- Use your professional connections to help out.
Ideas for Starting Your Own Fundraiser
4. Create a crowdfunding page.
5. Launch a birthday fundraiser on Facebook.
6. Let your dancer take charge with a student-led effort.
Ready to learn more about how to get involved in dance studio fundraising? Let’s dive in!
How to Support Studio-Led Fundraisers
There is a wide variety of fundraisers your child’s dance studio might host, from merchandise sales to dance-a-thons and car washes. Some studios even host used gear sales to help families purchase affordable attire like ballet shoes. For nonprofit dance studios especially, these fundraising efforts often are what keep the dance studio running.
If your child’s studio is hosting an upcoming fundraiser, here are a few ways to get involved and give the fundraiser a boost so that it reaches its goal.
1. Promote the fundraiser to your family and friends.
Many fundraising ideas rely on support not just from those within the dance community but from the wider community as well. For example, if your dance studio is hosting a social media challenge fundraiser, they’ll need engagement from a wider audience of supporters to really get the fundraising activities underway.
This is a great opportunity to provide some easy support and spread the word so the fundraiser achieves a greater degree of participation. As our DanceStudio-Pro dance studio marketing overview points out, there are plenty of platforms studios use to market their offerings that you can also take advantage of to promote your studio’s fundraisers. Here are two of our favorites:
- Social media: Share your studio’s social media posts to your page and create your own unique posts as well! Be sure to add a quick sentence or two about your connection to the studio and how much your child loves their dance classes so your followers are more inspired to contribute.
- Email: Send information on the studio fundraiser to those you stay connected with via email and point recipients to the donation page or studio website where they can give. You can even draft a personalized message that details your child’s history with the studio and why it deserves support.
Don’t go overboard with fundraiser promotion, because you don’t want to annoy your friends and family! But a post here or there can provide effective exposure for the studio’s message and push the fundraising efforts forward.
2. Encourage your child to get involved.
Dance studio fundraisers provide an excellent opportunity to encourage your child to get out of their comfort zone and support a cause they’re passionate about.
For example, maybe your child’s dance studio is hosting a bake sale to raise money for travel fees for an upcoming competition. If students are encouraged to get involved, you can help your child make baked goods to sell and sign them up for a few sales shifts. This equips them with real-world experience and can help build their confidence in speaking to people they don’t know.
As Dr. Patrick Capriola says in this Dance Parent 101 interview, you should view your role as a dance parent as “an opportunity to support [your child] while they are putting building blocks in place.” Providing them with the support they need to get involved in your studio’s fundraisers is a great way to establish these “building blocks” such as working in teams, handling money, and promoting a cause they’re passionate about.
3. Use your professional connections to help out.
If your child’s dance or ballet studio is a nonprofit organization, you may be able to support them using the power of your own employer. Corporate philanthropy is becoming a priority for many businesses that want to give back to their community and demonstrate social responsibility. With this in mind, plenty of businesses offer matching gift programs to support charitable causes that their employees contribute to.
Double the Donation defines corporate matching gift programs as “a type of philanthropy in which companies financially match donations that their employees make to nonprofit organizations.” Businesses usually match gifts on a 1:1 ratio. This means that if your company offers matching gifts, you can contribute a donation to a nonprofit dance studio and your company will match your gift dollar-for-dollar.
Additionally, dance studios often seek sponsorships from local businesses to help put on competitions or other events that require more funding. If you’re a business owner yourself or if you work for a philanthropically-minded organization, your company could be the perfect sponsor for the dance studio events. The company will be able to give back to the community while receiving an advertising boost from the visibility of sponsoring a major event.
In addition, many dance studios offer ad placement in their recital programs in exchange for a donation or sponsorship. Most dance shows draw large crowds – sometimes a couple of hundred people can be in attendance. This might be valuable exposure to grow your business as well as support a great cause.
As you can see, these are a few simple, highly effective ways you can give your child’s dance studio or ballet community a big helping hand.
Ideas for Starting Your Own Fundraiser
Even if your studio isn’t currently engaged in a fundraising effort, there are plenty of ways you and your child can support your studio on your own. Coordinate with the dance studio owner to ensure you’ve got their permission to fundraise on their behalf. Then, look into these easy fundraising ideas to get started!
4. Create a crowdfunding page.
Crowdfunding is an effective fundraising idea that relies on the power of supporters’ personal networks. With a crowdfunding campaign, you can create a page dedicated to raising money for your dance studio as a whole or a certain initiative, such as funding an upcoming trip or tuition scholarship.
To get started, there are plenty of crowdfunding websites available to help you create a page and start promoting it. As you create your page, be sure to add images or videos and add your personal story of why you’ve started the fundraiser. To get the most traction, share the page on social media and via email.
5. Launch a birthday fundraiser on Facebook.
Have you ever been scrolling through Facebook and see a post from a friend that says something like “It’s my birthday, and instead of gifts, I’m asking people to donate to the Furry Friends Animal Shelter”? Facebook fundraisers are becoming an increasingly popular way for people to raise awareness and funds for a cause they’re passionate about.
You can take the opportunity to create a Facebook fundraiser of your own. While you can align the fundraiser with your birthday, you can also start a campaign any time of year. Design your fundraiser page with personal photos and a short description.
This type of fundraiser allows your friends and followers to give without having to leave the Facebook platform. This makes it a highly convenient fundraiser that has the potential to raise a lot for your child’s dance or ballet studio.
6. Let your dancer take charge with a student-led effort.
As we mentioned earlier, getting your child involved in fundraising is a great way to build their confidence and teach life skills. With a student-led fundraising effort, you can provide your child and their fellow dancers with the tools and resources they need to carry out a fundraiser on their own. When students work together on the fundraiser, they’ll learn valuable leadership and teamwork skills that can even help prepare for any upcoming competitions.
A few ideas for student-led fundraising campaigns include:
- Lemonade stands
- Bake sales
- Car washes
- Dog walking or babysitting services
- Craft fairs
Make sure the students know how to collect and handle payments, and for younger groups, ensure there’s an adult to supervise. Other than that, you can let the students take charge and run the fundraiser on their own!
Check out this guide for more simple and creative fundraising ideas that you and your student can launch on your own to support your studio.
By supporting your child’s dance studio and its fundraising efforts, you can not only help provide much-needed funding for the studio community, but also foster some life lessons for your dancer, tapper, or ballerina along the way. Even if you’ve never participated in fundraising before, these ideas won’t take too much time or effort to get off the ground. Good luck and have fun!
Laura Cole
CEO Dance Studio-Pro
Providing Software Solutions for Dance Studios