Putting the Fun in Fundraising-  20 fund raising ideas that you might want to consider.

1. For one week stop doing one thing you can live without doing for a week. Maybe it’s coffee or sodas, fast food, donuts, candy. Then estimate how much you saved during that week and donate it to Drop in the Bucket.
2. Organize a bake sale, a yard sale or a car wash.
3. Set up a coin jar at your school cafeteria and encourage everyone to put their change in it. Within a few weeks a whole school can raise a surprising amount of money.
4. Hold a swim-a-thon, dance-a-thon, read-a-thon, bowl-a-thon, jump rope-a-thon or anything else you can think of. Set a duration time that will make your friends, neighbors and relatives want to donate and get them all to sponsor you efforts. 
5. Set up a lemonade stand, or alternately set up a no lemonade stand that sells tap water and lets everyone know that by buying water from you they are helping to save lives.
6. Hold some kind of competition, it could be chess, or a trivia game, or if someone brings in a Wii you could pick a dance or tennis game and have everyone play it. If you ask a local restaurant to donate a mePal for the winner and a friend of their choice and have everyone that enters ask people make a donation or find a sponsor. You could even sell tickets and get an audience to come and support your efforts.
7. Get the local media involved in what you are doing, the local newspaper, tv channel or radio station would probably love to do a story on local kids raising money for Africa. A local story that has an address where people can send donations could bring in money from lots of people you don’t even know. 
8. Plan the ‘Water Cup’ a sporting competition of your choice, soccer, football, baseball, basketball or maybe volleyball. Anything you choose that you think your friends will want to compete in to raise money. Have people sponsor you to enter and the winning team wins just a cup of water, but gets to help save lives.
9. Hold an “Our School’s got talent” contest, the audience buys tickets to watch the performances and the proceeds to to Drop in the Bucket.
10. Collect bottles and cans and recycle them, if a whole school is recycling it may surprise everyone just how quickly funds can be raised.
11. Challenge other classes or grades to see who can raise the most money. Whichever class raises the most money gets to name the well. 
12. 12) Challenge other schools to see who can raise the most money. The school that raises the most money gets the well named after them. 
13. Go to a hardware store and buy a plastic water container. Then fill it full of water and arrange for everyone to carry it around a track or ball field. Have people either sponsor or donate towards you carrying water just like children do in Africa every day.
14. Ask a local restaurant or other business if you can help work there for a day and have them donate your ‘salary’ to Drop in the Bucket. 
15. Hold a Dance Contest with an audience that has to purchase tickets to attend.
16. Make your own bottled water, have everyone bring in their own plastic water bottle for a week and have them fill it up themselves instead of drinking sodas or bottled water. Then donate the money they saved.
17. Pick something up from our cafepress online store http://www.cafepress.com/dropinthebucket 
18. Become our Facebook, Twitter or Myspace friend, you can even make a donation using our causes app. http://apps.facebook.com/causes/86742?m=c5265bc0   
19. Read our blog or twitter feed. Oh and you can also donate.
20. A school wide auction where people can bid to be the Principal for a day. You get to make the rules, maybe everyone can wear jeans or sneakers that day. With all the proceeds from the auction going to Drop in the Bucket. Who wants to be gym teacher for the day and make the teachers play dodgeball? If you can come up with enough auction items maybe you can even build a well in one day.

If anyone has any more ideas please sign up as a member of this site and post them here, who knows your idea may inspire others to start funding wells. You can sign up by going to the 'Stories from Africa' and creating a username and password. We are looking forward to hearing your ideas. Also once you have signed up you can post on our message board.