Raffles & Fundraisers
Promotions to Market Your Business
Offer a free rental certificate to schools and daycares to be auctioned off at fundraisers or raffled.
- You can set the terms of the certificate to correlate when business is slow, for example, Certificate not good on Saturdays, Weekends, or Fri-Sun. You could specify weekday evening rental only. You may want to restrictions at all on it if you are just getting started and don't have many bookings.
Offer a Referral Program
- Offer schools, daycares, and churches a free rental for every 5 rentals that are referred by them.
- This is a great way to encourage them to hand out your flyers or business cards.
Offer them a reusable Event Banner (see Signs) as an extra incentive for 8 rentals.
Gather E-mail Addresses
An effective tactic for gathering e-mail addresses and birthdates is to place a box or sign-up sheet at local child care centers that offers a drawing for a free Moonwalk party.
Win a Moonwalk Party for your child's next party!
We will draw one winner on Month, Date for a free rental on your child's birthday
The winner will be notified by e-mail! Please fill out the form with your name, e-mail address, and child's (or children's) birthdate (s). We will send out a notification of who won the rental on Month, Date! Thanks!
Terms: Free rental must be used within 1 year. Free rental consists of 1 (one) 4-hour rental and includes delivery and setup within our delivery area. Free rental is not available on Saturday but may be used for any other day of the week.
You can then use your e-mail list to send a reminder out to parents the month before their child's birthday and let them know of any specials you have running.
Set Up a Mini-Carnival!
Call the management companies of local shopping centers and offer to set up a mini-carnival to attract attention for their next sale event- Back-to-School, Easter, Sidewalk Sale, etc. You can set up your equipment and if you don't already carry them, you can rent a sno-cone machine, cotton candy machine and bubble machine. (This is a good way to decide whether you would like to carry this type of equipment!)
In many instances, the merchants are already advertising the sales event. You may want to offer a local high school band or sport team a percentage of the profits to help you man the event.
This is definitely a
press release-worthy happening, so send out your press release 2 weeks in advance.
Fund Raisers
Car Washes
Suggest to local fundraising groups that their car wash would bring in much more if they have a moonwalk on site as well!
Families often won't stop for fund-raising car washes simply because they can't keep the kids entertained while waiting on their car. Add a moonwalk (with a pay-per-ride fee) and the kids will be howing for them to stop.
More people stop, more money-earning opportunities. The perfect fundraiser! How you structure the payment is up to you. You can charge regular rental rates or you can split a percentage of the take-in from the event.
Don't forget to send out your own
press release!
Carnivals
This is popular with many moonwalk companies. The fundraising group sells wristbands that have 2 pull-off tickets on them for $5 to $10 each. The wristband gives the access to the inflatable equipment for playing and each ticket gets them one fun food, ie, popcorn, snocone, cotton candy, hot dog, or soft drink. You can also purchase pre-packaged ice cream novelties as an option.
Typically, the group must sell 50 in order to hold the event. Then their portion of the proceeds goes up incrementally with the number of wristbands they sell.
Example:
50- 10%
51-100- 15%
101-150- 20%
151-200- 25%
200+- 30%
This is an excellent idea as the payment is assured before you go to set up and a percentage of the wristbands sold will not be presented for redemption. It helps the fundraising group know how many volunteers are needed as well.
