Eco-friendly Fundraising List
Products, E-Waste Drives, Foodie Fun and More Green Fundraisers
Does it make you cringe to see your school, club, church or scouting group selling unsustainable products to raise money? Many of us would prefer to fundraise when what is being sold is clean, green and environmentally sustainable.
But sometimes it’s tough to buck the tried-and-true conventional fundraising traditions schools, clubs and churches have relied on for years. It’s easy to complain about the expensive and wasteful wrapping paper, preservative-loaded cookie dough, toxic candles and other low-quality-products commonly included in fundraising drives.
It’s hard to know what else to recommend your group could be selling or doing to raise the necessary funds, right? So to make your life easier and greener, we’ve compiled a list of eco-friendly fundraisers for schools and we invite you to share these with your community. When developing an eco-friendly fundraising calendar, it’s important to vary your activities. Mixing up product sales with community donation drives and other events helps increase participation and decrease fundraising fatigue.
Here is our recommended list of green fundraising programs, including selling our zero-waste ECOlunchboxes as well as various other eco-friendly products, events and activities we think you’ll love.
Join us in our effort to protect the planet by choosing a program where you can do your part while at the same time raise money for your group!
Here’s a list of eco-friendly fundraising options from ECOlunchbox, including selling products, like our ECOlunchboxes, for a fundraising commission, organizing e-waste collections for money, appealing to your community’s appetite for conscious foods, and doing used book and clothing sales events.
When you read this list, you’ll see that helping your organization go green and earn green at the same time isn’t so hard after all!
Pair Eco-Friendly Education With Commissioned Product Sales
Organize An E-Waste Recycling Drive & Earn $$
Chocolates, Mushrooms, Grocery and More Foodie Fundraisers
Turn Used Books and Clothing Into Cash
Pair Eco-Friendly Education With Commissioned Product Sales
ECOlunchbox Plastic-Free Bentos
Does your school have a program to encourage waste-free lunches? ECOlunchboxes offers a great plastic-free and waste-free line of stainless bento boxes and artisan bags for all ages. Help your community learn about how to reduce their waste while raising funds. We have two easy fundraiser options to help you earn up to 15% of sales for your school. Additionally, if packing waste-free lunches is something your school is educating about, we can support teachers and parents with educational materials.
Tru Earth Laundry Detergent
Earn 20% of all sales of Tru Earth’s innovative and plastic-free laundry sheets via online sales with free shipping. This mission-based company’s laundry detergent is a light-weight, waterless alternative designed to serve eco-friendly households interested in reducing their carbon footprint. Educate your community about the environmental impact associated with shipping heavy liquid bottles of detergent and transition them to this greener alternative.
Tru Earth will create a unique fundraising link for organizers to share with their community via social media, email newsletters or a Website. Every time your supporters click through your fundraising link and place an order, your organization earns 20% from every sale.
EcoBags Organic Cotton Reusable Lunch and Grocery Bags
Ecobags can print your school's logo on a resusable lunchbag or shopping tote. Or you can sell blank products and your group can plan a fundraising activity and invite participants to decorate the organic canvas bags with colorful fabric markers. To learn more about the program, email info@ecobags.com and review the company's Website.
Chico Bag Reusable Bags and Bamboo Utensils
Interested in the plastic-free movement? Now that California has banned the single-use plastic bag, interest and demand for reusable shopping bags is surging. Chico Bags, offers up to 40% on sales of its extensive line of products. To learn more click here.
Plymouth Greeting Cards • Online
If your group likes the idea of selling greeting cards, consider offering the beautiful cards made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper and printed with soy inks. Groups can earn up to 40% of product sales in Plymouth Cards fundraisers.
Organize An E-Waste Recycling Drive & Earn $$
Your group can provide a valuable recycling service for your community while earning needed cash with an e-waste recycling fundraiser. Your group collects unwanted cell phones and chargers, ink cartridges, MP3 players, digital cameras, and PDAs to send to the company for cash. Some websites that you can work with are Cartridges For Kids, Office Depot, RecyclingFundraiser.com, Planet Green Recycle, or Funding Factory.
Recycling electronic devices saves energy, because it means that fewer raw materials need to be extracted from nature to create new devices. Providing consumers an easy option to recycle old phones, tablets and other devices also keeps e-waste out of landfills where they can leach toxins into the environment.
Chocolates, Mushrooms, Grocery and More Foodie Fundraisers
Divine Chocolate sells Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate from Ghana. Schools and other organizations can buy 1.5-oz. dark, milk, and crispy rice Divine Chocolate bars at wholesale prices, then resell them at retail and keep the profits.
Back to the Roots Mushroom Kits
Mushrooms are good food - and good fun for families. Back to the Roots provides grow-your-own-mushroom kits for school fundraising. The easy-to-grow mushroom spore are embedded in 100% recycled coffee grounds and can yield a crop in as little as 10 days. Schools earn 15% to 40% from sales of the kits depending on whether the fund raiser is 100% online or involved bulk purchases with direct delivery to the school. Anyone who posts a picture of their fully grown mushroom kit on the Back to the Roots Facebook page can earn a donation of a kit and sustainability curriculum for an elementary school classroom of their choice.
Grounds for Change Organic Coffee • Seattle, Washington
Through Grounds for Change, your group can hand-sell 12-oz. bags of organic, shade-grown, Fair Trade coffee, using the company’s order forms and information cards, or you can purchase it in bulk at a discount and resell it, pocketing a percentage of the profits.
Chipotle Mexican Grille
When you partner with your local Chipotle restaurant serving natural foods in low-waste style, you can raise 33% of the proceeds in special events. Chipotle is committed to increasing pounds of organic, local, and/or regeneratively grown and raised food used in its restaurants and diverts more than 50% of its waste through recycling, composting and waste-to-energy programs.
Growums Garden Kits
Tapping into the food and farm movement sweeping the USA, these garden kits are a great way to teach children how to easily grow and care for a garden of their very own. A full 50% of the proceeds earned through a Growums fundraiser goes directly to the school, while a portion of revenues is also donated to feeding needy children. Growums offers six different garden themes (Pizza, Taco, Herb, Stir-Fry, Salad and Ratatouille) for $10 each. Click here for more information and scroll down for email contact to set up a program.
Whole Foods Markets Gift Certificates
Whole Foods Fundraising Program. What better way to raise funds than by asking parents to purchase gift cards for something they already need -- groceries! Whole Foods Market offers non-profit and school organizations the opportunity to purchase gift cards at a discount. Sell the cards at face value and keep 3% as profit. Learn more about how to participate here.
Good Eggs Online Gourmet Grocery
Good Eggs is an online grocery store that delivers absurdly fresh groceries and meal kits across the Bay Area. Good Eggs partners with local school for fundraising each spring and fall. When parents shop on Good Eggs during the fundraiser, 5% goes back to their school. If you're interested in getting your school involved please fill out the form here. You don't have to be on the PTA or work for the school to sign up -- as long as you can connect us to the right person we can work out the details!
Turn Used Books and Clothing Into Cash
Ask your community members to clean out their bookshelves and closets and donate their used books and clothing. We recommend you start by picking one of these items and reaching out to your community as well as friends and family. Offering to pick up donations from elders and others with large quantities can also be a good strategy.
Then, organize a fair to sell the second-hand items keeping these pointers in mind:
- Get lots of used donations of lightly used items. Very worn items won’t sell as well.
- Planning the event date well in advance so you can publicize widely.
- Set simple pricing structure in advance and label items or create charts for the check-out volunteers so charging customers is easy and stressless.
- Recruiting plenty of volunteers for the day of the event so that if a few cancel last minute, you’re still fully staffed!
Have other great sustainable fundraising ideas? Please email us at social@ecolunchboxes.com
