CFS Columbus

I have been coaching baseball for 8 years at the high school level and the one aspect of the job I dread the most is fundraising. Throughout the years we have tried it all from raffles to discount cards. Then I heard about CFS and the mattress sale from a colleague and thought, “why not, I’ll give it a shot.” What I found was a fundraiser we will run yearly with great results. I know selling mattresses sounds a bit bizarre (and it is) but it works! Our team has raised over $10,000 in two years and I cannot stress enough the simplicity of the events.

Sean Ring, Head Basketball Coach, Westerville North High School

Our school is located in a rural community in southeastern Ohio just outside of Athens. Our band program consists of between 100 to 120 students total depending of the year. The district is very supportive of the program and provides us with funding for music, instruments, and repairs of school-owned instruments. We are very fortunate in this regard. However, we do have to fund any other expenses outside of these, so it is necessary for us to do a few fundraisers per year. When I first heard about the idea of a mattress sale, I thought it was strange quite frankly. It was just so different from any of the other fundraisers we’ve done. However, after talking to Kevin Krinsky, our representative from CFS, I felt that it was going to be an exciting fundraiser for our program. It was much less work for us than we normally had to do for a fundraiser. We worked hard to get as many people through the door as possible, but that was it! The referral system and incentives that are set up for the students really excited them and made them want to get people to come to the sale. On the day of the sale, there was not very much for us to do. I had several students come to play instruments, hold up signs, and be around the sale. I thought this was great because the people that were coming to the sale wanted to see the students that they were supporting. Other than these few tasks, I did not have to do very much that day. Kevin and his team took care of everything. By the end of the day, we had taken in $6,800 for the band program! It was amazing. I couldn’t believe we could make that much money for our program in one day with such little work for myself and the booster organization. Because we exceeded our goal by so much, we are now looking into buying an equipment trailer, something we thought we were going to have to wait a few years before we would have enough money in order to purchase it. I am definitely going to do this fundraiser again next year and would highly recommend it to anyone else looking to earn money for their organization.

Lindsay VanWinkle, Band Director, Alexander High School