Sharp Ideas for End of School Year Activities

Simplify prom ticket sales with an online process like this one. It features two ticket options: single and couple. We think requiring advance ticket sales is smart for planning purposes, and you can set an automatic end date for your collection to prevent late orders. However, you can easily sell tickets at the door if you wish! Either way, we also highly recommend grabbing a QR code for this one — leave it on lunch tables and post it on flyers around the school so those high schoolers can easily snap, pay, and be done.

Another smart prom collection we loved: selling prom flowers! (And their use of categories and item variations — 🤩.) A high school PTO partnered with a local florist to offer two types each of boutonnieres and corsages, in a variety of colors, for convenient pickup at the school. No extra errand required!

For more prom ideas, like after-prom parties and an elementary parents-only prom (what a fun spring fundraiser!), click here.

We share this one a lot because it’s just that good: An elementary school PTO set up a collection for the entire staff, letting parents choose to whom and how much they wanted to give. This takes a load off room parents who are balancing other end of school year activities, and it gives teachers precisely what they want. We also love how this collection uses a custom form to collect personal messages. 

If you are looking to collect for just one classroom, we love this end of year class gift example. In addition to the classroom teacher, the room parent listed special area teachers and classroom aides, and divided the total money received among them all.

Also: Don’t miss our best tips for teacher gifts and easy last-minute ideas!

We could not wait to share this field day “concessions stand” collection with you! How great are their graphics? This PTO opted to preorder field day food, but if you want to offer concessions on site, our point-of-sale functionality is made for that. (And you can have a spiritwear clearance sale while you’re at it. 😉)

Field day isn’t field day without T-shirts! We’re big fans of this elementary school PTA’s approach. They took orders for white T-shirts with the field day logo — and each grade level will tie-dye them in their assigned color. We like that two-activities-for-one deal!

Opting for a fun run instead? (And an average earning of $5,330? Yes, you read that right.) This blog post is for you.

Spring musicals have quite a showing around here — but we especially liked this one for its one-stop shop. All in one collection, this high school sold tickets for three different nights, solicited donations, and offered $2.00 custom messages for performers. We love this because when someone comes to purchase tickets, they’ll see the other offerings for a potential “impulse buy”. Because each of these items required different information, this collection was also a perfect use case for item questions, which are like “mini forms” but connected only to the item that applies (whereas forms are seen by every visitor to the collection, regardless of what they purchase).   

We loved this school’s Fine Arts Night, which was kind of enrichment, kind of showcase, and 100% parent-student engagement. They offered four class options for parents and students to take together and used Cheddar Up exclusively for registration. (Quantity indicators and custom reports are ideal for this!) They also set an automated start and end date, which helps stick to the registration timeline. If users visited before registration opened, they saw a countdown timer. If they visited after the deadline, they saw a notice that the collection had ended.  

For more fine arts end of school year activities and spring showcase ideas here.

Graduation yard signs are a hot commodity on Cheddar Up! While they are a way to celebrate graduates, we love this collection because it offers options for the entire school, including fine arts and athletics. This was a fundraiser for after-prom activities.

High school seniors aren’t the only graduates — we see plenty of yard signs for kindergarten, elementary, and junior high grads too. Here’s an example for 8th grade graduation yard signs. We love the simplicity of using the sign itself for the collection banner image, and we think it’s so smart to use a drop-down form to choose pickup times!

Check out more graduation yard sign ideas here.

We love this graduation party ticket sale from a school in New York. Not only is the banner eye-catching, but the description provides such great detail about graduation and corresponding events. This parent association also created an adjacent graduation party fundraising collection, and we’re not sure which of the two is our favorite! We love the separate items to disclose exactly what costs are needed — a format that also allows parents to specify a preference for their contribution.

Now here’s an ingenious fundraising idea: Raffle off priority seating and reserved parking for graduation! Every dollar donated earned one raffle ticket, and we liked that donors could decide their amount — we’ve discovered that open donations raise about 45% more than fixed amounts. We think a fundraising progress bar would be fun here to show just how in-demand those items are!

We’ve got more graduation event ideas here.

This gorgeous collection is a poster child for our recurring payments feature. How smart and thoughtful to offer five different payment plan options for this senior class trip. It’s also a prime example of our Cheddar Up power combination: In one transaction, parents can pay, fill out a comprehensive custom registration form, and sign a permission slip; and our reporting center will automatically file those together.

This is another senior class trip idea we liked. A few things to call out: bullets detailing exactly what the cost includes, the ability to enforce “first come, first serve” with set quantities and “sold out” notices, and an automatic collection end time to enforce the payment deadline.

Looking for other senior class trip ideas — or maybe options for 5th and 8th graders? Check here.

Because time is money, especially this time of year, we’ve made these resources to help “brand” and promote your collections.