Gloomy overhead, weary students, and a lack of motivation, these are all characteristics of the typical early school morning; however, just as all hope seemed to be lost, is it a soft-drink? Is it a tea? No, it’s coffee! Smell that? That’s the brewing of a good idea — the brewing of coffee in the early morning.
The fundraiser idea of the month is nothing short of a miracle for both the FBLA chapter for funding, and the students at your local high school. The fundraiser idea of the month involves local FBLA chapters establishing a school wide accessible coffee stand in which FBLA members would setup, brew, and sell coffee to the students at their school. The idea is very straightforward, however, there are numerous outlets of funding to explore in order to generate the most satisfaction for prospective coffee loving students and to maximize funds for the FBLA chapter. The process of going about making this dream a dream-come-true is outlined below into two segments: the superficial — phase I — setup, and then capitalizing on the underlying potentials — phase II — in order to maximize efficiency of the coffee stand.
The initially thoughts that need to go into setting up the coffee stand involve: how much startup capital does our capital need? How much should we initially invest into the idea before we see a turn-around? Where do we setup a base of operations to store, brew, and sell the coffee? Are we going to carry a single coffee based product or offer a selection; do we only sell what’s easiest to make in the mornings? Some of the questions prompted after establishing the stand include: how much should we charge for each product? How does our local chapter decide who should be in charge of storing the coffee beans/products, ordering more materials or supplies as needed, brew the coffee product itself, and who is going to sell the product? What I propose, in addition to the coffee stand, is to maintain a signup record for who will be volunteering to operate the stand at certain times or during certain days. A way to encourage members to become active in this aspect is to advertise these responsibilities as an easy outlet for volunteer hours, the potential to gain valuable experience working a cash register, and learning how a small scale “business” operates on a day-to-day basis in order to satisfy consumers and, all while, make a profit. What I encourage you to do, is to only open the coffee stand on designated days (definitely Mondays at the very least) in order to generate a sense of exclusiveness to the product being available to the students and the act of this also lessens the stress of figuring out who will be working the stand every day. Some feedback that I have received in the past with this idea has centered around the location of the coffee stand in which should be centrally located and/or easily accessed; for instance, for stand should be located outside the cafeteria, directly in the FBLA chapter’s business classroom, in front of the school’s main entrance — or right when you walk in, or any other place easily accessible with prior permission to “set up shop.”
The sheer possibilities with this ongoing fundraiser idea are truly limitless. Soon you can be the reason why students are energetic and ready to learn on Mondays all while being the cause of bringing in funds for your local chapter!
