For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a series on how to plan an evening fundraiser and events to include in that. Today’s idea is one that I’ve seen used to great effect at an evening fundraiser – a paper airplane competition.

This isn’t a fundraiser that would be likely to raise much money as a standalone event, but by making it part of the evening extravaganza you’ll have far more people taking part, plus it helps make the evening more fun due to the competitive element.

What You Need

The paper airplane competition doesn’t require much – just:

• Room large enough for a group of people to throw paper airplanes
• Ream of paper
• Possibly a prize.

Tips: To save some money, see if anybody would be willing to donate the paper for the airplane competition. Also see if anyone would be willing to donate a prize – perhaps a local business would be able to supply a small trophy to give to the winner.

Fundraising

The way that the paper airplane competition works as a fundraiser is by selling sheets of paper in order for people to enter the competition. You should set the price of each sheet as high as you can, without putting people off by setting the price too high.

The optimum price will depend on the income of the people attending your evening fundraiser. For some fundraisers, $1 per sheet might be an appropriate amount, whereas at other fundraisers you may be able to charge $5, $10 or even more per sheet.

Tip: Make sure everyone writes their name on their sheet(s) of paper, so that it’s easy to identify who won.

Maximize

To raise even more money, offer an enhanced option whereby competition entrants can pay more for a sheet that has a paper airplane template on it. For example, you could charge $5 for a plain sheet of paper or $10 for a sheet with a pre-printed template on it. There are a number of sites where you can download paper airplane templates for free – here’s one such site.

Another way to maximize how much you raise is by allowing people to enter more than one paper airplane into the competition.

The Throw

Once everyone has had a chance to craft their plane(s), it’s time for the paper airplane competition itself. There are a few ways you can organize the throwing of the planes:

• All together – Get everyone to stand behind a line at one end of the room and on the count of three, have them all throw their airplanes at the same time. This can be a fun culmination of the competition, but a couple of downsides of this option are that planes might hit each other and participants will probably be so focused on their own plane, they won’t get to enjoy watching other people’s designs flying
• One-by-one – With this option, people take it in turns to throw their paper airplane(s). One of the good things about this is that everyone gets to see each others planes flying, but this option might take a long time if you have a large number of participants
• Heats – Organize participants of the paper airplane competition into groups of four or so. Have the first group throw their planes at the same time, with the winner of each heat making it through to the next round. Keep running these heats until you have a lineup for a grand finale, where all the previous winner throw at the same time for one ultimate champion

To Win

The winner of the paper airplane competition will – needless to say – be the person whose plane flies the furthest. Bear in mind though that there are a couple of ways that this could be judged:

• Furthest distance travelled before touching the ground
• Furthest distance travelled in total

The difference between the two is that the latter option includes the distance travelled sliding along the ground. This could result in a different winner, so be sure to communicate before the competition starts which of these options will be used to judge the winner – this will prevent any arguments or bad feeling.

Prize

As mentioned in the “What you need” section, it would be nice if you can give a prize to the winner of the competition. As you’re fundraising, you don’t want to spend a lot of (if any) money on this, but it’s a nice gesture to thank them for their support.

If you can’t offer anything else, provide a winner’s certificate. You could also provide a certificate to the person with the plane adjudged to have the best design.

If you’ve found this idea helpful, you might like our other ideas for youth group fundraisers.

Question: What tips do you have for running a successful paper airplane competition fundraiser? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
2. Following us on Twitter
3. Liking us on Facebook
4. Signing up to our RSS feed