Birthday Book Club is one of the biggest fundraisers that our Library does each year! This year we had over 300 students participate. We charge $25 and after buying books and supplies for each student, make around $15 per student. Students receive a book, cupcake, bookmark, and little treats (this year we did a happy birthday bracelet and a cupcake eraser). The goal of our Birthday Book Club is to put a book in the home of our students while also improving our library with a project sponsored by the club. This year the funds raised will go towards a Little Free Library for our school. I plan to in some way recognize the 2021-22 Birthday Book Club with a sign or plaque.
Here’s how I plan and prepare.
Step One: First, I split the year into five different delivery dates as shown in the graphic below!
Step Two: Create and send out your your flyers and forms to gather information. I create my forms in Canva (you can get a free pro account using your school email!). Information needed: student name, birthday, homeroom, grade level, allergies, and interests/hobbies. (I include a place for parents to include a replacement treat if students are allergic or unable to eat a cupcake. I usually get just a few!) I also ask for the $25 payment.
I include a cut-off date for joining. Students must turn in forms and payment at the beginning of the year regardless of which birthday delivery they fall under. This makes it easy for me to order in bulk and know how many students to purchase for and I only have to worry about collecting and receipting money one time each year.
Step Three: Input student names and information into an Excel spreadsheet (include a column for each piece of information collected on your form) and then organize by birthday month. I then color code each delivery according to the delivery dates sent out.
Step Four: Order supplies! I would definitely try and order enough supplies for the entire year in one big order.
–Bags
–Stickers (for the tops of the cupcake container)
–Individual cupcake containers
–Ribbon (we chose to do our school colors)
-Extra treat (cupcake eraser, happy birthday bracelet)
Step Five: Order books. I try to spend around $5 or less on the book. You could simply order several of the same book for each grade level. I do this some, but also try to order specific books based on student interests if they included that on their sign up form. I add the book title to my excel spreadsheet next to student names, so that I remember which book I ordered for each student. This is time consuming, but worth it in my opinion.
My favorite place to order books from for this specific fundraiser is Scholastic. You receive points for each purchase and several of my orders end up being free. You have been warned though…make sure you order well enough in advance! At the moment their shipments are extremely late and take over a month to receive.
Step Six: The week of your delivery, begin setting up your bags. I create tags for each bag that include the students name, homeroom teacher, and grade level and staple to each bag. Next, I tie and curl ribbon to each. Load each bag with the book and extras.
Cupcakes: Always remember to communicate with your book keeper for a Purchase Order request ahead of time. I make a count of hour many cupcakes to order and usually add 5 cupcakes just to be safe. 75 cupcakes will usually run less than &50. Place the order a few days ahead of time to be picked up on your delivery day. Our book keeper gives me a school card to purchase cupcakes from Publix. I then load them into a single cupcake holder with a happy birhday sticker on top!
Step Seven: Delivery! The first delivery this year, I took each bag to the individual classroom to deliver personally, but have since made an “all call” via email with a list of students (copied and pasted from my spreadsheet), so that teachers can send students at their convenience. Students come down to the library and grab their bag from me. It’s much simpler this way!
(With the book + cupcake and other materials you are at around $15 profit to spend on your library project sponsored by the club)