Your dance studio has a lot of expenses, from staff salaries to the monthly upkeep and rental costs of your facility. While you likely receive a good chunk of your necessary funding through student tuition, class fees, and recital tickets, it’s likely that you could use another revenue stream to help cover day-to-day costs. This is where a strong fundraising strategy can help.
Fundraising is a great way to rally your dance community together to secure your business’s financial future. Not only will it help you raise more revenue, but fundraising can also help you reach new people in the community and attract new students.
However, it can be difficult to pinpoint the right fundraising idea that will excite your dance community and drive enough revenue to meet your fundraising goals. To help you plan the
perfect fundraiser for your business, we’ll cover the top dance studio fundraising ideas that studios of all shapes and sizes can pull off:
With a creative and well-designed fundraising event, your dance studio can effectively engage your audience and achieve the financial stability you need to continue serving your dance community. Let’s begin.
Dance-a-thon
Get your dancers up and moving for a great cause with a dance-a-thon fundraiser! A dance-a-thon invites your students to dance for hours at a time in exchange for donations from sponsors. For example, a student might receive a pledged donation from their neighbor promising to donate $10 for every hour the student is on the dance floor.
The pledges could also be tied to other types of milestones, such as the number of songs your students dance to or the number of dance challenges they participate in (such as playing a round of limbo). Get creative with your dance-a-thon to keep students’ spirits high and encourage them to dance for as long as they can.
Here are a few tried and true ways to make your dance-a-thon go off without a hitch:
- Create a solid playlist that all of your dancers will enjoy.
- Offer plenty of refreshments and snacks.
- Gamify your event with fun dance games and competitions, such as dance party musical chairs and dance offs.
- Select a theme and invite your dancers to dress up in costume. For example, you might encourage students to wear masks for a masquerade theme.
- Check in with your dance students often to ensure everyone’s safety is being prioritized.
Dance-a-thons are flexible events and can be tailored to your studio’s exact needs. Best of all, these events pair well with peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, giving you a prime opportunity to take your revenue generation to the next level. Invite your dancers to create their own peer-to-peer fundraising pages ahead of your event and ask for donations from friends and family members.
To motivate your students to raise as much money as possible, offer fun prizes like free merchandise or a brand new dance costume. If your students are younger, reach out to their parents with the help of your dance studio app and communicate instructions on how to create a peer-to-peer fundraising page on their child’s behalf.
Talent show
Put your dancers’ creativity to the test by challenging them to brainstorm routines for a talent show fundraiser! Talent shows are a classic performing arts fundraising event, and they’re a great way to bring your dance students and the community together.
To put together the perfect talent show fundraiser, follow these steps:
- Ask your students to team up and choreograph group routines that showcase their talent. To make things interesting, you could challenge them to incorporate at least three new skills they learned from class into their routine.
- Market your talent show widely to your dance parents and community. Double the Donation’s guide to marketing recommends taking a multichannel approach to reach as many people as possible. For instance, you might create digital flyers promoting your talent show and share them on social media, your email newsletter, and your website. You can also tap local businesses to help out by hanging up printed flyers or passing them out to customers. In exchange, you could shout these businesses out during your talent show, giving them more exposure.
- Sell tickets. To sell plenty of tickets and reach your revenue goals, you’ll need a smooth ticketing system. DanceStudio-Pro’s line-up of tips for dance studio owners recommends using dance studio management software with powerful ticketing features to ease your administrative burden. Specifically, look for software that enables your studio to configure custom prices for different sections or rows and organize ticket records.
To take your revenue generation up a notch, you could also sell food and drinks at a convenience stand or even exclusive talent show merchandise branded to the special occasion. At the end of your talent show, remember to thank all of the members of your community who showed up to make this fundraiser happen (as well as the dancers that lent their amazing talents)!
Community dance workshops
Leverage what your dance studio does best by offering a beginner-level workshop to anyone in the community! This lucrative fundraising event will encourage aspiring dancers to jumpstart their dance skills or simply give community members a fun opportunity to work out and have fun.
To launch your community workshop, consider asking current dance students to volunteer their time and lead the course. This is a great way to help your students hone their leadership skills and showcase their talent to the community.
You’ll need to also think through the following details to bring this workshop fundraiser to life:
- The style of dance and routine you’ll be teaching: Make sure it’s accessible to people of all abilities and feels doable to beginners.
- The number of community members you can permit: Consider how many participants can safely fit in your dance studio and set a cap when selling tickets.
- The duration of the workshop: You might offer a one-off workshop for an hour, or create a continuous series of workshops that walks community members through learning an entire routine. Think through what would be both appealing to your audience and manageable for your dance studio.
End your workshop by explaining different ways community members can further their dance education at your studio. You might source new students from this fundraising event and secure more enrollments, helping you to push your revenue goals forward.
Fundraising for your dance studio shouldn’t feel like a chore! With engaging fundraising ideas and the right tools to execute them, your dance studio can easily take your business to new heights. Don’t be afraid to get creative with these classic fundraising ideas and put your own spin on them to meet your audience’s interests.