Fundraising Activities

Invite employees to buy a ticket for a chance to win money. Once raffle tickets are sold, select a winner. 50% of the ticket sales goes to the winner and 50% goes to United Way.

Employees volunteer to cook dinner and employees bid on the delicious meals. Coordinate a drop off at winner's home address or at the office.

Employees post their baby photos and contestants pay to match employees to their pictures. The employee with the highest number of correct matches wins a prize

Co-workers buy employee-donated baked goods with proceeds benefiting United Way.

Put a prize note in each balloon. Be sure to have one big prize. Place balloons in a contained area and have participants pay to pop balloons for prizes.

Charge an entry fee for a single elimination bean bag tournament. Winner receives bragging rights for a year or different prize.

Create Bingo cards and sell to employees. Every day, email a bingo number to all participants. The first one to reply “BINGO” wins a prize, and the game continues until all prizes are distributed. To customize, create Bingo card with phrases said during meetings or in emails, common situations that happen while working from home, etc.

Team up and bring in your favorite classic board games for a bracket style tournament!

Have a wide variety of sundae toppings available for sale for employees to build their own sundaes.

Individuals are tasked with creating a sculpture made out of only butter. The best sculpture wins!

Employees submit their own photos (based on your campaign theme) to create a custom calendar that you can sell to raise funds for United Way. 

Employees volunteer to wash cars for a fee. All proceeds go to United Way.

Bring the classic childhood favorite’s in-Trix, Cocoa Pebbles, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and host a morning cereal bar! Charge per bowl or offer a sample flight option to try them all!

Employees who arrive late for meetings, or produce any other tardiness, pay a fee to be donated to United Way.

Pick any topic and employees have to put them in chronological order correctly. You can do a timeline of events from history or something fun like song releases or photos from your CEO's life.

Compile recipes from employees to create a custom cook book. Sell it to employees with proceeds benefitting United Way.

Employees decorate cookies employees vote on the winners. Employee can then purchase some of the winning cookies as a donation.

Dress up and vote on the best costume.

Employees raise money for United Way by sponsoring contenders on a per-donut-eaten basis. The winner is determined by either eating the most donuts in a time frame or the first to finish a set number of donuts.

(get boss’ permission first…. Of course) - charge to enter- post submissions and the winning drawing wins a prize!

Hide Easter Eggs around the office. Once employees find an egg they can purchase the egg to see if there's a prize inside. Fill the eggs with small prizes like candy and have one big prize hidden inside one egg!

With your boss’ permission, allow workers to contribute to the jar with the costume they’d like their boss to dress as for Halloween. The jar with the most change/money is what they will dress as! (Example- 1 jar labelled “Ghost”, 1 jar labelled “Witch”, etc.…)

Two teams compete against each other guessing common answers. Team can be comprised of departments.

Offer a lunchtime yoga or workout class that coworkers can contribute to join.

Place a "flock" of pink flamingos in a coworker's yard, along with a sign that they have been flocked for United Way. They will have to pay a fee to get the flamingos removed, that amount is a donation, and then get to decide who gets flocked next.

Have a local food truck come to the office for lunch with lunch as a donation to United Way.

Fill a clear jar with candy and have employees pay for a chance to guess the number of pieces in the jar. The most accurate guess wins the candy

On a hot day, visit employee cubicles and offices selling popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and other cold snacks. Donate proceeds to United Way.

Charge employees a fee to wear jeans to work. Employees can several days in bulk for a discounted price.

Create a custom Jeopardy board (or play online using a site like JeopardyLabs.com). Teams pay to play and prizes are awarded to winners.

Teams donate a small sum to participate. Spice up the game by adding obstacles that can be “purchased” by teams or individuals. Example: the opposing team has to kick with their nondominant foot.

Embrace your inner child and host a lego building competition around your United Way theme.

Employees submit a picture of what Living United means to them.

Welcome a United Way speaker to talk about an issue facing our community and how United Way is working to address it.

A massage therapist, preferably one that is willing to donate time, visits the workplace and employees pay for time slots to be massaged. Proceeds go to United Way.

Put together several games from the show "Minute to Win It" and have team members compete. Encourage leadership play and invite everyone to watch.

Sell large plates of nacho and/or soft pretzels with cheese and jalapeno peppers. Donate proceeds to United Way.

Get a behind-the-scenes tour at one of the 110 nonprofits United Way supports.

Make cut-outs of pink flamingos (or another animal!) and charge co-workers to flock other people's offices or cubes. Take the cut-outs or plastic flamingos and decorate the flockees area.

Have a tricycle or office chair race. Use items around your work location for golfing, shooting baskets, etc. Have spelling contests, typing contests, competitions to develop the most persuasive or most complimentary memo, etc. Devise rules for each race in advance and seek participants, combine the event with a cookout as an incentive and designing award medals to display in the cubicles of winners.

Employees pay to participate in a virtual class hosted by one of your colleagues, like painting, cooking, yoga, etc. You could also find someone to donate their time so all proceeds go to United Way.

Take orders from your co-workers for take out from their favorite restaurant. Pick up the food and charge a delivery fee benefiting United Way.

Pledges of a certain amount are entered into a drawing for a premium parking space for a particular time frame.

Divide the office by department or teams and have a money jar assigned to each. Members of each department deposit pennies, nickels, and dimes into their own jar and place quarters or “green” into the jars of the other departments. Pennies count as positive while quarters and “green” are negative. The department with the highest number (or often the case, the least negative number) wins a lunch provided by the company.

Employees upload a picture of their pet and employees vote on the cutest pet photo, silliest pet photo, etc.

Employees upload a picture of their pet and employees pay to match employees up with the pet photo

For a fee, employees nominate one another to receive a pie in the face. The top four with the most votes receive a pie in their face.

Vote on which employees will ride a pony stick around your parking lot in a competitive race!

Post a sign-up sheet for employees to bring entrees, salads, and desserts to ensure a variety of good food.

Teams will be assigned a random topic and will be given 5 minutes to present a PowerPoint presentation on the topic. Pick a random topic, preferably something obscure, Invite coworkers to watch and vote on which presentation was the best.

Allow employees to pay to prank a co-worker. This could be gift wrapping or post-it-ing their office or cube, decorating it with yard gnomes, or whatever else you can think of! Co-workers can pay extra for prank protection.

Carve pumpkins and submit for the best design to win.

Participants pay to join the group and swap puzzles with other puzzle lovers! Same idea could work for books or other at-home hobbies.

Have employees donate their talents for an auction — handcrafted jewelry, scrapbook services or a musical performance. You can also have teams create raffle baskets for employees to bid on. For online auctions, you can use the free site 23Auctions.

Buy necessary ingredients. Floats made and served by executives can be a fun treat!

Write numbers on the bottom of rubber ducks and have prizes corresponding to those numbers. Charge participants for each time they pick up a floating duck from a large tub of water.

Organize a run or walk and encourage teams fundraise for the event. Proceeds go to United Way.

Create a scavenger hunt around the office or for employees to complete at home. The first time to find all items wins!

Put together kits for employees to purchase and keep at their desk. Kits could be "germ buster kits" with tissue, hand sanitizer, etc. or "super snack kits" with candy and snacks.

Employees sign up to bring their favorite soup or bread. Set up at lunch time and charge participants fees for a bottomless bowl to try one or all! (Bring your own reusable bowl.)

Hold a spelling bee with an entry fee. Have galley observers place bets on their favorite participants.

Theme each day of campaign where employees dress up. Example week could be Favorite Shirt Day, Lumberjack Plaid Day, Hat Day, Biker Day and Fancy Friday.

Charge employees a fee to wear their favorite sports team’s jersey or t-shirt.

Hold a pay-per-plate cookout during lunch with tailgate items, include games like bags and volleyball for fun.

Employees pay a fee to eat a buffet of food from around the world that their co-workers bring from home, or that is donated by a local restaurant.

Teams race in relay format around the office parking lot on small bikes. Employees bet on which team they think will win. All bets go to United Way.

Employees pay to participate in a survey about United Way, your company and anything related to your campaign theme!

Plan a volunteer activity like kit packing, notes of encouragement or a supply drive during your campaign to benefit one of the nonprofits United Way funds! 

Sell individual bags of corn chips with divided plastic or foam containers filled with taco meat, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, lettuce, packets of hot sauce, etc. Price accordingly.

Allow employees to bring funny items to be displayed on a co-workers desk for the duration of the campaign. They can pay to move the items to another worker’s desk, otherwise the items have to stay up all campaign.

Organize a series of one-on-one Wii sport challenges among your co-workers.