Do you have the restaurant Max and Erma's where you live.  They have a fundraising program where you pass out these tickets to everyone you know and pick a day and anyone that presents their ticket on that day, 20% of the bill goes to the organization.

If you don't have Max and Erma's, well then, this post was for naught

-al

One type of fundraiser that our SPS chapter likes to do at U.W. Platteville is to collect old Physics I and Physics II exams from our professors in the department.  We then go through the exams and solve the problems thus creating a solutions manual for that exam.  We then sell these booklets at the beginning of the semester to incoming freshman and sophomores.  We usually do quite well, but the trick is getting our members in to work on the problems.  So we usually have a pizza party with this.  Hope that helps!

Our chapter manages to make ridiculous amounts of money for relatively little effort. All you need is a room in a well trafficked building (I'd recommend the physics building, this being SPS). Back in 1986, we started selling coffee and donuts in the physics building student commons, and eventually we got our own lounge out of it. Now, we sell coke products, candy, ice cream etc...and make about $24,000 a year. A good place to start is with coke products, once you acquire a lounge. This is because the Coca-Cola Corporation (or Pepsi I'm sure) will furnish the fridge and maintain it as well, making the barrier to entry fairly low. Then, all you need to do is undercut the vending machines and stores on campus and get the word out. Be wary, though, theres a lot of administrative overhead for this on your part too. You need to have someone availale at all times to run your cash box, manage your lounge, someone needs to be there at all times, a bank account, a safe to store money, a place to store your excess inventory, a well trafficked location (which can be difficult to wrest from beauracrats or office workers).

Depending on the culture and personality of your school, it might also take a lot of convincing your physics department that the benefits to the student body in terms of social life and happiness and the significant increase in income you'll experience are worth it to the department.

And, of course, your milage may vary.

I'm wondering the same thing, too, right now.  We wanted to sell apples and cider, maybe mugs with our logo on them, but it seems like the administrative hurdles to sell anything are going to stop us.  I don't want the university to find some way we didn't follow procedure and penalize us...but we desperately need money.  Do you have any recommendations for easy fundraisers (say, during a conference) and how to get people to provide start-up money?

I'm getting frustrated because I think I'm going to end up spending my own money on a fundraiser that we might not be allowed to do....sorry for the rant, but any feedback would be appreciated.