Ask a school in your area to help. Seek permission to set up tables in the gym every day for a week over the lunch hour and sell treats to children and their parents. If the school agrees, donate a few new books to the library, a piece of sports equipment or money to help with a school trip. Schools are always looking for money and this is an easy way for them to make a little. Both the school and your group will benefit from this type of agreement. Then, send a member to a local book store or sporting goods store to ask for donations that your group can give to the school. Ask a church to allow you to run a bake sale in their gym or basement on Friday night and Saturday. Set up nicely decorated tables. If your sale is near Christmas, Easter or some other holiday, decorate for the occasion. Use tablecloths in pastel or solid colors. Patterned tablecloths draw attention away from your product, which are the baked goods. If you wish, you can hang beautiful decorations from the ceiling or place them on walls. Be sure you have permission from the buildings caretaker to do this. Out of respect, take the decorations down when the sale is over and clean up after your organization. This will encourage the church to allow you to use their services again in the future.
Advertising
Make up a flyer telling all about your fundraiser and what charity is going to benefit from it. Ask someone you know that has a copy machine to make a donation of a few hundred copies. Distribute these in your neighborhood, ask stores to tape them on their doors, hand them out at food stores and have the school principal distribute them to all the children in the local school, so they can take them home for their parents to read.
Setting up the Sale
Arrange the tables in categories. Pies, cakes, cookies, squares and breads should all be placed on separate tables if you have the quantity to do so. This allows customers to easily find what they are looking for. Sales will be much higher if people can find what they are looking for at a glance.