Serve everyone's favorite iced drink or ice cream dessert and raise some cool cash for your nonprofit group.

Ice Delights

Is it hot outside? You can create a chill that is a

great crowd pleaser and a quick fund raiser.

Set up your own Ice Delights Stand.

Think about this for a moment. You've got a

nickel's worth of ice and flavoring and you are able

to sell it for $1.00 to $2.00 per serving and double-

serving. Wow! A few quick sales and you are in

the money.

First Step

Choose a committee to discuss the implementation of your program. Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 15:22.

You should have several people that like to cook or are good with preparing food. Once your committee is in place you will need to explore exactly what type or combination of Ice Delights that you will offer to your customers.

Second Step

Choose the types of Ice Delight products you will offer. You must test your choices out thoroughly.

Lean toward those that are the quickest to fix. Think about people lined up waiting to get your product and then getting frustrated because you don't have enough help or each item takes several minutes to make. They will not want to wait long and so they will leave and not come back. I really do not like to see money being waved in front of me and then simply vanish.

Here are a few types of Ice Delight products to consider:

Ice-Cream

Sweet Chill -- Start off with basic Vanilla and then add chunks of candy-bars ground up and blended into the mixture. Get some inexpensive styrofoam cups to place it in. You may get from coffee cup size all the way to quart size cups at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or your local paper supply company.

HomeMade Cream -- Don't forget to try your hand at making your own homemade ice cream flavors. You better have Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry on hand, but also create some exotic blends for your customers to try.

Smoothies and Custom Blended Ice-Cream

Smooth-eeze -- Get some great hi tech ice-cream makers and get to blending custom smoothie flavors that you've tested.

Luzianne brand products actually has a variety of pre-blend mixtures for Smoothies that might be ideal for you. You simply add milk, ice, the pre-mix and

mix it in a blender. There are several flavor recipes to choose from with my favorite being strawberry-banana.

Here are some smoothie recipes to consider: Banana Blueberry Smoothie , Mixed Berry Smoothie and more Smoothies: 50 Recipes For High-Energy

Root Beer Floats

Cold Floaters -- Of course there are other types of floats. You may obtain store bought Vanilla Ice-Cream of a good quality and then add a variety of Coke, Cherry-Coke, Root Beer, Orange Coke, and more.

These are easy to make and attract a lot of attention if served in a highly colorful cup. Serve in theme cups if you are fundraising on special days. For instance, get a red, white and blue cup if on Memorial May or Independence Day.

Snow Cone Heaven

S' No Cones -- Cut up your own ice for your snow cones and add flavoring, but don't use cones to hold it. Get small to medium sized styrofoam coffee cups to serve your iced delights in.

Come up with the most popular and colorful flavors. Rent a professional ice grader or shaver or get your own food processor with attachments that

will chop or shave ice. See Southern Snow as an example for equipment and flavoring packages.

Third Step

Your final step for your Ice Delights Fundraiser is to choose the very best location with high traffic to sell your treats. County fairs, civic events, trade shows, flea markets all allow you to have a booth.

Also, think of any retail outlet that will be having a Grand Opening. What great PR they will get by announcing that they are also providing support to your worthy organization.

Decorate your booth with bright colors and items that move or wave to attract attention. Get a regular box fan and put colorful streamers attached that will blow outward when you are running the fan. Also secure electricity, since you will need to keep your ice cool.

Depending on how consistent you want to be, you could operate your booth each weekend over a summer. Assign turns to run the stand and nobody will be overloaded too much with work.

Sell your delights for $1.50 for small cups up to $2.50 for medium sized cups. Sell just 100 large cups and 100 small cups and you will have raised an easy $400. This will be what you will probably raise on the low end. Most likely, with a little effort your take will be in the thousands. What a simple fundraiser.

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