How can PENNIES raise BIG BUCKS?

During the course of April and May, Sentinel Secondary’s ADS club organized what is described as the most successful fundraising event of the year. $500 from 27 classes was raised in just three weeks to sustain the club, which promotes school events and other club activities for free. How did we do it?

A penny war.

A penny war is a friendly competition between classes in which students put pennies in a container found in their designated classroom. Each penny counts for a point. And there is a twist. Students can sabotage each other by putting silver coins (nickels, dimes or even tooneys) in other classrooms’ container. These silver coins serve as deduction points based on their face value. That’s ingenious, because the more silver coins there are, the more money you make! As an incentive, the class with the most positive points gets free pizzas.

However, the simple idea belies the arduous effort the members exerted to make this event happen. First of all, 30 1L bottles that would be used as containers have to be collected from recycle stations in shopping malls. They also have to be cleaned thoroughly and stripped of their labels. This onerous task landed on the two treasurers’ shoulders, Congyun and Sam. In addition, long slots are cut out after they found out that silver coins are too big to fit through the neck of the bottles. Finally, these well-made “artifacts” are distributed to all the classrooms. The preparatory phase ends here. With the help of daily bombardment of announcements and many teachers’ fervent participation, Project “Penny War” launched successfully. The rest depended solely on the level of interest of fellow students.

Some minor issues did occur, but overall the event ended peacefully, and we wrapped up the exciting event. Points were tallied up and coins were rolled, ready for cash-in. Our harvest surpassed our expectations by a considerable margin. However, this event presents more than the pecuniary promises we looked forward to: through the course of the war, tension tightened up between classes and, most notably, among teachers. Tactics came into play when many teachers devised clever methods of protecting their containers from influx of silver coins, including hiding the container, extracting the silver coins and converting them to pennies, and even locking them up in safes. Some teachers also revealed personalities — most notably altruism and cooperation — that we otherwise might not have perceived

The penny war proved to be successful in various aspects, such as elevating school spirit, distracting students from the stress of everyday studies, and, most importantly, raising lots of cash. So, why don’t you get started?