What's a really great idea for a school-fair booth?

You might try one that sells items made by handicapped/elderly groups, with a share of the proceeds going to them.

What about a booth with a Pirates of The Caribbean theme? The fund-raiser could be to have a photo taken as Captain Jack or a mermaid using cut-outs like this. The booth could be decorated in a pirate ship theme, including a pirate flag on top, if allowed. The booth workers could dress up in different pirate attire. There could also be a raffle for free movie passes or for the latest DVD.

On with @Pied_Pfeffer ‘s idea, have one of those fishing games and put prizes on the hook from oriental.com. Charge $.50 or a dollar to fish. Keep the pirate theme though! They go together! You can even have pirate prizes! Oriental.com has fake rings, eye patches and bandanas cheap.

And playing off of @Judi‘s ideas (great site, by the way!), what about creating a treasure hunt? For X amount of money, they can buy a treasure map, and for each booth they visit, they get a sticker or stamp. Once they have collected one from each booth, they can pick a prize from the treasure chest.

It would take the agreement of the other booth owners to participate or allow one of your team’s pirates to be there. The benefit to them would be to guarantee that people would stop by.

We had a fundraiser recently and one of the competitions was a Chocolate quiz. Cryptic clues with the answers as names of chocolate bars. The people pay to buy the quiz sheet, hand it in to you, and at the end of the fair you announce the winner, picked out of a hat if there’s more than one.

Also the ones that sell out quickly are the bottle stalls. Get lots of donations of bottles of food and drink. They all have raffle tickets on them, usually with the numbers ending in 0 or 5. All the other tickets are put in a bag and people pay to pick a ticket and if they get one that matches an item they get to keep the item. We include bottles of wine but you may need to exclude alcohol for a high school event….

Likewise the raffle. Get donations of prizes then sell tickets. Pick them at the end of the fair. Get local businesses to donate prizes – our local restaurant donated a meal for 2 and the hairdresser gave a free haircut.

Another one that does a very brisk trade is the games stall. People donate toys and games and you sell them. Especially good for younger kids.

Face-painting usually does well but three or four painters otherwise queues put people off.

Find willing authority figures (Principal, teachers, etc.)

Get a dunk tank and baseballs to throw.

Instant hit.

Check in yellow pages, Internet to find party companies that rent out stuff like this for carnivals and fairs.