Fundraising idea needs your help!

Help me work out my fundraising idea!

I've got a 5th grader. Every year I take off of work on the last day of school (which usually dismisses around noon) and have all the kids over to swim in the back yard until their parents get off work. Then lots of folks just hang around and BBQ for the evening. It's a great way to kick off the summer vacation.

My 5th grader and I came up with an idea to make it a bigger deal this year... they are graduating elementary school after all, and we could charge admittance as a way to turn it into a fundraiser. We'll need to come up with a take home flyer for the kids. I'll also want to give a heads-up to the principal. We were thinking that there would be two ways to give. First we can encourage the parents to go online and make a contribution and then just send a note with their student letting us know what they contributed. (I'll explain why we want to know in a minute.) The 2nd way would be to send a donation of any size with their child to the party. I want to make posters with the different animals/gifts that can be purchased, the price, and what can be done with those animals. The pictures and explanations on the Heifer web site will be perfect for that. At a pre-arranged time at the party, all the donations would be in and we would total them. We then let the kids multi-vote with stickers on the animals that we can afford with what we've collected. Things that parents have already purchased would be noted on the posters. At the end, the kids could see all the good things they were able to do.

My 5th grader liked calling it "5th grade gives back" probably because he's an American Idol fan!! I think it might be fun to get a DJ and have games and prizes. After we choose our purchases on Heifer.com, Chris could speak and entice the kids and parents to think of their own fundraisers.

Fundraising can and should be fun to encourage more people to participate. Does anybody know a DJ that would donate their time for 2 or 3 hours? Is anybody good at getting donated prizes. I can buy the food. I would be doing that anyway.

Let me know your ideas. The last day of school is June 4th so we have time to plan.