School Fun Run is first and foremost a school fundraiser. It can raise a lot of money, as school fundraising has been proven to be extremely successful.

There is no limit to the amount that can be raised, but with high levels of attention from sponsors, anonymous donations, getting in touch with friends and family, schools have, in the past, raised as much as $15,000 per 300 students.

Children are encouraged to organise reading sessions and challenge themselves to read something for 30 minutes every day. The school will be provided with plenty of information to provide teachers with, providing advice on the best way to encourage children to read regularly and how to encourage parents to spread the word regarding donations.

A School Fun Read can be set up in 5 steps.

1. First, you'll need to register. This will need your school to decide on dates for the fundraiser to take place and will also be when you'll be assigned a Fundraising Coach.

2. Next, your Fundraising Coach will touch base with you and show you the ropes. Whether it's the best methods for encouraging literacy amongst kids, some ideas for the most enticing book, you'll be able to ask your Coach whatever you need. Together, you'll come up with a great plan to launch to families of the student body before the reading commences!

3. After this, the donated money will be sent through our secure online platform, allowing sponsors to easily donate without any cash involved. Halfway through the fundraiser, each child begins to read a book for 5 or 10 days, with a minimum of 30 minutes a day. This phase can be ended with one of our Fundraising Ideas if you so wish, just to give the kids a break from their book!

4. Finally, we'll be doing all the tracking of money collected from the School Fun Read, and your school will get 60% of the money donated (subject to taxes) and all kids who are eligible for prizes will receive them as soon as possible!

5. Students will order rewards online for taking part and we'll send them to you post-event for distribution to the kids.

We usually recommend running the School Fun Read for about five to six weeks, allowing two weeks of school time to facilitate the reading and two weeks on either side of the reading period to attract donations and draw attention to the fundraising platform that the School Fun Read creates.

Each school chooses to do it differently, and sometimes, each class does it for a different amount of time. Some schools in the past have conducted the School Fun Read during Book Week, with a much larger focus on books and reading in class to make the School Fun Read fundraiser feel more like an event, whilst also bringing the school together as a group.

Not only are there tons of benefits for students to get involved in the reading sessions and school fundraising in general, but like with everything, there are great incentives depending on the number of donations raised by the kids.

Even if just $10 is raised, kids can get awesome prizes for themselves as their group, which can encourage friendly competition amongst friends. As a company, we do understand how not every family encourages their child to be a reader, which is why we believe that having lots of different prizes as a reward for donations can attract a lot more attention to an area's fundraiser.

There is, of course, the fundraising coach that you will have access to after signing up for this fundraiser, and they will work on creating a custom fundraising plan for your school/group alongside you.

For other fundraising ideas, some readers might be enticed by an event such as a book swap, or an opportunity for students to dress up as their favourite characters from books for fun, or maybe even a book fair to raise money further. Discover more ideas here.

We get questions about reading content a lot for our School Fun Read and we always reiterate that it's more about the time spent reading and the ability to raise money, rather than the books read. However, the key point here is that we want kids reading, so let them read material they actually want to read. It's much important that the students are 'excited to read', as opposed to 'having to read'.

In each area of fundraising and to every group, we advise that the best way forward is to ask the class/school what books they would prefer to read, rather than discouraging reading with a book they find boring, or too much of a challenge.