Spaghetti dinners can make great fundraisers because they are cheap to run, easy to setup, and highly profitable in theory. As long as you have a group of people willing to do a little cooking and marketing, you should be able to make some money for your organization through a spaghetti dinner fundraiser. Whether you’re raising money for scholarships for Hispanics or you just need a new set of uniforms for a sports team, you should be able to see some sort of profits from this kind of fundraiser. Read on to see what all you’ll need for a spaghetti dinner fundraiser.

Food

The food for a spaghetti dinner is cheap and easy to cook. You mainly need noodles, sauce, and meat for the spaghetti, as well as bread and salad to go with the dinner. You can buy noodles in bulk quantities, and you may be surprised by how many people one pack will feed. You can also purchase pre-made spaghetti sauce so you don’t have to worry about making it from scratch. This will probably cost you less money in the end.

For the salads, just make sure you have a huge bowl of lettuce and a few different dressings for people to try. Croutons, cheese, tomatoes, and other toppings are optional, but they would improve the taste of your salads considerably. If you have room in the budget to get some Caesar salad, do that. It pairs well with spaghetti, and it will be a good alternative to the traditional iceberg-ranch combination people have come to expect.

You don’t need to do much with the bread other than put some butter on it and broil it in the oven for a few minutes. You can buy loaves of French bread from Wal-Mart for next to nothing, and then you can get them sliced for free in the bakery. That will save you from having to slice the bread yourself, and it will still give you a chance to offer the guests something beyond Sara Lee White Sandwich Bread. Slap some butter and garlic powder on the slices and bake them to perfection.

Venue

You obviously need some place to hold the spaghetti dinner. You can rent a cafeteria of some sort in your community, or you could see if there is something available on your college campus that you can just use. This may hard to do if you go to school online, but you can ask churches and other places like that in your area to see if they can help you out. Just make sure you have enough tables to seat however many people you think will come to the dinner.

Charge

What you decide to charge for your spaghetti dinner is up to you. You can do a slight calculation as to what you’re paying per plate of food, and then you could base your prices on what money you need to make after that. $5-$10 per person should be more than enough to cover your costs and still make some money, assuming you market the fundraiser well.

Marketing

Speaking of marketing, you need to make sure to spread the word about your spaghetti dinner fundraiser. Advertise as much as you can for free online, and try to post an ad in the paper to draw in a local audience. You can put a shoutout on Craigslist or Facebook telling everyone about the details for the dinner, and you could even see about getting a radio ad for the dinner. If you put enough effort to drawing people in, you should have a pretty good crowd for your spaghetti dinner.