A run of 100 printed tea towels costs $800 and sells for $2,500 at the price most groups charge. That is $1,700 into your fundraising account from one order, without giving up a Saturday.
A run of 100 tea towels costing $800 to print and returning $1,700 profit at a $25 sale price
Every number on this page is worked from our own print prices, and you can check all of it against the tables below.
What a Tea Towel Fundraiser Actually Makes
Our print cost per towel drops as the order grows, so the whole curve is here rather than one example.
| Order | Print cost each* | Your print bill* | Sell at $15 | Profit | Sell at $25 | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $8.00 | $800 | $1,500 | $700 | $2,500 | $1,700 |
| 150 | $6.50 | $975 | $2,250 | $1,275 | $3,750 | $2,775 |
| 200 | $5.80 | $1,160 | $3,000 | $1,840 | $5,000 | $3,840 |
* Prices are indicative of 1 colour screen printing and may not be final based on customer requirements. Some remote locations may incur additional shipping charges.
The sale price matters more than the order size. Going from 50 towels to 200 multiplies your profit by about five. Going from $15 to $25 on the same order roughly doubles it. Most groups undercharge.
The other thing that table settles is what our price is worth against the alternatives. Other Australian tea towel fundraising suppliers sell to schools at around $13.95 a towel. Resold at $25, that leaves about $11.05 in the tin.
At our price, the same towel leaves $16.50. On an order of 200, that difference is over $1,000 you would otherwise have printed away.
Going from 50 towels to 200 multiplies your profit by about five. Going from $15 to $25 on the same order roughly doubles it.
For context, the average Australian primary school P&C raises somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000 across a whole year of fundraising. A single tea towel run of 200 at $25 covers a tenth of that in one go.
Against the fundraisers you already run
A Bunnings sausage sizzle brings in $700 to $1,500 for a day, and it costs you a roster, an early start, and a dozen volunteers who would rather be somewhere else. A tea towel run of 100 at $25 makes $1,700 and costs you a design, an order form, and one trip to the office to unpack a box.
The other common benchmark is the chocolate or cookie dough drive. A 300-student school at 40 per cent participation, $50 average sale and a 40 per cent margin nets about $2,400.
That is a good result, and it takes every family selling to their neighbours for a month. Tea towels do not beat those numbers outright.
They get close with a fraction of the volunteer hours, and what you sold is still in the buyer’s kitchen in ten years.
Break-Even, and What Happens If You Undersell
Before you commit, work out how many you have to sell before the fundraiser stops costing you money.
| Order | You must sell at $15 | You must sell at $25 |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | 29 | 17 |
| 100 | 54 | 32 |
| 150 | 65 | 39 |
| 200 | 78 | 47 |
At $25, an order of 100 breaks even once 32 families have bought one. Everything after that is profit.
If the other outcome worries you, do not order first and sell second. Take pre-orders, set a minimum, and place the print order only once you have hit it. Then the worst case is a fundraiser that does not go ahead, instead of a box of unsold towels and an invoice.
How It Works
Four-stage tea towel fundraiser process with the pre-order step enlarged as the one that protects the group
- Decide the design. A collective piece with every child’s contribution, or a single logo, crest or class list. Collective designs sell better, because every family is buying their own kid.
- Take pre-orders and set a minimum. Your minimum is the break-even number from the table above, plus whatever profit makes the effort worth it. This is the step that protects you, so do not print until you reach it.
- Send the artwork. Upload the drawings or designs, and we prepare the artwork for your approval before anything is printed.
- Print, pack, deliver. Once you approve, we print and deliver to your school or group at a set price.
Order a few extras. You will always get latecomers, and a family who missed the deadline will pay full price for a towel that cost you $8. Ten spare on an order of 100 is cheap insurance.
Run the money in that order too. If you collect payment with the pre-orders, the cash is in your account before the print bill is due, and the fundraiser never needs a float from group funds.
Committees that print first and chase payment afterwards are the ones who end up with an invoice and a spreadsheet of maybes.
Setting Your Sale Price
$15 is the price groups reach for because it feels safe. $25 is what the market charges and what these actually sell for.
$25 works because nobody buying one is comparing it to a tea towel. They are buying their child’s handprint, or their class list, or the church their family has attended for thirty years.
Grandparents in particular buy several. The item is a keepsake, and it should be priced like one.
If $25 feels high for your community, $20 still leaves $12 a towel at our 100-unit price. The mistake is $15.
Tea Towel Fundraising for Schools
Schools run more of these than everyone else combined, and the design is why. Every student contributes something, so every family has a personal reason to buy, and the biggest buyers are not the parents. Grandparents, aunts and uncles order two and three at a time.
What works on a school tea towel:
- Handprints or footprints for childcare centres and family day care
- One handprint per preschool student, signed by their teacher
- Self-portraits for primary students, which are reliably the best sellers
- Signatures and personal logos for high school students, sports teams and graduating classes
- A class list, school crest or a sketch of the school building if you want something simple
You upload the students’ designs, we prepare the artwork for approval, then print, pack and deliver to the school for a set price with everything shown upfront. Start with the step-by-step school fundraising order form, or read the longer guide to running a school tea towel fundraiser.
Tea Towel Fundraising for Churches
A congregation is a ready-made buyer list with a long memory, which is what this product needs. Anniversary years, a building fund, a restoration appeal, a departing minister.
Print the church, the year, or the congregation’s names and it sells to members, to visitors, and to families who moved away and still care.
The same maths applies. A hundred towels at $25 across a congregation is $1,700 without running a single event. More on church group fundraisers.
Charities, Clubs and Community Groups
Sports clubs, childcare centres, associations, community groups and charities all run these, and they share one constraint: your buyers are the people already connected to you.
This works by converting an existing membership into funds at a good margin, so it will not reach strangers.
That constraint decides your order size. Count the households genuinely connected to your group, assume a third of them buy, and order to that number rather than to an ambitious one.
A club recipe collection, a premiership team list, or a group photo all work.
More on fundraisers for organisations and on memento fundraisers.
Running an event rather than raising funds? Tea towels also work as invitations and keepsakes for weddings, showers and special occasions.
Before You Commit
Sort these out at quote stage rather than after.
- Confirm the GST position on your quote. Fundraising budgets are built to the cent, and you want the number in your spreadsheet to be the number on the invoice.
- Work backwards from your deadline. Most school runs are aimed at the end of the year, and everyone aims at the same weeks. Allow time for collecting student artwork, our artwork preparation, your approval, then printing and delivery. Collecting the drawings takes longer than the printing does.
- Get your pre-orders in writing. A verbal yes at pickup is not a pre-order. A form with a name and a quantity is.
On the artwork itself, the usual holdup is never the printing. It is one class handing drawings in late, or scans done on a phone at an angle in bad light.
Ask for dark pen or marker on plain white paper, scan or photograph everything flat under even light, and set the collection deadline a fortnight before you think you need it.
We prepare the final artwork and send it back for approval, so a clean starting file is what keeps that step to a single round.
Get a Price
Schools can go straight to the school fundraising order form, where the price is shown upfront with no hidden fees.
Everyone else, send your idea, your rough numbers and any artwork through the quote form. Tell us how many households you are selling to, and we will tell you what to order and what you stand to make.
Get 200 White Tea Towels printed and delivered from $5.95 each
(Get a Quote Here)
Want to know more?
Continue with more information about how the decoration and printing process works.
Good luck with your fundraising efforts. If you need any help, just let us know.
Need Some Help? Send us your ideas, designs or orders via the quote form.
