The State of School Fundraising
in Australia
What 106 P&C leaders told us about time, money, volunteers, and why the sector urgently needs a new model.
The problem is not motivation.
It is infrastructure.
This report is based on feedback from 106 people at the heart of P&C life[1] — mostly Presidents, Treasurers and Secretaries — across a wide mix of school sizes, metro and non-metro communities, and fundraising situations.
The message is clear. P&C associations and committees do not want big risks. They want clarity, predictable returns and less admin. When P&Cs talk about risk, they are really talking about time, uncertainty and volunteer burnout — not money.
The sector is willing to fundraise and willing to invest in better models. What it lacks is the infrastructure, tools, and confidence to execute them. That execution gap is the single most important finding in this report — and the opportunity it represents is national in scale.
Time is the number one
deciding factor. Not money.
P&C associations and committees are willing to fundraise. But only in ways that respect limited time, reduce admin, and avoid burning out the same small group of people.
"Not enough volunteers" is the single biggest fundraising challenge — cited by more respondents than any other barrier, well ahead of low parent engagement, time pressure, and admin burden combined.[1]
When asked what matters most when choosing a fundraiser, volunteer time commitment ranked first — ahead of profit margin, student enjoyment, and ease of organisation. Low upfront cost ranked last.[1]
This has significant implications for how the sector needs to be served. The fundraising market has largely optimised for low upfront cost. What P&Cs actually need is low time cost.
Appetite for better fundraising
is enormous. Execution is the gap.
Interest in doing fundraising better is strong and consistent across school sizes, fundraising performance levels, geographic location, and digital capability. When P&Cs are asked whether they want to do fundraising differently, the answer is overwhelmingly yes. The barrier is never desire. It is always execution.
87% of P&C associations and committees are open to new fundraising approaches, with almost no difference between metro and non-metro schools.[1]
Most P&Cs are not looking for more fundraising ideas. They are looking for someone to have done the hard thinking already — and hand them a model that works within the reality of time-poor volunteers. The appetite is there. The infrastructure is not.
This finding holds across school sizes. Mid-sized schools of 300 to 600 students present the strongest overall opportunity, balancing community buying pool with operational manageability.
The sweet spot investment
is $1,000 to $5,000.
When asked how much they would be willing to invest upfront in a fundraising solution that delivered strong, clear returns, the majority of P&C associations and committees clustered in a clear band.
55 of 100 P&Cs are willing to invest between $1,000 and $5,000 for a fundraising solution with clear, predictable returns.[1] This is not caution — this is smart procurement behaviour from committees managing community funds.
Non-metro P&Cs show slightly lower willingness to invest $1,000 or more (53.1% versus 68.5% for metro)[1], reflecting practical risk management rather than lack of ambition.
School size does not determine
fundraising success.
A persistent assumption in school fundraising is that bigger schools raise more money. The data does not support this.
Profit ranges overlap heavily across small, medium and large schools.[1] What matters far more is having the right model for the school's size and operational capacity.
Lower profits in small schools reflect capacity limits, not lack of effort. These schools do not need more fundraising ideas. They need low-risk, low-admin models that work with minimal volunteer hours.
What P&Cs are actually raising
— and what is possible.
Survey respondents were asked to report both their largest single fundraiser profit and their total annual fundraising profit after costs. The results reveal significant variation — and significant untapped potential.
Largest single fundraiser
The most common result is under $5,000 for a single event, though a meaningful proportion of schools achieve $10,000 to $40,000+ from a single fundraiser. The variance is not explained by school size — it is explained by model quality.
Annual profit after costs
The largest single annual band is under $25,000, with most P&Cs raising between $10,000 and $50,000 across the year. A smaller cohort exceeds $100,000 annually — typically with repeatable, infrastructure-led models.
Based on survey data showing the majority of P&Cs raise between $10,000 and $50,000 annually, applied conservatively across NSW's 1,869 P&C associations[2], Australian school communities are generating tens of millions of dollars through volunteer-led fundraising each year. This is entirely separate from the $115 million in direct voluntary parent contributions to NSW schools recorded by the Department of Education in 2024.[3]
The sector data
confirms what we heard.
Our survey findings are corroborated by independent national and international research across volunteering, community funding, and the economic value of unpaid effort.
69.4% of organisations cite burnout as a key challenge in retaining volunteers — directly validating our finding that volunteer exhaustion, not fundraising ideas, is the primary constraint on P&C performance.
29% of people leaving the not-for-profit sector in 2025 cited burnout as the main reason — up from 21% in 2024. The trend is accelerating, not stabilising.
Volunteering rates in Australia have dropped by more than 10% in the last decade. The pool of available volunteers is shrinking while the demand for their time continues to grow.
The replacement value of a volunteer hour in Australia is approximately AUD $49.53 — outpacing general inflation year on year.
In 2024, there were 9,653 schools in Australia. NSW alone collected $74.2 million in voluntary parent contributions. The infrastructure gap identified in this report represents a national opportunity, not a regional one.
Five things every P&C leader
should take from this report.
P&Cs care more about volunteer hours than upfront cost. Any solution that saves time will outperform any solution that saves money.
Nearly 88% of P&Cs are open to new and better fundraising approaches, with almost no difference between metro and non-metro schools. The willingness to change is everywhere. The tools and support to do so are not.
P&Cs have not adopted better fundraising models because they lack the tools, time, and confidence to execute them — not because they do not want to. Solving for execution capacity unlocks the sector.
Schools with 300–600 students represent the strongest opportunity: large enough to generate a meaningful buying pool, small enough to manage operationally without a full-time coordinator.
The highest-performing P&Cs treat fundraising as repeatable infrastructure rather than isolated events. Models that generate ongoing, predictable revenue consistently outperform seasonal campaigns that require rebuilding effort from scratch each time.
Built by P&C leaders,
for P&C leaders.
No More Sausages is a purpose-driven business reimagining fundraising for Australian school P&C associations and volunteer communities. Founded by three school mums from Cabarita Beach on the NSW Far North Coast, NMS operates under a simple belief: P&C communities do not have a motivation problem. They have a tools problem. One percent of profits is channelled back into the NMS Grants Program, directly funding the communities NMS exists to serve.
NMS has built a micro business ecosystem that gives P&C associations and committees the infrastructure to run fundraising like a proper business: place-based community merchandise programs, a wholesale marketplace of premium products, a suite of event and stall playbooks, a curated affiliate store of tried and tested products, and the National P&C Collective — a closed community of 1,600+ P&C members across Australia. The P&C Perks Card, currently in development with named commercial partners, will give P&C associations and committees collective buying power for the first time.
nomoresausages.com.au · Less grind. More good.
Citations
All survey data cited as [1] refers to the No More Sausages Co. P&C Fundraising Survey 2026, a proprietary primary research study of 106 P&C leaders conducted by No More Sausages Co. External sources have been independently verified at time of publication.