Putting the FUN in Fundraising

So, it's that time of year again, and I'm gearing up for our local Relay for Life. My team of 9 from last year lost 5...and gained FOURTEEN!!! Very exciting! We knew we wanted to do something fun this year when it came to fundraising, and of course I hit up Pinterest for some inspiration. Which is where I got the idea to do this...

Basically, you drop the potty on a lawn, and the homeowner has to pay to have it removed. $10 for removal, $20 to move it to a friend's house, and $30 for the above + the promise that it won't come back to them. So far (with 1 notable exception) everyone who has gotten the potty dropped on their lawn has been a good sport about it, and almost everyone has chosen to pass it on to a friend.

Now...I saw a couple different versions of the purple toilet...but could never get to a blog / site that gave me any information about the actual painting of the toilet. As you're probably aware toilets are made out of porcelain. Which you, allegedly, cannot just paint. Thanks to my friends at Home Depot, I got some great advice and can now pass it on to YOU, should you be interested in doing a similar fundraiser!

OK, so step one is to obtain a toilet. While it might be skeevy and gross to use a used toilet, it's also a helluva lot cheaper. One of my RFL teammates works for a builder, who happened to have access to a no-longer-in-use toilet that he was willing to part from. HOLLA! Free toilet! After a vigorous cleaning by 2 of my teammates the toilet was ready to go. First I hit it with a couple of coats of Zinsser spray paint primer. This stuff is a miracle in a bottle. Not only does it adhere to porcelain - you don't have to sand the porcelain first! I told you - MIRACLE. I was {not} looking forward to sanding a toilet, let me just say.

Once the primer was dry, I used good old fashioned Rustoleum spray paint in Grape (gloss) to give it a perfect purpley exterior. Isn't it lovely?

The most expensive part of the project was the jewels for the toilet seat. No...I'm not kidding. I used some heavy duty adhesive to stick them on - just to add a little sparkle and some color.

Once the toilet was painted, I designed the sign, printed it out, and used some fantastic connections to get that puppy laminated. Then I used duct tape to stick it to the toilet. :) DONE. The only other thing we did was write a quick letter letting the lucky recipient know who had sent them the potty, and telling them how to contact me so that they could have it removed from their lawn.

Petunia the Purple Potty has been in {several} yards, and has already brought in over $350 for the American Cancer Society ~ and we have a few weeks left to go!  Some of the paint has chipped a bit, and she's been targeted by a few birds, but other than that she's in pretty decent shape. Enough so that we'll probably use her again next year!