1. Find a venue. 

The first step to hosting a great pancake breakfast is choosing the right venue. You can choose any location with a kitchen and a space large enough to hold plenty of tables, but these are two common choices:

• Your own space: To save room in your budget, host the pancake breakfast inside your school or church.
• A local restaurant: Partner with a local restaurant and rent out their space for a few hours. If you choose this option, see if the restaurant will sponsor your event in exchange for promotion. This way, you can reserve the space as an in-kind donation.

When you reserve your space, get confirmation on which areas and equipment you’re allowed to use and if you can move tables around. 

2. Schedule a date for the pancake breakfast.

Once you’ve selected your venue, decide on a date for the pancake breakfast based on the venue’s availability.

Saturday mornings are usually best, but Sundays after church are also a great option for church fundraisers. No matter what, try to schedule a date that works well for a majority of your students or supporters.

3. Recruit plenty of volunteers.

You’ll need a large number of volunteers to cover all these roles on the day of your pancake breakfast fundraiser:

• Setup
• Signing guests in
• Making the pancakes
• Serving the pancakes
• Clean up

You can set up one or two-hour shifts if you have a lot of volunteers with limited availability. Or, you can set up a system where volunteers rotate roles throughout the morning, moving from the kitchen to the dining room as they choose.

4. Promote your pancake breakfast and sell tickets.

Next, it’s time to announce the event and promote it across all your communication channels. Send out emails, post on social media, and send flyers home with students to get the word out.

To sell tickets for the pancake breakfast select one of these options or combine all three:

• Sell tickets online through an online donation platform.
• Ask individual members or students to sell tickets individually.
• Sell tickets at the door of the event.

Your donations don’t have to end with ticket sales. Add in other fundraising opportunities at the event itself to inspire additional giving. 

5. Host the breakfast and enjoy the pancakes!

On the day of the pancake breakfast, welcome everyone in and enjoy the food! This is a great opportunity for getting to know your donors, team building between your volunteers, and spreading awareness of your any upcoming programs or fundraising initiatives.