Candy bags?

Question

Hey guys, I am running for a student council elections, and my budget is really tight. I can afford to spend about 40 dollars on candy and there are about 500 students in total. Not all students will be getting small candy bags, but I will be handing them out next to my ad board outside of cafeterias. I would like to make sure that the bags have the most/best candy I can buy for this low fee. Any ideas? What would you like to get as candy assortments if you had a choice?

I used to be President for a larger organization on campus - with about 3500 students and ran in three elections for various positions in SG. I won the elections on issues such as tuition deregulation, etc. but looking back it seems like my opponents were remarkably successful with little things like candy, or catchy phrases (I ran against a team of three guys called "PMS - we've got the answers" - we have to have our name initials as our team name, thus PMS). I'm still campaining on the big issues, but I also want to reach out to those people who don't really care and want the cheap laugh, or the free food.

Answer 1

What I did when I ran for student office in high school was to buy Pixie Stix, print labels on my computer with my name and the office I was running for, and band two Pixie Stix together with the label - that way, people had my name, and I didn't spend a lot of money getting it out there - you can buy like hundreds of Pixie Stix for under $10.

Answer 2

There is a magazine called Oriental Trading Co. that sells little trinkets and candies for really cheap. I don't know if they have a web site, but I'd be surprised if they didn't. You can buy huge bags of sweet tarts, jaw breakers, fireballs, taffy, lolly pops, etc. I'm afraid even though Sam's and Costco have fairly good deals on candy, $40 will not get you very far, especially for 500 students. Your best bet is to order the typical penny candy stuff items from one of the above dealers in bulk and hope that's enough. Is there no way you can get a little extra money in donations somehow? Quick impromtu bake sale perhaps?

Another idea is making your own lollypops. You would just hand one out to each student but you could personalize them. Perhaps they could be in the shape of the first letter of your name, or maybe you could use edible paint to paint your name on them. I think you could probably do that for $40. It would take some time but I think that would stand out better. Have like a fruit flavor and a hot cinnomon flavor and make it in the school colors since it's student related. Good luck to you.

Answer 3

HI Im in australia so no doubt we have different sweets and lollies but if you are on a tight budget why not give out bags of popcorn instead?
you can make it interesting by using the coloured popcorn or add some sugar and honey and make caramel popcorn.
Its really cheap (here anyway) to buy the kernels and you could give out nice big bags full.
Of why not bake some muffins or cupcakes and just put icing and a lollie on the top of each one this would be really cheap and you could wrap each cupcake in coloured tissue paper and tie with a ribbon if you want them to look really pretty.
Anything home baked is always more enjoyable than pre packaged and will cost you hardly anything at all

Answer 4

Instead of candy bags why don't you buy a pin maker and pins and make that.

Or buy paints, glitter and cardstock and make tags to pass out.

Candy on such a low budget could be very expensive.

The idea of running an election, even at student council, is to be promoted.

Anything with your name on it will make a bigger impact than candy.

Answer 5

You shouldn't have to bribe students to vote for you.

Show them who you really are, and don't ask them to vote for you 'cause you gave them candy.