© 2020 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In the framework of generalized finite element methods for elliptic equations with rough coefficients, efficiency and accuracy of the numerical method depend critically on the use of appropriate basis functions. This work explores several random sampling strategies that construct approximations to the optimal set of basis functions of a given dimension, and proposes a quantitative criterion to analyze and compare these sampling strategies. Numerical evidence shows that the best results are achieved by two strategies, Random Gaussian and Smooth Boundary sampling.