PTO Today

Hi. I am new to this site and a newly elected PTO president. Our school is no longer doing the catalog sales (due to various reasons by Board). I would appreciate any ideas for a fundraiser that we could do. I would like to find something that is different or unique. I really want to get parent involvement (don't we all !!!! and make it memorable for the children. Thanks for all of your help.

We do a basket bingo each year that is done with our basket auction (the classrooms each come up with a theme basket) that brings in about 6k. We also made 3k on our Fall Fun Festival. We got away from catalog sales as well just to take a break. We also supplement with Spirit Nights, Market Day (at the parents request on that one), we run a Karate Camp good for about 2k the first year and 1k after that. We usually make about 30k a year when all of our little things are tallied up. This year we will sell Yankee Candles and I think it will be a great fundraiser. We allow parents to donate money in return for an ad of acknowledgement in our newsletter and that tends to raise about 2k a year to cover copier and paper costs and finally we have a boosters program where parents can donate just cause. That also brings in about 2.5k (Yes, we have terrific parents). Oh, we also run our own summer supply sales program that brings in a couple thousand.
Finally when we have things like a visiting author-we do the work to augment his fee by selling his books (autographed and personalized).
This year we've set up a Legacy Fund. Our 5th graders will be selling ice cream once a month. They do all the work and the year end dollars go toward the purchase of something they leave behind to enhance the school. Any additional dollars are put toward the purchase of the rising 5th graders DARE tshirts. It's a nice little idea.

Hope these help.
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Hi,
My nephew's school recently did a walkathon. It is a small school and they did it one afternoon for a school event. They walked to a near by baseball field and had the kids walk the bases. I think K walked for 30 minutes and the upper grades walked for an hour? They sent home forms for donations and you would donate an amount for the entire time you walked. I donated 20.00 and that is what I donated for his entire walk. They made 4500.00 on this. They had water , music and then I believe gave the kids lunch or something afterward. I thought it was a good idea.

We have done the walk a thon and we did well on that and we didnt have go over order forms, count money all that extra stuff. And the kids really do like the walk a thon
This year we are having a big ticket raffle with a big screen tv, gas card, some kind of game system and it will be drawn a couple weeks before Super Bowl.

I like the Walk A Thon idea and we have been thinking about it at our school.. Would love some more information about how you went about it and full details if anyone has it that they could send to me?? Our school district said we couldn't use the teacher's time during a school day most likely so we are trying to figure out how to either do it one evening after school or see if the PTA did all the work we could take kids out of class towards the end of the day

I too am new to this site and love all the ideas everybody shares. I am the fund raising chairperson for a small catholic school with approximately 225 students and we run fund raisers all year. Our primary fundraiser is a walk a thon held in May. The students have one month to line up sponsors and are asked to contribute at least five dollars each. On the day of the walk prizes are awarded to the top 3 students. This past year every student who collected at least $100 was invited to an afternoon at a local sports arena. The money was collected to support a new hot lunch program starting in September and will be used to update our lunchroom. The kids collected over $23,000.00. Not a typo!!
We also have a Penny Party, sell CheeseCakes twice a year, $1.00 Candy bars, Christmas Bazaar, Candles, Night at Applebee's. This year we are hoping to sell Christmas Wreaths and have a Nite at the Races if I can find a source.