PTO Today

our fundraiser vendor is offering a 3 year contract with yearly incentivies. Please send in if your group has done this and was it okay with the following membership? thanks

The group before me set up a 2 year contract and it was a mess. I felt like they thought they had our business and didn't have to help us run a sucessful fundraiser. On the other hand, we usually sign up for our fall fundraiser almost a year before we run it. If your group has a company that they use regardless year after year, it may not be as big of a deal. You may want to consider if the incentives are worth a problems that may occur in the next 3 years and having to deal with them. If you plan on being in charge 3 years from now, it might not be as big of step than if you will be gone next year.

I just signed a 3 year contract with our catalog fundraising company, and had no issues about it. The company is a smaller, fairly local company and the owner prides himself on having the best customer service and products on the market. I'm not worried at all that they will feel like they don't have to take care of us. I have been very upfront as to what I expect out of them. I also made it clear why I "fired" the other catalog fundraising company that we had used in the past.

We were locked into a three year contract left over from our PTA and it was the worse...alot can happen in three years, sales people change, once they get you locked in they can no longer give you top notch personal service, how will the sale do three years in a row...will people get tired of it? Alot to think about, I would not do it but you know what works best for your group! Good luck!

We are absolutely opposed to any contract longer than 1 year. We've had this discussion a few times in the past and decided against it. It's not fair to the follow year's board members to lock them into a contract which they had no say in.

We also felt it was a sleazy move by the fundraising rep to push the multi-year deal. Yes, the were offering better profit margins, but we felt they were exploiting the system of the yearly turnovers in our PTO. Remember, they work on commission so the longer the contract, the more money in their pocket.

Each newly elected PTO board should have a right to run their PTO on how they feel fit and not be bound by decisions (and many of them poor decisions) by previous board members who will be long gone by the end of the contract they signed the PTO up for.

So, again, stick to 1 year agreements! Thats what we did.

I agree with the reply by P_T_A. We turned down a magazine sales fundraiser because the salesperson wanted us to commit to a 2-year contract. I told the person the board changes from year to year, and we feel it is improper to impose the contract on a board that will change next year.