We are trying to start a "Family Teacher Organization" at a new school in our community. It is a District funded school, but also a school of choice. The school houses a combined special ed and typically developing preschool, and elementary school. There is a fairly large percentage of non english speaking and low income families. We have been told we can not require fees from families. We did request that people give a "donation" when signing up. SO far we have had very little response. We need some INNOVATIVE ideas on how to draw people in. We have tried to explain that our primary focus will not be fundraising, but on trying to involve families more in the school. We are trying to stress that everyone can contribute something(money, time or talents.) Of course that leaves us with no money and very few volunteers to try to structure an organization. We have some passive funraising in place through corporate and community sponsers, but not any big money items. We would very much like to avoid traditional selling fundraising campaigns. We need help from the ground up. At this point everyone is so worried about not becoming a traditional fundraising PTO group, that nobody is getting anything done. We could use opinions and ideas from anyone who has tried to start a different kind of parent group.

Our biggest 'fundraiser' is not a traditional fundraiser. It's our school carnival. We get almost everything donated from area businesses, which means we get most of the profit. Each class makes a themed basket (sports, pamper mom, candles, we even had a Coca Cola basket this year). We auction the baskets off at the carnival. We also have a drawing for prizes every 30 minutes,and sell the tickets for $1 each. Of course we also have fun stuff for the kids, games, face painting, a jupiter jump, things like that, and the adults love to play Bingo so we have that too. If you're interested, I can send you some more information about our carnival. The first year I was a PTO member at our school, we made $1200 at the carnival (after expenses), last year we made $1500, and this year we made $2600!!! It doesn't seem like a fundraiser because people are having fun, and they get something out of it, whether it's a sno-cone, a prize from a game, or even their face painted. We are considered a high-poverty school, but the parents really seem to come out for this. We push it to the kids the week before, and we give the teachers carnival tickets to reward the kids with for good behavior. We sell our tickets for 25 cents each, or 24 for $5(4 free tickets). If you are interested, feel free to e-mail me, centralpto@aol.com, and I'd be happy to send you some more detailed information on putting one together. I hope everything works out for you!