First the fun. At PTO Today we talk a lot about how important it is to infuse some fun into your parent group. Well, these groups certainly seem to have the fun factor figured out.

• Nothing like some good-natured competition to liven up a school community:  Iron Chef competition.
• This PTO is giving families a chance to get creative with an all-day scrapbooking event.
• Families at this school love their Spaghetti dinner family night tradition. Sometimes it’s the old fashioned favorite that is the most fun.
• Getting high schoolers on board with a fundraiser can be a bit tough. This NJ PTO figured out a fun event to do the trick: a fashion show fundraiser. Loved that they involved the students by sponsoring a contest for the invitation. Neat idea.
• This school combined a  school carnival with a silent auction and had over 1000 attendees. Wow, that says a lot about the community!

Ok, now for the not-so-fun. Speaking to the need of solid financial controls in your parent group, there were several stories in the news this week about embezzlement:

Woman pleads guilty to $35,000 PTA theft.

PTA treasurer sentenced to three years of probation for stealing nearly $75,000 over a six-year period.

Ex-PTA president sentenced for stealing funds.

School Family Events:

Enthusiasm is the key ingredient in this parent group-sponsored math night.

PTO runs a fitness day where football rules.

Creative PTO party animals set the stage for success.

Teachers & parents with talent serve up plenty of inspiration at this school!

Loved this PTA event that encourage middle schoolers to honor family history.

And it always saddens me to post articles about thefts from parent groups but they certainly serve as good reminders for PTOs & PTAs to employ smart financial controls.

Parent Group Thefts:

http://www.brainerddispatch.com/stories/020510/new_20100205001.shtml

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100127/LOCAL1804/1270354/Maplewood-Elementary-PTO-chief-jailed-in-theft

Has your parent group been in the news and you’d like to share your story with other leaders? Email me at lgundlach@ptotoday.com and I’ll include it our weekly round-up.

Save time!

Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that we have reorganized the popular File Exchange section of our site. We’ve added new categories, renamed a few, and moved around a bunch of files that were getting lost — so leaders can easily find the forms, flyers, letters, and surveys that they need. Hopefully, the changes will also take the guess work out of where to put something when you upload files to share with others.

Some new categories include:

• volunteer recruitment
• fundraiser forms & letters
• fun run, walk-a-thon
• spaghetti dinner
• holiday shops
• audits
• community service

New file additions of note include a slew of generic parent group logos and a new email opt-in form.

Thank you to all who have uploaded documents to share with fellow parent group leaders. We hear from leaders all the time that the file exchange is such  a powerful resource.  Happy sharing and swapping!

Which one did you use this fall?  Which one is the best choice for your group?

This is always a big discussion on our message boards and in our PTO Today community, mainly because the differences are so stark.  I recently received an email about this topic from an expert that brought a fundamental new concern into the debate.  I’ll explain below.

First, to set the table what we’re talking about here,  is whether you should run your fundraiser so that all sales are paid for up-front (pre-pay) or whether you should take orders and then collect money only at delivery time (post-pay).

I can give you three facts in this debate:

1. Almost all group will make more profit with post-pay– usually a lot more.

2. You will likely have a bounced check or two or get beaten in another way in post-pay (though #1 still applies).

3. There’s some extra work involved with post-pay, as sellers need to go back and collect money at delivery time.

This expert I heard from – a long-time salesman in the fundraising business – gave this perspective:

“A postpay sale is going to generate some “no pay” sales.  That’s a given as “the cost of doing business.”  It is also true that a postpay sale generates approximately double the sales volume of a prepay sale.  As an example, (one of my schools) had a total sales of about $4,500 on their prepay fall fundraiser in 2007.  They switched to postpay in 2008 and had a total sales of over $20,000.  They more than quadrupled the fundraiser profit that they could spend on behalf of the children, and did it with the same size of enrollment.  Yes, it takes a little effort to collect all the money, but they liked the additional money so much that they are doing a postpay sale again this fall.

A second reason relates to the issue of trust.  When parents are told they must have the money up front, they are reluctant to ask their co- workers to buy, lest the co-worker be insulted, thinking that the parent doesn’t trust them.  An even worse situation is one where a school will not accept checks at all. This indicates a severe lack of trust and is pretty much guaranteed to make parents decide not to participate at all.   If you have less than half the parents participating on a fundraiser, you have a lack of trust on the part of the parents in the school administration, simply because the parents feel that they are not trusted.”

The new factor for me was a discussion of how our credit card and debit card and online banking society has made prepay so difficult. Years ago in a prepay sale, the neighbor or co-worker or aunt or uncle pulled out a check and paid for their order on the spot.  Today, I haven’t carried a check in my wallet in several years, and I rarely have more than $20 or $30 in cash in my pocket. Many days, I couldn’t help the prepay seller, even if I wanted to.  The stats show that I’m far from alone in using plastic and online banking (and few paper checks) in my daily routine. This is a huge factor making prepay so difficult.

Hadn’t thought of that.

I’m interested in your take and your experiences on this. Did you prepay or postpay this year? Seeing any trends at your school? Love to hear ‘em.

PS – Are you following us on twitter yet?  @TimPTO and @ptotoday.

With the new school year, it’s a good time to take a good look at your PTO group’s financial controls.  What are you doing to prevent theft? Does your group have insurance?  Is an annual audit part of your group’s standard procedures? Please take the time to read these articles and review your systems. It is our sincere hope that this information will reduce the number of thefts this school year.

Plan out your entire year. Write down all the activities, programs, fundraisers, etc. that you hope to run. Include when they’ll start and when they’ll end. Think about how much each one will cost (or raise), and think about how many volunteers you’ll need for each. You want to make sure that you have a balanced year, that you aren’t caught off guard, and that you have the resources you need at the time you need them. And by the way, it’s OK to change your plan along the way. Starting with a road map makes picking a new route a lot easier.

Plan to build involvement. How will you attract the volunteers you need and the participation you’re hoping for? Getting people connected to the school and to your group through family events and low-key activities is an important first step. Make sure a big part of your plan for the year focuses on building involvement. The better you do that, the easier everything else will become.

Use our tools. We have lots of free planning tools on ptotoday.com. Finances are not a sexy topic, but we have two terrific articles
that walk you through the basics of creating a budget for the year and figuring a budget for a specific event, even if it’s one you’ve
never run before. Our 2 Hour Power volunteer pledge program has proved to be a successful way to build involvement all year long. And ”9-Stress Busting Organization Tips” offers a nice list of objectives to make your year a success.

Recently their county school board announced a new policy that states that principals will no longer be able to hire extra teachers for their schools using operating funds. The reason: budget and equity concerns. The result: no more technology teacher, one very unhappy school parent group! Tough economic times mean tough budget and policy decisions all around. It also raises the question of what should PTO and PTA groups pay for?

The key point is that Fun Services is very much still going strong.  There had been some questions about what would happen, because Fun Services was technically a part of a big behind-the-scenes fundraising company called “Giftco”, which went into bankruptcy.   But the various Fun Services franchisees have been working throughout the transition, and now are on even stronger ground with the Rhode Island Novelty folks.

Will keep you informed of any other developments.

From my reading of various public documents, a few key items:

Membership – 5.16 million in 23,094 units.  Membership year earlier = approx. 5.4 million.

Revenue of national PTA = $12.5 million.  Revenue year earlier = $13.2 million. 

Expenses of national PTA = 13.2 million. Expenses year earlier = $13.1 million.

Net realized and unrealized loss on PTA investments (fancy term for stock market losses) in past year = $3.6 million.   (I think everyone who has a 401k knows that pain this past year. Ouch.)  Still a good chunk of assets ($14 million) as safety net even after that loss.

National PTA Employee Count 2009 = 81.  2008 = 73. 

My reading:  Expenses and employee count going up is going to be a tough mix with membership still going down.  It’s been several years now since last national dues increase.  Next increase has to at least be under consideration.  Was surprised that there seemed to be little if any questions re: these financials at the national meeting.