JTina -

With so many fundraisers...how do you keep your parents (and teachers) from getting burned out?

Jane

We are a small school of 160 student’s grades prek3 - 5th grade with about 100 families. Last year we raised roughly $50k in fundraising money. Not to bad for a small school. How do we do it? We provide our parents with a wide variety of fundraisers and they can choose which ones to participate in. This way they do not feel forced to participate in ones just because. We have decided to put out a fundraiser booklet listing all the fundraisers. We also decided this year to do some that are online only fundraisers in case family and friends out of state would like to participate. Right now it seems we have a fundraiser a month. We have done entertainment books, sally foster gift wrapping, original art work, cold stone ice cream fundraiser, fall dinner, theme basket raffle. We have 3 book fairs lined up, a holiday breakfast, readathon, car washes, silent auction, golf tournament, cold stone again, fundraisers at stores that will give the store a % for everything sold that night. We have also signed up for Kroger's, Food Lion, Harris Teeter Fundraisers; we do box tops, soup labels, Target cards, recycle ink cartridges and old cell phones.

Thanks to all of you for the wonderful ideas and leadership advice. We think we took the right steps by reducing the budget and choosing a fund raiser that potentially could have earned 10K. It was important to us to have the parents vote and feel involved as much as possible. Although, it did not turn out the way we wished. It was at no fault of the vendor or us. Just a bad turn out. We know that families are struggling. We decided not to turn around another big fundraiser in thought that the parents would feel we are constantly asking for money. Instead, we summarized the current situation status in our monthly newsletter with another copy of the 2006-2007 budget. We are going to continue with our monthly Family School Nights at area restaurants and our free Family School Night events at the school. We took all of your suggestions and others I found on this site and created a new idea. At this time, we decided to have a Holiday Celebration & Craft Show. We are offering face painting, homemade crafts, story time, dinner and bake sale, and movie along with tables for craft vendors and a preview to the Gingerbread Shop. We are hoping all of these things will encourage the parents to donate and participate in PTO while enjoying a nice event with their families. Thanks again for the support and great ideas because all of your thoughts help to me.

If you are looking for an easy fundraiser with good profits try GBI Marketing and the Yankee Candle fundraiser. Too late for holiday but they have a spring fundraiser and it has done well every where we have used it. There is also the option of the Spring Flowering Bulbs from Dutch Mill Bulbs. Both are simple, good margins, easy to do, and the companies are GREAT to work with. Something different often does the trick. People might like to see something different!

You might want to try some fun nights at the school-- such as a Movie night-- or Family Bingo.
The cost out is very low and their is a potential for a good return on these events.
This is a fun way to get family and friends together.
The parents feel their getting something out of the event and it's not going to cost each family very much to have a great evening out.
Movie night is a small fee at the door $1.00 per person and have concessions and glow items available for purchase-- could have a 50/50 during an intermission.
And Bingo - you could charge $3-$4.00 per person -- they get a drink and maybe an ice cream or bag of chips plus they play 5-8 games of bingo with inexpensive prizes that the winners get to pick from. You again have a 50/50 and raffle drawing for some door prizes that were donated. We've done these for the past 2+ years and each year these events get larger.
Good luck!

I agree that you should try to push through another fundraiser. We had to pull together an emergency fundraiser last year, so we decided to do Helen Grace chocolate eggs. It was probably the easiest fundraiser we've had in years, and it was a huge success. We attributed the success to limiting the sale time (1 week) and limiting the choice of items (we did the egg sale rather than the full-blown spring catalog). They have holiday chocolates, too.

About the Fitness Challenge, we're doing that in the spring, also. This year's twist is that we're getting parents involved, and we're doing a Family Night tie-in at Souplantation (a salad bar buffet chain). The restaurant gives us a portion of the proceeds that evening.

Good luck!