ptofire;143746 wrote: Check with your local Applebees. I am a new PTO president and getting re-started after 4 years without an organized group. I have been to our local applebees for a pancake breakfast for a local schools high school band several lyears ago. I called & booked one for our school in the fall. They do most of the work you provide about 10 volunteers at a time (we are going to do one hour shifts). Great profit potential and only one morning of work! they provide all promotional materials! It feels like a good one so far........

How did this work out for you? Did you have a good turnout and make a good profit? I've never heard of our Applebees doing anything like this.

There are many options out there.......But the numbers are getting smaller. Companies buying other companies, see the Time purchase of QSP in PTO today.

I have been an active parent for nearly 20 years. There are very few things that I haven't seen tried at some point in that time.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing is to have organization. If you don't put effort into the advertising you will not be successful.

Look for ways to fund raise while having FUN, and do the things that parents don't know they are being fundraised. The restaurants don't raise their prices yet they give you 10 or 15 %.


Want a successful event get the parents involved. When I first started being active the PTO would send home a flyer begging for help in a variety of areas, and then guess what happened , NO ONE would get called.

I immediately took hold of the list the following year, and called every volunteer every month, if we didn't need them, I would tell them that, but thank them for volunteering.

I am no longer at an elementary, but I am a firm believer in bringing in companies that know what they are doing.

For years we had a carnival company come and do our festival, and yes we wrote them a big check. Then we had some people think we could do it better, first year we profited the same amount of money as the previous year, yet we had an additional 100 hours of work, tracking this and tracking that and ordering this and ordering that. We were actually short game workers the actual night of the carnival since we had used so many people to do the extra work.

I tried to explain that I didn't feel it was worth the extra work, but we tried it again the following year. Total disaster.........people didn't want to help since it was so much work, they spent less money(several friends told me that the prizes were so junky the previous year that they brought less money.) When we used a company they would bring in nicer prizes and take back any unused one, there wasn't inventory sitting in the PTO room.

We switched back to the company, but it took us almost 3 years to get back to our old profit. Parents don't have money to waste these days, get the best programs for your students and volunteers.

Not trying to rain on anybody's parade. But please be careful, we have a strict policy about reimbursement of expenses. When you have 4-8 people all running around buying things there is always a chance of someone using the PTO money for personal use. If you order out of catalogs, make sure that another person checks in the order, we caught a mom supplimenting her kids birthday parties out of our treasure chest prizes. I don't care if it's $1 or $100 dollars that isn't there money.

We did the McDonalds last year. It was the first time they had let a PTO have a night. I don't know if we made enough for them to start letting PTO's have a night. Guess we will see. We made about $370 that night.

We also did the concession stand at the DARE Dances in town. Each school that wants to participate gets two nights. This was also a first for our PTO. Each time we brought in about $450 a dance, after expenses. Well worth the effort. And both of our dances brought in about $100 more than the other schools.

We also do the Spiritwear sale. We are a low income school and made about $450. We have expanded our line this year and also offer a faculty only line too! I am excited to see how this turns out.

I had us signed up for concession stand at the high school games, but could not come up with enough volunteers to pull it off. Thought this year about asking another elementary school to send some of their volunteers and split the profit.

Did the cookbook thing in the past, took several years to sell all the cookbooks, although we made enough to cover the expenses in the fist couple months. Just remember getting rid of the last few cookbooks last year that were ordered in 2001.

Used FunServices Midwest for our Christmas shop and cleared about $500 and was able to send back ALL unsold merchandise, unlike with other companies we used in the past.

We have Family Nights at local restaurants usually once a month. All it takes is a flyer to each student, distributed the week before and the day before or morning of the event. The school bore the cost of printing and school staff and teachers distributed to students. We average $400 an event. Also many of our parents have commented that it's a great way to grab a bite AND catch up/get together with their neighbors and friends.

Check out keyanorea.org Very simple once it's set up no labor on re-orders. Hope it helps.

Check with your local Applebees. I am a new PTO president and getting re-started after 4 years without an organized group. I have been to our local applebees for a pancake breakfast for a local schools high school band several lyears ago. I called & booked one for our school in the fall. They do most of the work you provide about 10 volunteers at a time (we are going to do one hour shifts). Great profit potential and only one morning of work! they provide all promotional materials! It feels like a good one so far........