I think you should come up with a survey of ideas for parents to rate. We are in the process of changing fundraising...somewhat. We do a brochure sale the first of the school year which brings in around 25k, which I am refusing to drop. We also do a school carnival in March which brought in 5k. Those are our 2 staple fundraisers. In between those nexy year we will do a santa shop and family fun nights. Family fun nights aren't huge fundraisers but more of a give back to the families for supporting the school and forking over as much money as they do. We tested our family fun night (they've never actually done them before at this school) and had a beach party with a dj and it was such a huge blast I had some parents that attended call me up and offer for next time. One parent has a full karoke set and said he had such a great time he'd be willing to bring his karoke set to the school for a family fun night and let us use it and his service for free.......
I agree that making $60 per family is going to be tough, and luckily if we have a bust year, no specific budget its blown. The funds from our fall fundraiser go specifically to things that directly benefit the classrooms and the teachers (like a large laminator, a woodcut machine, things that aren't in the regular school budget), but they are, in fact, discretionary. Hopefully we will be able to do okay, but I am not sure.
We will be doing all the art at school, either through the classrooms or with the help of the art teacher, so everyone will participate in the initial step.
The problem with the wrapping paper thing for us is that about 2/3 of our school is kindergarten and younger, so there is no participation of children really at all in catalog sales, the kids are not even aware of it, and we don't do prizes (which is in part because the kids are young and, moreover, philosophical). I'll have to check about our percent participation, I don't remember, but I believe it is over 50%. But there were a handful of families who sold $200-$500 worth of wrapping paper, and a lot who had very small orders. I am pretty sure that our families who sold lots of wrapping paper are also very likely to buy Christmas presents for the relatives with the children's art on them, so maybe it will work out.
Our PTA is struggling with this issue now. We want to phase out our wrapping paper fundraiser as it's just not making the money. People are tired of it, but we are meeting resistance from the board members who are afraid to try anything new, and also don't want to hurt the rep's feelings.
If people want to keep the one that's a lot of work, I'd suggest THEY try running it; it's easy to want something and a lot harder to work for it! Try phasing in something new, Kidstuff books or something like that. We tried the artwork one (greeting cards) two years ago with little success. It was expensive, and people felt they could do it at home on the computer themselves. I'd ask yourselves if you're more interested in one big fundraiser that might be a lot of work for a couple of months, but then you're off the hook, or if you would be willing to do a couple of smaller ones during the year with less work as a trade off.
You're smart to know how much per family you need to earn. Can you realistically earn that with the kids art work program, keeping in mind that parents will have to spend maybe $120 to earn $60?
We have done the artworks project, and parents love it, but we wouldn't ever get the level of participation we get with a traditional brochure fundraiser. If your students ALL make a good-quality picture in art class, then send home the sales brochure, you might increase sales. But when we relied on parents getting Susie to do the artwork at home, particpation dropped to virtually 0.
Do you know what percent of your families typically participate in a fundraiser? Ours is about 50%, so for us to make a specific level of funding, we have to assume only about half our families will participate. (And that stat is based on traditional sales catalog fundraising so it wouldn't necessarily apply to a new project).
When we evaluate a new major fundraiser, we need to keep in mind that more than just parents or grandparents buy from a catalog fundraiser. On average, our catalog orders come from about 4 different customers per student, so the sales volume is spread over more than just one family. We tried a "no fuss" fundraiser many years ago, with poor results. Our families would have to donate $74 per student to match the sales from our catalog (taking into consideration how many families wouldn't participate anyway, and the average profit from each particpating student in a sales campaign). People laughed when I captured these statistics, but it helps us make better decisions. Good luck!
Two years ago we did catalogue wrapping paper, as well as cheesecake and cookie dough. Keeping the perishables cold until pick-up was extraordinarily difficult, so we didn't do that again. We just did wrapping paper catagogue last year and this year. I think our profit went from $10,000 with the perishables, $8,000 last year, to $7,000 this year. We decided that people are burnt out on wrapping paper and this catalogue in particular. So now our president wants to do the objects made from kids' art for next year. (There is some appeal to this because the school is mostly VERY little kids.)
So we all just go from one fund-raiser to the next. What was the kid-art company you used? We were looking at originalworks.com.
This past year we made less than $50 per family, less than $40 per kid. For our fall fundraiser, it would be really good for us to make $60 or so per family.
My two cents:
Cutting your budget because the new fundraiser did poorly is a VERY bad experience.
If you have some savings to pick up the the slack if you don't do well, then you can be more adventurous. I would make them prioritize which groups will get less money if you don't do well. It will prepare you and maybe make them stop to think that it's not worth the risk.
Maybe they would be happier if you rearranged how the current one is done. What exactly is the problem? Can you fix it without switching fundraisers? Maybe the rep can help you with ideas on that.
