PTO/PTA questions

[Verity]

I have recently become more involved in PTO at my dds' school and I am curious how PTO/PTA is run at other schools. Ours is the typical SAHP-oriented schedule, and I would like to see some changes. I am also curious about what other PTOs/PTAs do to raise money. So...

When are your meetings?

What are your fundraisers? How successful are they?

[chellemarie]

I was a member of a parents group at our former elementary school. We weren't PTO/PTA by name. The meetings were (and still are) the third Thursday of every month at 6:00. (It used to be 6:30, but most members were able to come 30 minutes earlier. And then maybe get home for the last half of Survivor. )

I work outside the home full-time and was frustrated with the amount of business that was done when I was at the office. The group would make decisions (regarding events and committees I was heading up or a big part of) and they'd get changed when moms were visiting during school hours. I miss being a part of that group - but I don't miss that aspect of it. I missed out on some big discussions because I couldn't hang out for half an hour after drop-off or before pick-up.

The school enrollment is just under 500 students. They did Club's Choice fundraising. I think it was very successful - $13,000+ in sales. (Not sure now how much of that was profit for the school. Or if that was the profit? Perhaps.) Club's Choice was reasonably priced for fundraiser food and it was usually good stuff. (Like, Twinkie good. Not farmer's market good.)

Schwan's runs a fundraising program. I'd look into that. A friend who is involved in her local PTA has had great success with cookie dough sales.

It's a good idea to run your fundraisers in the spring. Most schools here do their sales in the fall when school starts. We had less competition after Christmas.

[Verity]

Thanks for your post!

I like the idea of shifting our bigger fundraisers to spring. Parents are hit with so much at the beginning of the year, and then holidays.

[kewb]

I am involved with our schools PTO. The meetings are the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm. I wish it was 7 but all the other moms wanted 7:30. The meeting is the only working mom friendly thing, IMO.

I wanted to join the fitness committee but could not because the meetings could only be done at 9:30am.

Plant Sale-8:30 (when school starts) to 3:30 (half hour after school ends). I have inquired about having one day of the sale until 6:30 for the working parents and I was told the kids can buy plants during the school day. I refuse to buy plants.

Our biggest fund raiser is the Golf Outing in the Spring. It was this working moms idea. This working mom brings the most corporate sponsorships with all the money.

We do a typical fall fundraiser and a typical Spring one in addition to the golf outing. The overpriced foods, wrapping paper, gifts. I just donate a check. I don't need the merchnadise.

We have also sell Scrip. It is a fairly easy fundraiser and runs all year. This is the company we use: http://www.glscrip.com/

[chellemarie]

Our private school does Scrip. We can designate 2% of our Scrip purchases to reduce our tuition. Gas and groceries for us alone makes a difference (enough to pay the band teacher each month, easily) but getting our extended family involved is even better. Most companies offer more than a 2% discount, so our school keeps the other portion of it to buy things for the classrooms.

Kathy - How do you do the Golf Outing? That sounds interesting.

[robin4kids]

OMG is Scipt a lot of work!

We did it for 3 years and unless you have the money to buy all the gift cards up front and sell them, than it is not worth it!!!! People hate to pay for a gift card and then wait a few days to get it. Plus you really have to sell a lot to make all the time put in worth it. I would sit at church and sell them for the school and then figure out we only made like $5-10 or less.

Our school puts on an auction. We are a very small school, and we are not wealthy. We do however make at least 10K every year. People donate new stuff. Sometime people donate a skill, like they will knit whatever someone wants or they will cook a dinner for 6. We try to get donations from stores as well.

We serve wine, beer and snack foods and offer babysitting, so parents can come with children, but not have them under foot. It is a lot of fun, because we like to bid against our friends and "ruffle their feathers."

[chellemarie]

Our school keeps as much local scrip on hand as possible. When my dh picks the kids up from school on Wednesday, he runs in and writes a check. They give him scrip. We use that for groceries and gas. If our family members need scrip, he gets it when we get ours.

If you can buy a bunch right away, and re-invest for a while, it can be a great thing. 2% of our gas and groceries plus 2% of our family members' gas and groceries adds up fast. It's worth the extra planning for us.

Silent auctions are awesome for fundraising.

[3boysmom]

Our meetings are the first Tuesday of each month at 7:30 pm - except for one meeting per year which is held at 10 am for those moms that say they can't attend evening meetings because they have little ones. This is our second year using direct donation as our fundraiser. We used to do the usual...giftwrap, candy, notecards, book fair,etc. but we found it more and more difficult to get volunteers to run these programs and folks got tired of always being asked to buy/sell something. Besides, the school only benefits from a portion of sales with those methods. Direct Donation has been a huge hit because parents give their one time per year donation ($50-$100 per child is average) and ALL of the funds go to the school. It is tax deductible and there is no hassle or time involved. I love writing my yearly check and knowing that every penny benefits the kids and I don't have to buy any overpriced junk that I really don't need. Love it!

[kewb]

Originally Posted by 3boysmom

I don't have to buy any overpriced junk that I really don't need. Love it!

That is why I always just write a check to the PTO for the amount I would have spent on the useless stuff. Why do I need to support some company when I really want to support the school.

Golf Outing:
It helps if you have some golfer parents. They will know which courses are the best for doing this on. If you don't have golfer parents-you need to do a bit more research.

Start planning it in September. You need to reserve a week-date. We usually do ours in May. Go to car dealerships and see if one is willing to donate a car for a whole in one prize. Usually no one wins and the dealership gets good publicity.

Do an ad journal. Sell ads to local business' & parents. You can buy full page, 1/2 page, or business card.

Sell Tee Sponsorships. Business gets a sign.

Sell Corporate Foursomes: This includes a foursome, tee sponsor, and an ad.

Sell sponsorship of breakfast & lunch or lunch and dinner (depending on your tee time).

Prizes: Get business' to donate prizes for worst golfer, most honest, best score, worst score, whatever you can think of. If you get enough prizes you can do a raffle as well.

Make sure parents know sponsorship is open to anyone. The first year our school did it the organizer wanted to keep all the sponsorships local. It is a nice idea but it limits who you can get funds for. This is about raising money for the school not supporting local business.

I am sure I am forgetting something but this is it in a nutshell.

[Verity]

We do scrip at our school and do pretty well with it. The problem is that people have to be willing to plan ahead and to write checks. We do take credit cards, but with a $300 minimum, and very few people buy that much scrip at once. (My family puts everything on a cash-back credit card so I rarely buy scrip. : ) We're also looking into something called schoolpop, where merchants donate back to schools via online shopping.

We are trying to phase out gift wrap sales because everyone is soooo burned out on it. We're trying to push for more direct donations, but I don't know how well that will work when we're still doing gift wrap and a spring carnival. (We actually did pretty well with the carnival last year--lots of local businesses donated food or paid for inflatables--but something like that is soooo labor-intensive.) We were thinking of ditching gift wrap sales this year, but we had already signed a contract for this fall.

We looked into a "boosterthon" fun run that is run by an outside company, but decided against it for various reasons.

We had a silent auction for years, but it was dropped due to some personality issues.

The golf fundraiser might work well here--lots of golfers/golf courses in our area.

[LiamnEmma]

Verity, can you tell us more about schoolpop? link please? PTA meeting tomorrow night.

[Verity]

Here's a link:

http://www.schoolpop.com

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "About" to get more information about the company.

Ds's old school used schoolpop, but I haven't talked to anyone about how well they have done with it. (I really don't know anyone there anymore since it was five years ago and we were only at the school for a year.)

[LiamnEmma]

Thanks Verity!