posted on September 2, 2002 12:56:37 PM new
As an actively involved parent in my children's school PTO, I am interested to hear more about fund raising activities that your PTA/PTO is involved in - I`m always on the look out for new ideas for raising money to bring up for discussion at PTO meetings.
One program I started at my children's preschool and elementary school is a plastic grocery bag recycling program - families collect clean plastic grocery bags from participating stores, send them to a company called Enviro-Bag, who recycles the bags into garbage bags which are then stocked on the shelves of the participating stores. The schools can earn up to $1.00 per pound of clean plastic bags. If you think your school PTO might be interested in this fund raising activity, check out website http://www.envirobag.com. It`s a great way to teach the kids about recycling and earning money for the school at the same time.
Another great fund raiser is the Scrip program, whereby you pre-buy gift certificates and participating merchants donate a percentage of the face value of the gift certificate to the school. If you are not familiar with this program, please check out website http://www.glscrip.com. The beauty of this fund raiser is that it does not cost the parents any additional monies - you use your existing shopping habits, and with a little pre-planning, can earn money for your school without spending extra dollars. This program helped pay for $45,000 worth of new playground equipment at our local elementary school!
K-Mart stores have a "school spirit" card program where a certain percentage of your purchase amount is donated to the school of your choice. It isn't a credit card type program - when you sign up you indicate your school of choice, then you receive a card and everytime you make purchases at K-mart, you show them the card and it keeps a tally of your total purchases and amount donated to schools.
Target stores donate a percentage of your total purchase amount when using a Target charge card.
Gordon Food Service stores offer a "fun funds" card and, like the K-Mart school spirit card, a percentage of your total purchase of "fun funds foods" (foods specifically marked for inclusion in the fun funds program) gets donated to the school of your choice.
There are also the Campbell's soup label and General Mills Box Tops for Education programs to generate additional monies for schools.
Other successful fund raising programs at my children's schools include a gift catalog sale (wrapping paper, various candies, household knick knacks, etc., school carnival, and flower bulb sale.
I'd love to hear how other PTO/PTA members help generate much needed funds for their community schools.
posted on September 19, 2002 09:10:28 AM new
For those PTO parents who are involved in some type of gift catalog fund raiser for your child(ren)'s school, I am interested in learning more details about it. Do you spend a lot of time processing the orders; does the catalog company you work with offer free product for folks to try/sample; how much profit does the school make from this one fund raiser; how involved is the gift catalog company in helping you understand the overall process; does the company offer tours of its facilities so you can actually watch your school's orders get filled?
I am heading up my son's elementary gift catalog fund raiser this year and am working with a company that is wonderful to work with! They provided sample products for us to give away on Parent Night at school (parent orientation for new parents on the workings of the school, meeting teachers and staff; annual review of the budget, etc.) - we gave everyone a ticket as they walked in the door and had a drawing at the end of the meeting to award the free products.
The gift catalog company prepares packets to be sent home to each student, including a cover letter for parents, catalog, and order form. They also print up order due reminder notes and delivery pickup reminder notes that get distributed to all students/staff. They also help set up the merchandise on delivery pickup day - having each order sorted by teacher name and sub-sorted by student name.
The company has a website (http://www.midlandfundraising.com/), where out-of-town friends/relatives can place orders and have the school get credit for the sale. They also provide tours for students who are interested in learning more about the process - they may even get a chance to see their own school's orders being processed!
This particular fund raiser last year raised over $8000 profit for the school (the school receives 54% of the overall sales, before taxes). I'm curious to know how other PTO sponsored gift catalog fund raisers are run - what works well, what needs improvement, etc.
