We're pretty darn sure every school and PTA, PTO, PTSA, PTSO and all sorts of other groups get tons of fundraising offers every year. What if I told you there was a secret. Something that school fundraising companies don't want you to know.
Yes, there's a secret.
But first a bit of perspective. Fundraising companies want to sell their products or services. They aren't interested in if it's good for you, your school, your parent group or even your community. They have goods to sell, plain and simple.
So, what's the secret?
It's quite obvious that when presenting an offer, you want to put your best foot forward. This means that anything that is a negative will be hidden from view.
Here it is...
Fundraising companies that do not produce results will want to hide the following:
• The participation rate of students in their program
• The average sale of students in their program
• Profit margin, hidden fees, shipping cost etc.
• Your anticipated profit based on your school specifics
• Most frequent negative comment about their product or service
To cut to the chase, as a parent group member in a PTA, PTO, a school administrator or other group leader, it's your duty to uncover what is hidden beneath. A good fundraising company will tell you what to expect and how your sale should turn out. A low participation, low profit fundraiser will tell you that it's going to be easy and exciting for students and attempt to leave out the rest.
Why does all this matter?
You may want to have multiple revenue streams at your school so that have consistent fundraising and income but there's a bit of a problem. Parents will only participate in so many fundraisers before they pass on one.
If you have consistent fundraising going on, let's just hope they don't pass on your main fall heavy-hitting fundraiser!
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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising and encourages any and all comments, suggestions and feedback here on this blog or via twitter - twitter.com/believekids
If you found this information helpful, please forward this on to someone who can benefit from the information and contact me via www.BelieveKids.com anytime.
3 comments:
I think another important thing that many companies leave out are product samples. If a company makes a presentation and just shows pictures of the items there might be room for concern. PTO members should have access to product samples and it is even more beneficial for parents to see them too prior to the sale, such as at an open house.
I couldn't agree more and thanks for your comment! Photos can be deceiving so in order to protect the PTO reputation in the end, seeing those products first-hand is a great idea!
oh, and I did write a blog post about this recently as well: http://believejay.blogspot.com/2010/04/you-should-see-fundraising-samples.html
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