Less is More - Get Rid of School Fundraisers that Don't Perform...

So, If you had a chance to read my last post entitled  Your school should keep records on fundraising trends You may be a bit more aware of the importance of your past fundraising data. 

Your past successes and failures in the school fundraising department can help you immesurably in how you structure your future school fundraising.  You can use past data to understand what works and what doesn't for your particular school.

When you take a look at the past school fundraising results or remember back to what didn't work so well, can you point to any of the following examples as being true for you?  Go  ahead and ask yourself the following questions:

-Did you have a spirit night or other event that generated little income?


-Was there a fundraiser that you marketed well that made under a thousand dollars?


-Have any of your fundraisers required an unreasonable amount of man-hours to pull off?

-Have you incurred rental fees on any fundraisers that barely broke even?

-Have you tried a type of fundraiser that is so new and unique that parents and the community didn't support it?


-Have you received a much larger number of complaints from any one fundraiser?


-Did you use your printed and email newsletters to promote a box tops, soup label or recycling program instead of your main fundraiser?

-Have you ever fallen short of your fundraising goal?


-Have you hosted safety nights or other educational or community service events and called them fundraisers?

-Have you added fundraisers to make up for lost fundraising income?

-Have you sold a single product that wasn't as popular as anticipated?


-Do you require approval for all fundraisers at the school?


-Are fundraisers allowed to operate one after another?

-Do you believe parents will only be satisfied with new and unique fundraisers?

Perhaps one or more of the above situations are true for you and your school.  We know there are a lot of considerations and that's why there are professional out there to help.  You can call my company or any other reputable elementary school fundraising company  and get honest advice free of charge.  Good fundraising companies should allow you to choose them and not try to take your desire for straight-up information the wrong way and pester you.

Regardless of your interest in calling around for advice, may I suggest you check my blog out again since I am planning a follow up to this post with some answers to the questions raised here.

In the end, you may be able to get rid of at least one fundraiser by using the questions above. Not every fundraiser or fundraising type will be right for your school so looking closely at the effort and results will certainly help you put things into perspective.

As usual, thanks so much for looking and I appreciate your comments more than anything else.  If you can, please just write me a little ditty below - good or bad.  Thanks!

PTA Advice - 4 Steps to Speaking Kindly of Others

It's clearly not a topic or advice only for a PTA group but here's the real deal:

As part of a PTA, PTO, PTSA or PTSO group, you have a responsibility to be kind and encouraging. Through this practice, you will also become more productive as a group and volunteers will feel part of a successful team.

You and your volunteers can be involved very happily and sometimes, it's just a matter of how people are treated.

“if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Of course, you know your group well and I don't. Regardless of the dynamics of your PTA, PTO, PTSA or PTSO group you may be able to change something in perhaps a small way to better include and encourage members.

Instructions for Speaking Kindly to Others:

1) Listen

Become conscious of your surroundings. When you talk to someone or overhear a conversation, are you able to recognize words that are untrue or hurtful? Do you hear someone being put down in order to raise another? Active listening will allow you to actually begin to hear some of the words that bring others down.

2) Take Note

Take note of your conversations. In your discussions daily, do you make a lot of negative comments or complaints that you can become aware of? If there were a news crew filming your conversation, how would you reword your conversation? Take a note of any consistencies you notice.

3) Be aware / Make change

Change your behavior. Replace negative words with positive ones. Replace 'I' with 'We' when it comes to discussions of the PTA. Replace 'No' with 'Yes'. Take sentences with direct blame i.e. 'She did this and now this happened' out of your vocabulary. Speaking kindly requires the use of positive words and being conscious of positive word choice is probably the most difficult part.

4) Practice.

We all know that practice makes perfect. When replacing long-standing bad habits with good ones, give it time. You will eventually replace negative phrases with others and it will become natural.

Remember that if you ever feel stuck you can say nothing. A simple 'I'm not sure right now how I feel about that' and move on - just don't allow your body language to do the speaking for you in that moment :)

You can make a positive impact on your PTA, PTO, PTSA or PTSO group by being encouraging and speaking kindly of others! It's O.K., give it a try!

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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising. Believe Kids provides school fundraisers to elementary and middle schools and groups nationwide. Please comment here and also at twitter and thanks for looking!

School Fundraisers that Flop, Pt. II - The Laws of Supply and Demand

Schools are being challenged this year more than ever and what's happening out there is very sad indeed. Take a look at the Alum Rock Union School District music program. They just hosted a fundraiser only to have just a few dozen attendees - no doubt a crowd comprised mostly of the parents of musicians.

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Here's the story:
Schools try fundraisers to save music, sports, small classes
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Now, I feel pretty bad that a music program has to spin their wheels like this. I also think that music and art are not 'extra' and believe they should be funded along with the three R's but that's a story for another day.

Here's some sound fundraising advice - Think things through.

In order to really evaluate the potential success or failure of your fundraiser, you've got to dis-associate yourself from your love of what you do. Go ahead, pull back, release your passion, relax your posture a bit and look objectively at what is going on. If you have an expert or a way to reach an expert you should consult them before the event is planned if you can. Back to our current example.

Today, two things are happening:

1) The climate of fundraising in schools is resistant - meaning that people are more likely to resist your fundraising efforts than support them.

2) A concert or whatever fundraiser you offer is in essence, a commodity (in this case entertainment) and there is a value associated with it. What this means is that your event is subject to the laws of supply and demand.

So, Unless your event is mandatory, you are not going to gain attendance simply because of an obligation to your fundraising event. In fact, if you look at the example above, the band concert most likely was attended by folks that felt obligated. I'm guessing that not many came out because of the entertainment (I feel bad saying that, but the event needed to be more special in order to draw a crowd).

Secondly, your event has a retail value. In order to price the tickets, I believe two things are true. You want to price the tickets low enough to pack the auditorium but you want to maximize your returns as well.

Ask yourself what a going rate price is for a similar event. Ask yourself what you would pay to see just the activity and take the fundraiser aspect of it out of your mind. There are not many tickets that are $20 out there for bands that do not have some fame. That turns out to be $40 per couple and that's a lot for a school function. Unfortunately, I know that many similar concerts are free or maybe just a few dollars and many in the summer are outdoors as well.

In order to stay competitive, a lower ticket would have increased ticket sales and then something else could have been introduced to increase revenue such as concession sales, some sort of vendor rental, art sale, auction, drawing or raffle.

A theme of some sort could have been introduced to attract a targeted audience in larger numbers. Instead of just folks that love Jazz, perhaps having a children's song set would have been enough to market to parents of younger children. I'm not saying this is what they should have done, just an illustration of some way to make the event draw other than a concert by a band. This is a concert - for kids - by a band and that has more appeal. Come up with your own ideas here though because I am really just making that up and have no idea if that would draw folks out or not but I do believe there is a way to add a more targeted audience to nearly everything and gain participation.

So, in the end, think things through, make every effort to make your events special and memorable and consider that when hosting a fundraiser, you are subject to laws of supply and demand.

Unfortunately, today's school budgets are creating quite a supply of fundraisers so you have to create that demand by making it special!

Best of luck out there!

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Jay Moneta is the Vice President of Believe Kids Fundraising with headquarters in Englewood, CO. I blog about school fundraising here on www.fundraising-advice.com and can be reached on twitter - twitter.com/BelieveKids

If you enjoy the content here on my blog, please take a moment to forward on the link or comment here. Thanks for looking!