We just had a longtime volunteer parent pass right before school started. She helped run many of our fundraisers and her whole family is a big part of our school community. We voted at our Sept meeting to add a piece of playground equiptment with a dedication plaque attatched. We are redoing our playgrounds this year as it it, and the playground committee is going to let us purchase one of the pieces they were going to buy.

Last year the 5 year old daughter of our Resource Teacher was diagnosed with cancer. Our school, "not the PTO" held a raffle for her. PTO members helped to promote the raffle by calling local businesses for donations for the raffle prizes. The PTO itself paid a total of $10 for City and State permits needed to hold the raffle.
This was very well received from our families. Tickets were sold for $1 each and almost $10,000 was raised, and we are a title one school (which means we have mostly middle to lower income families). Parents were happy to help and the kids were thrilled to be a part of helping this little girl pay for even a small amount of medical care that she needed.
However, if you still feel uncomfortalbe with the raffle, our school also had another fundraiser. Again, the school (principal) in conjunction with a local McDonalds held a "McTeacher's Night". All of our faculity and staff worked at the local McDonald's (making fries and serving food) for a two hour time frame, 6 - 8pm. The owner of that McDonalds donated 40% of all sales that were generated in that time frame. The children from our school along with family and friends pour out in droves to have dinner at McDonalds within those two hours. The 5 year old little girl attended with her parents and the local news stations covered the story. IT WAS A FABULOUS EVENT!!!!!!! Over $2,200. was raised.

These events not only helped a 5 year old little girl with cancer, and her family, it helped teach our kids compassion, support and the art of giving, as well as how to be greatful for what you have. It was amazing to see our elementary school aged children, ban together to help a little girl they had never met. In these crazy times of " I want, I want, I want, from our kids, it was overwhelming to see them "give give give give give".

Thank you for the responses. It kind of told me what I was already thinking. I hope if someone has held a raffle, the will respond and tell how they did it. I agree someone outside of the PTO should hold the raffle, or have a committee to handle this type of situation. Thanks again!

I'm with JHB--I think as a PTO we have to understand that we are setting precedents when we take on this type of support. If then you are willing to do this for everyone at the school if a tragedy befalls them then you can move forward--if not then having something that is not PTO oriented is probably best. You could possibly collect gift cards to restaurants that the family can use as they go through the process of recovering and the sole parent has the requirement for meals reduced. We've found that families get so much food donated after a tragedy that the gift cards worked well since they didn't expire or "go bad" and the parents could use them as they needed to.

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We just had the parent of a student pass away - he was 35 and they had 4 children of varying ages. We put together a basket of games, coloring books, either donated and what we had on hand or from the dollar store plus a couple of gift cards to say we were thinking of them. Nothing fancy - we tried to think of something that we would appreciate if we were in the same situation and we thought it best to keep the kids occupied.

I understand the potential problem but we kept it very simple and low cost and hope we did the right thing.

You've exactly defined the problem. Unless one of your PTO's objectives is to maintain a "Sunshine Committee" and has a way to manage these situations, my advice is to stay away from them as a formal activity of the group.

That being said, if a group of parents wants to take that on - but not in the PTO's name - wonderful. The PTO could help promote it, just like it might announce or include in its newsletter any activity of interest to school families. but I wouldn't recomment the organization run it or manage the funds.