One more thing I want to stress in this. By allowing us to raise money this way instead of so many fundraisers we were able to concentrate on other things besides raising money!
Here are the basics...
We charge $4 per card and have a Membership Drive lasting 4 weeks in July and August(our school year starts July 1). We have 4 tracks, so 2 tracks only had a 2 week participation. The prizes were awarded to the classes with the highest student participation. All classes having at least 50% participation received a pizza party, certificate and recognition at the monthly awards assembly. The class on each track that had the highest participation won a pizza/popcicle party, certificate, recognition AND the Teacher got to spin our prize wheel at the assembly. The prize wheel had packages for the Teachers valued at $200-300 (spa visits, dinners, golf, etc). All prizes were donated by local businesses, the only thing we paid for was the pizza at $4.99 per large. A local printer agreed to donate the membership cards. These were just glorified business cards with a place for us to write in the member's name. We also had donated by the same printer, matching collection envelopes that went home with each of the kids. After a membership was received we had the card out to the parent within 1 day, the discount directory and a thank you card. On the thank you card it listed the meeting schedule for the entire year. The thank you cards were just printed up from my computer and copied at the school.
Now my take on why the participation jumped so much is that we hit the parent at the beginning of the school year. We showed them that we were prompt, courteous and wanted them at meetings. That we were working to give them something for the money ie: soliciting businesses to give them a discount. And last but not least we were promoting LOCAL businesses. Now with that start our participation in ALL events/activities went up. But the numbers show positively that by allowing the parent various ways to support the school through a catalog sale, membership drive and passive money making opportunities (meaning boxtops, rebates, webpage, etc), they could participate and support the school financially how best fit their lives.
Lisha,
Your profits doubled just because of parent involvment? Meaning that the fundraiser you did made more profits because more parents were helping? How much do you charge for your membership? You had the cards donated? Are they just business size cards that are laminated?
I appreciate all your answers. Going to bring this up at next board meeting. I think it is a great idea. Spoke about it on another area.
We have about 1200 students in a year round school and our membership went from 73 2 years ago to 500+ last year to over 600 this year! One of the biggest reason we have heard is that the members receive an "actual" membership card. We had a local printer donate 1500 of them. We stamped the year on the cards so that they have lasted us 2 years now! We also downloaded the City Chamber of Commerce listing from their website, sent a 1 page form letter to 150 businesses. Within 1 month we had 25 businesses offering discounts to PTG Members. We now print a brochure listing all the discounts and also a section called "free money" that tells the parents about things like boxtops, target or local grocery store rebates. In January our 2nd membership drive consists solely of sending out the updated brochure and a note explaining how to join if you have not already done so. Our fundraising efforts went from $30,000 2 years ago to almost $86,000 so far this year! AND we only have 1 catalog sale in the fall - we actually cut out the spring fundraiser!
We are going "High Tech" next year. The APT purchased a "Palm piolt" for inventory control in the Media Center this year with the understanding it would have multiple functions and the APT would also use it.
We will scan the "Bar code" that the school provieds to each student to check out books.
This will become the membership card.
We will also use this to track Visitors, Voulenteer reading minutes, Attendance at meeting and School sprit events.
We maintain a data base of all students & members and the info will be down loaded into it.
Dont waste time printing and signing cards.
I especially like the idea of including a
local 'discount incentive' on the back of the cards. Our local business owners will be happy to know the PTO is up and running again!
