Sit with your officers and make a list of what sounds good. Don't worry if you don't get to them all, we never do, but it gives us things for the next year.
We've done these in the past: School Mall magazines(they have a website), cookbooks, candy/cookies, school spirit t-shirts, Y-ties shoe laces(they have a website), school dances, fall festival, spring carnival, spaghetti suppers.
Don't forget about Box tops for education! This will bring in free money all year if you get it going and keep them interested.
I think to be really successful is to know the history of what the school has done in the past and most recently. Some ideas don't go over well at all and some get tired and old. Being new, ask some of the seasoned parents from the school what has been done in the past. The last thing you want is to go in with a list of suggestions and hereing the old "been there, tried that".
discount cards are great as well as scrips. It's not a huge money maker, but parents feel that they are helping their school with their normal purchases. Dance a thons, walk a thons, etc. can bring in a lot of money, but it all depends on participation and making it fun for the kids so they want to participate.
Oops meant to mention--we also very actively pursue our classrooms being adopted through adoptaclassroom.com. The teachers then receive around 500.00 to purchase things for their classrooms that directly benefit the childrens learning goals. This past year we had 31 classrooms adopted to the tune of about 16,000 dollars that went directly into the teachers hands....If you are not a part of the program it is worth checking out and usually all it takes is a note home requesting a donation (it is all tax deductible) and then a classroom parent to organize the classroom drive. As little as 20 dollars per family at our school gets us to the 500 dollar mark but really many families have small businesses and send in larger donations to use as tax deducations....d
My son's afterschool program ran a dance-a-thon using Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). Kids and some of us old folks love DDR. My son dragged me into it at the school and now we compete at home. It's pretty cool. I found information on it at www.digitaldanceathon.com
. It seems to be a new idea but one worth evaluating. I don't know anything about the company but our group was extremely satisified. Even the Principal danced - we probably shouldn't have laughed but she didn't seem to mind.
Hi Destiny--I think we do the normal stuff but this year instead of a sales event we're doing a Spirit Sprint where the children get sponsored to do laps in the PE area. We also get a local dojo to come in and donate free to the PTO, karate classes that we charge a 20 dollar fee for. The kids go to 8 classes and the only stipulation is they go to graduation at the dojo and the instructor gets to pitch his program (of course attendence to that is optional). We also do a 12 baskets of chistmas where we purchase longaberger baskets and then sell a raffle ticket that is entered into a drawing and there is one ticket pulled every day for 12 days. You can buy as many tickets as you'd like (I think we did them for 10 dollars a ticket) and if you win the winning ticket is withdrawn. We do a family bingo with classroom baskets that brought in around 4600 dollars and our "fair" brings in around 8k. Book fairs are run by our library (we assist) but she keeps all the proceeds to buy more books and the Santa Shop brings in around 4k. We use a santa shop sales program so there is very little risk. They drop some inventory and you can return what you don't sell.
Our summer supply purchase program usually makes about 4k for us as well...which helps fund our start up programs.
I am looking for ideas to take to the parents at the first PTO meeting after we decide who our officers are going to be. Now since not only am I new to this the school has had little luck with PTO I want to be able to wow the masses with wonderful ideas that are not only fun but profitable. Any ideas would be great. I am also wondering if anyone knows about the santa shop and the book fairs
