I agree with Critter. Don't fundraise your families to death. Use your volunteers wisely. Some of these collection programs can use quite a bit of volunteer time for not much return. Ink and toner cartridge programs can be pretty easy but you'll have to compete with Office Depot and Staples to get much participation. Use your volunteers instead to plan a fundraising event. Or if you've already got your fundraising event in the pipeline, have them plan an overlay fundraiser at that event like a raffle. You'll make much more money and an event isn't "in your face" fundraising. Look for fundraising events and
raffles
at FundraiserHelp.com
UPromise has a schools program too. Register your credit/debit cards and shopping cards and a portion goes to your school.
Upromise - Save for College - Welcome
There are also ompanies that will collect used clothing and give you money per pound. If your school has two collections per year (when parents are getting ready for the next season, you can hold a clothing drive. They pick up the clothes in bags, boxes - whatever and take it.
I don't have the names of the companies any longer, but you may want to google it or check your local newpapers, phone book etc.
I agree that for some of the things you are collecting, you need a volunteer to coordinate the collection & delivery of the items. So try use the programs such as Staples Rewards, Target red card bucks to obtain extra funds - no volunteers are necessary except to draft the memo to the parents!
One word of caution about these kinds of fundraisers.
Every program you adopt consumes precious volunteer time. You need to have someone (or at least part of someone) oversee the program, handle the upc's or whatever, communicate with the company, and market it to your parents. Though most of these programs are very little effort on the surface, and of course all are "optional" for your parents, they tend to return very little money to your PTO. And on the flip side, from the perspective of your parents, your PTO is always sending fundraising messages out. Yes, they are easy fundraisers. Yes they involve things you would probably just throw away anyway. But again, the message consumes valuable "customer" attention (your parents). Is it the message you really want to imprint on your parents? Would it be more beneficial in the long run if your PTO was constantly reminding parents about the upcoming enrichment programs, or the family nights? We all have a limited attention span, and as parents of school-age kids, we are BOMBARDED with info and flyers and emails from school. For a PTO, or any group marketing itself, it's iimportant to be somewhat selective about the messages you send home so the really important ones make it thru our mental spam filters (and off the kitchen counter onto the refrigerator).
Could you maybe earn more money by redirecting that precious volunteer to some other project? Or to some enrichment program your PTO wants to offer? Or to that new familiy night you want to try?
Over the years, we've dropped several "easy" fundraisers and have stuck only with cartridges and Kroger. We earned about $9K total from these two last year (580 families). That's volunteer time well spent.
Debbie's "Cash for Trash" program sounds like a good way to manage all these little programs if your group really wants to participate in several. If all the marketing is done at once, for all the individual programs under the Cash for Trash umbrella, then at least your parents aren't getting pelted with many separate appeals. Just keep in mind it's still alot for your families to filter ("do I save the UPC or the special logo on this bag of chicken??").
I am in northern lower Michigan and these are our "Cash for Trash" programs items:
Box Tops for Education
Campbell's UPCs
Spartan product UPCs
Fast Fixins Home Team Advantage
Tyson Project A+
Perfection Bakeries Soft n Good School Spirit Logo & UPCs
Grocery receipts from Northland Food & Family Center AND SaveALot
Used printer cartridges and cell phones
We earn between $3500 and 5500 each year with just these items.
We are also enrolled with Target, Meijer and Glen's Market to earn cash for customer puchases when the customer presents a card or ID number. Direct TV has a program we are enrolled in to earn $100 for new hookups. Sara Lee has a program also for their stores. We're enrolled but haven't earned anything since they aren't in our town.
Good luck!
