Instead of mandating 'x' number of fundraisers, why not do it the other way around. Look at your final budget... how much do you need to make to run all your programs (that is one $ amount) and how much do you want to make to cover those and any incidentals that you would like to purchase for the school throughout the year (another $ amount). You must have enough fundraisers to get the former $ amount and want to have enough fundraisers to reach the latter $ amount. (hope this is clear).
Once you know those 2 things, list each fundraiser with the most profitable first to least profitable last. Total them up from the top until you reach the amount of $ you need to generate. That is the correct # of fundraisers you should run. Remember that you can also switch from year to year with fundraisers so if you discontinue someones favorite this year, ask them to chair it for your next year.
Good luck.
HOLY SMOKES!!! 35 fundraisers?! That's got to be a record breaking number.
Our school board of education has a policy that each building can only use students (i.e. wrapping paper, cookie dough, etc) twice per year for fundraising. We could still do other types of fundraisers such as spaghetti dinners or auctions, etc. At the two buildings that our group supports, the schools use them in the fall and our PTO gets them in the spring for our magazine sale.
I am surprised that more school districts don't have a fundraising policy. Our bylaws state in our missions/purposes that we fundraise only to support our programs. Have you checked your bylaws to see if fundraising is addressed there?
I don't have anything written down but maybe you could have something written up that states that any fundraiser MUST have a reason. A lot of times you have a fundraiser and it just goes to general funds for whatever happens to be needed.
If you can only come up with so many things to pay for then you can only have fundraisers for those particular things.
And maybe throw in some free sign up fundraisers that still earn the school money but at no cost to the parents or pto/pta.
You don't necessarily have to lower it to an exact number, just make sure that it is definately going to one place or another.
Hope I am not suggesting something that you have already thought!
Last school year we ended up with over 35 fundraising evnets - if you include everything that went home to parents asking them to purchase something or attend something. After that chaos the Exec Bd of our PTO decided to revamp our whole fundraising vision - and we want to bring it down to only 5. Of course this is being met with opposition because everyone still wants to do their favorite. Does anyone have anything in the way of Fundraising Rules/Guidelines/Policy down in writting already? That's where we are - trying to set up something more structured. I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if someone already has something out there we can plagerize!
