We had a lot of requests from Home based business to do fundraising for the school, so our Vendor Fair was born. Our Vendor Fair is one evening in November (just in time to order and get back for Christmas gifts). Our school Book Fair is also going on and this year we had a 5th grade chorus performance and Beta Club induction (which filled our halls with parents and grandparents aka SHOPPERS).
We charge $20 per table and a donation for our Silent Auction in February (the donation is also a form of additional advertising for the vendor), The school lets us use their tables and we cover them with a festive red tablecloth. We also offered a pre-ordered dinner this year to parents and vendors.
We allow one sales associate per National company (ie Pampered Chef, Mary Kay, Origami Owl, Avon, etc)- on a first sign-up basis offering to past vendors first.
We also give each vendor a personalized bottle of water and a candy "goodie" bag. Just our way of telling them thank you for caring for our school. It grows every year with new vendors.


This has worked very well for our school and when a new parent has a home based business we have an immediate way they can be involved, if they choose to.
Hope this was helpful!

I am a TS rep - and I am very involved and part of a few chairs for our PTO. I have offered baskets for silent auctions - and our new thing is that I am offering a Freezer Meal workshop and donating 20% of my profit (I make 30%) to my child's PTO. We have done 1 and working on another one- which had some good response - not 100% but I wanted to only 'help' my parents find some great meal ideas instead of fast food that us mom's sometimes (ok a lot) go too.

I personally can't do a 'book' party b/c the cost of my catalogs to 500+ kids is a lot - and a lot of vendors do not want to spend that kind of money.

I think Vendor shows are great - but I would (as a vendor) never charge $200 a booth - that is crazy!
We did a Carnival in the spring and charged $30 for the booth - that was easy money - and we don't ask for a % of the sales - bc sometimes they might not have any sales. As a Vendor the most that I have paid for a show is $80.00 and that is an all day event with 10,000 + people attending.

Just my imput as a PTO mom and Vendor. Great ? though!!!!

I know of a mom from a different school who does Mary Kay sales, with different types of events and promotions, etc. throughout the year for her PTO. For example, she recently ran an offer on her mascara sales. Each tube of mascara she sold, she donated 10% of the sale to her daughters school. However, the PTO and the school does not promote or advertise this in anyway. At the end of an event or promotion, she simply writes a donation check to the school along with her accounting.

Personally, we have not had issues with this, as we have never had a parent interested in working something like this out. We do however allow our parents the opportunity to offer their business services and products at our auction.

I hope this helps.

One thought: Getting donations from these home-based vendors does work well for auctions, should you happen to be hosting that type of fundraiser. Earlier this year I wrote a blog post sharing a few ways I've seen these "work-at-home" businesses tapped to procure donations for silent auction items. But of course, that's only relevant if you've got something like that coming up. The beauty is that at least it doesn't play favorites ... anyone could contribute.

Hi All -

I think you're on the right track with your thinking. The parents offering to help are typically coming from a good place. But that doesn't mean it's the right fit for your group. And there are a *ton* of those home party offerings around these days. You'll wind up having a different sale every week, and that will do real harm to your bigger fundraising efforts and your efforts to avoid getting pigeon-holed as an "always fundraising" group.

One idea if you are getting a lot of these requests: We've seen schools put together a bazaar of sorts featuring all of these products in one place/day. You basically rent booths in your gym or parking lot and also get a % of sales. You could get, say, $200 per booth plus the typical % that a home host would get from that product. Your group's job would be securing the space and marketing the event.

Then it's a real fundraiser (could make thousands), and you have an outlet for all that well-intentioned interest.

Tim

We had the same issue come up for us with a mom who wanted to knit school color scarves and sell them at school with the PTO taking a cut. Our board discussed and decided it was not worth having every parent selling mary kay, avon, pampered chef, etc..... asking to do the same. Could we ok some and veto others, then you have parents with hard feelings complaining that "jane" got to sell her stuff.