Holly,
Wow! What a great idea! I would love to implement a program like this with our school. We are a large (800 students K-5) school with a pretty poor fundraising track record. If you are willing to share your letter, I'd love to see it.
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Thanks!
What we are doing right now is with our first PTO meeting (august 10th) we are asking the parents and teachers that attend to submit the church or organization that they are with and allowing us to contact them personnally. The reason is that we know more of what the classrooms consist of and the needs of each grade. Then we will contact the Pastor or Director by phone and send them a list by fax, mail, or meet with them personnally, of the classes that are available with the amount of students per classroom. With the classroom they pick we will take the name of the organization, the contact name, and number to the teacher and give the teacher their information and get the information from the teacher of how to contact her and give it to the organization. (Respect of privacy and authorization of each teacher is needed)Then it is up to the organization to contact the teacher before the first of the month after the inicial contact to keep an inventory of the needs of the classroom for that month. They will be asked for help with school supplies, birthdays and parties, and maybe monetary donations for children who may not be able to pay for a feild trip or special thing for that month. This helps your PTO or PTA to save and use your funds for more larger needs for your school. And this helps with not having to contact people for monetary donations alllll the time or having to find more inovative ways to raise funds. We are always bombarded with little minor needs and end up with not enough for the larger needs at the near end of the school year. This will help keep things less stressful. If you need more info or would like a copy of the letter(after our first PTO meeting aug. 10th) please feel free to contact me. Have a great day!
How do you handle letting a church sponsor a room?? It seems like that one inparticlar would lead to Church/State problems. But overall it sounds like a good idea.
This sounds like a great idea! How do you go about getting the companies to sponsor a room?? Do you do a mailing to local companies asking for their help?? If you do, would you mind sharing the letter that you send out!!
We have implemented an new program for our school called "Adopt a class" where local churches, youth groups, and other organizations are asked to adopt one class from a list of grades to help with teachers, classroom supplies, parties, and after school projects. These are always on going expenses that many teachers in our area are forced to pay out of pocket. Our school is in a Middle to Low income area and to raise funds is more difficult for us than other schools in our district. This also will help you with pr. The way we have done this is to let those organizations know that you will list their company or organizations name on your school web page with what they have done for your school as a whole not by individual class. Also, anytime you have talked to the press about your schools activities or fund raisers make sure you keep a list on hand of those who have sponsored in the past so you can plug them and give them a little free advertising and good PR.
Always make sure you keep intouch monthly with the Adopt a class people to make sure everything is running smoothly. In an area like ours, you must be on top of everything or it will not succeed like you had hoped. You wouldn't beleive the response we have had. Because our fund raising efforts are limited to 4 programs a year from "Fundraising companies, catalogues ect)we had to come up with a better and on going solution besides asking companies for a program iniciative or straight out funds. Try it out or let me know how yours went. Good luck with the 2004/2005 school year!
