We do a mini calendar. Its the school district calendar just shrunk down. Easy to fit in a pocketbook. We sell them for $3 or $4 a piece. Since it has all the events for all the schools in the district, its a great seller.
Have you all considered using a print-on-demand model for your calenders? Get sponsors, layout the calender, and then use a service like www.lulu.com
to make and print your calenders as people order them. This way you're not stuck printing out hundreds and trying to sell them. While print-on-demand costs more per unit, I think you'll be better off in the long run.
Also, using this similar model, you can sell "year books" too. Assembly a year book, and use a print-on-demand model. You will make money from the very beginning.
Andy D.
Disclosure: I have NO financial interest in the above activities, nor do I hold stock in any of the companies mentioned above.
National PTA did a calendar for 2006 themed on the Reflections art contest, and there's a space in there for the local units to get advertisers. The idea is that you sell the advertising space (I think there was room for 8 sponsors) to cover the basic cost of the calendars, then sell them to the school community. We did this at our high school, and had no problem getting the sponsorships, so the whole cost of printing the calendars was paid for. So now we're selling the calendars for $5 each, and any one we sell is pure profit. I can't say they're moving like hotcakes, although it's still kind of early and they are just "generic" calendars in terms of dates--no special school dates or anything like that. Anyway, guess my point is that we're glad that the sponsorships covered the cost of printing the calendar.
If they don't sell, we're giving the extras to teachers as a "Happy New Year" gift....
Originally posted by MonkeyGirl: Would it be ok if we did both, selling advertisment in the calendar and charge the parents for them? The money that we make for the ads could be used to pay for the making of the calendars and then the money that the parents pay for them would be total profit for the PTO to use on the schools. Is that a bad thing??
I don't think it is unreasonable to charge the parents a fair amount of money for the calender. The publishing industry makes money on both advertisers and subscribers.
Because of advertising, the cost of the calender is much lower than without ads; thus, the parents will receive a quality calender at a good price. I think your idea is good.
Would it be ok if we did both, selling advertisment in the calendar and charge the parents for them? The money that we make for the ads could be used to pay for the making of the calendars and then the money that the parents pay for them would be total profit for the PTO to use on the schools. Is that a bad thing??
Yes.. We did a school calendar this year. The director had all the teacher's turn in their due dates for projects, schedule of field trips, PTO meetings, parent teacher conference, holidays, early releases, program, primary lunches, box tops/campbell soup labels due dates, spirit dates, etc., items they need for projects (white sweatshirt due by Dec 1st for holiday project etc)
I called minutemen printing, office max, and IKON for quotes. As long as we put it in a format they could use...printshop, outlook, etc. (varied by vendor) then they would just charge us for the copy and assembly of the calendars. We went with IKON because we could order as little or as many as we needed and they had a 24 hour turn around. Our price for hard stock cover front and back with color logo on front with a picture of all the kids on the inside cover in color. Then we had a sheet for each month that was assembled with a GBC binder. Each month you tear off the month but the kids pictures is still the picture you see. Our total cost was $4.62 a calendar and we sold for $8.00 a calendar. Was a huge hit with parents. Parents bought several-- one for each office, home and for babysitters/grandparents.. We did our in outlook and provided them a hard copy of the item to copy and that worked as well. Good luck
