We began our QSP fundraiser on Sept 7. We had planned on a turn-in date of Sept 24. We had heard parents say that they honestly hadn't thought about it and had put it away. Many said they would have sold if they could have had more time to regroup and resume life. We gave them an extra week and happily, we met last years sales plus about $1000. We collected over $33,000.
As far as collecting donations from businesses for auctions and festivals....
GO FOR IT!!! Many businesses and individuals are feeling especially benevolent these days.
Our PTO has collected over 100 quality prizes for our bingo night since the attacks.
Some of these donations include theater tickets, dinners, luggage, hotel stays, toys, and merchandise from the DC area pro sports franchises. My advice would be to hit the street, don't be afraid to ask, and be prepared to hear "no" every once in a while. Suck it up and go to the next place. You'll get your donations.
Our primary fundraiser ended the week of 9/10. I don't have the final figures, but it looks like about 1/3 of what we did last fall. Last year was a real spike and the kids sold an amazing $41,000 in catalog items. We figured it was probably not repeatable as the local economic picture was much brighter then, so we only bugeted for $36,000 this year. Looks like we'll have to make to with much, much less.
Like 2boyzmom, we don't have any capital projects underway. Primarily we prioritize our discretionary funds towards the needs of the school and teachers from year to year. This will definitely cut down on how much we can contribute, but we don't plan to add a significant new fundraiser. Added to everything else, our area is facing a grim downturn in the economy. For many reasons, we don't plan to hit up the community any time soon.
As an organization our #1 objective is volunteerism. I think "school spirit" is next, with "fundraising" being 3rd or 4th. We'll focus on the other objectives.
On the bright side - with any luck at all, next year's officers can boast HUGE percentage increases in revenue over this year!
Specifically related to your idea about a direct donation fund-raiser: our school tried that years ago and it was a major flop, even though they asked for only $20 per family. We did some analysis last year, and figured out that we would have to ask every family to donate $50 in order to meet our budget projections. Too high! But, we know that only about 50% of the families participate in our traditional fundraiser.
If you decide to go ahead, take some time to really figure out how much you need, not just how much you want to ask for. Also, do a great job of marketing what the donation pays for (i.e. specific events, projects, etc.)
I wish that our school would allow us to do something- IE: a clothing fundraiser or dime drive. Unfortunately, even though we live in the Washington D.C. area, our school district has forbidden the elementary schools to talk about anything related to 9-11, furthermore we are not allowed to do any fundraising related to what happened.
I am hopeful that the school district will change it's current policy, but it does not look very likely.
The second problem that I have is that I had just completed my mail merge to send out donation letters on 9-10. Needless to say, I am sitting on the letters...
I too, feel strongly that our children need to be provided continuity... the problem is that we don't have the money to do the events that we had planned. That is why I am suggesting a direct contribution option to our parents. We would then be able to provide the events we had planned for and at the same time minimize the requests to businesses that have already been adversely affected by this crisis.
I too had a moment of guilt realizing that our auction letters had already gone out - but I agree that there has to be some normalization of life for the kids - our auction isn't until the spring so hopefully things will be better by then. I believe that while we are all trying to do our part -we still have to tend to business as usual. One of the ways we did this was by having a clothing drive last week. Our local red cross said that there was a need for sweatshirts, socks, t-shirts and stuff for the rescue workers. We put out a flyer and an email and in a little less then 48 hours we collected 125 boxes of stuff. The Red Cross brought their trucks and the kids formed a chain and we passed them from the gym to the trucks - they had to bring the trucks twice! The kids loved it - the newspaper covered it and there is a beautiful picture in the paper today. One of the parents also contacted some local agencies who donated some stuff. It really turned out successfully and I am so proud of of our kids.
Our Superintendant and my Principal both feel that we need to provide as normal a life as possible for the students. Hence we are proceeding with the projects and events that we normally do. However we are having a spare change drive next week for the Red Cross. Also each student traced out and cut their hand print in red, white or blue and some volunteers made a huge American flag with them.
