I wanted to add that in some years we have approached businesses, such as Office Depot, to come on board as a sponsor of our PTA and donate paper. Two previous years they donated 10 cases of white paper and 50 reams of any colored paper that we wanted. That was of tremendous value. But, we have never had any luck getting a printer to donate services. Don't forget to ask the business community to help out once in a while.

We do not pay for copies at our school. Our principal feels that the information that we send home is all school related: family event flyers, reminders of school pictures, newsletter, etc. This would be a HUGE expense if we had to go outside for printing! I would be miffed if we were asked to pay for copies. However, we do keep in mind the school's budget, too. If we have a big printing job, we will buy a case or two of paper and donate it to the school. Sometimes we'll by an ink cartridge for the copier, too. We purchase the items from the company that our school district uses and get everything at half-price. I would say that by the end of the year we have "donated" $100 of paper/ink (retail value of $200) to the school, just to help out. We have a school of 500 kids and probably use about 1,500 pieces of paper/ink each month of school for flyers, etc. Also, we produce the school/family directory for free to all families; a big job of 12 pages per directory. That's a lot of paper and ink. I think the principal and staff respect us for donating paper/ink, once in a while. If we went outside, we would expect to pay a low of 6 cents per copy, which is around $90 per month. Our directory job, which we used to hire an outside printer cost $350 to have printed/collated/stapled. Overall, probably $1,000 per school year if we did everything outside of the school...whoa!

Please--don't get me started. OK, well you did, so here we go.

When my group started, we asked for copying priveleges, which we were denied. It was explained to us that only our PTA had those rights. It had to do with the leasing of the machines. uh yeah sure uh huh--whatever.

At this time we were told NO ONE, not even the 8th grade dance committee had rights to these machines, but I'm finding QUITE the opposite to be true. I was miffed because I even offered to pay for our costs if they changed the lease, and still got the big blow off.

So now I'm wishing I had stock in Staples. We pay for our own copies. We're a K-8 with about 700 students, though most of the time our copying is limited to the lower grades (K-5). We've spent approximately $1,000, including $200 that we just spent on our first newsletter. And we're not even done yet. I'd say every time I walk in it's going to run me about $25, and that's being conservative.

My fantasy is that we're SO successful raising funds with this playground that we have a few grand left over so we can buy our very own commercial grade copier capable of handling 50,000 copies per month! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

We don't pay for our copying. We do all our copying at school we just need to provide the paper we copy on. I think last year we spent about $300 on paper.

We are supposed to pay for our copies but this doesn't always happen.

Our school has the print shoppe for the district make our copies. They are just black and white. It takes about a week to get them back so we have to plan further in advance. No charge.

For some things I've printed them at work when needing them quicker, others have as well. We have yet to date paid for copying as it's to expensive to justify for a lot of things.