Our district also cracked down on office personnel handling any monies for the parent association. So far, teachers can still forward to our drop boxes order forms, etc. that are sent to school from home.
It has to be incredibly frustrating that your principal won't work with you on the drop box option. I, too, suggest that your parent organization offer a release of liability to the school in exchange for the benefit of having on-site drop boxes. Draft something up for him to review.
Couple that offer with a very frank decision about how this roadblock will affect fundraising and how, in turn, the students and school will suffer: Does the school receive money for new education materials? Gone! Say good-bye to the extra office help that parent money pays for. Want money for new technology? Sorry! It's not being mean to point these realities out-- it's just the natural consequences for being put in a position where the parent association is being arbitrarily handicapped by his reluctance to find a reasonable compromise.
The only other couple of options I can think of are to add a volunteer position to clear out the P.O. Box at the times you are expecting orders/checks for fundraisers. Then, of course, every order form is going to need an attached envelope (and a stamp to go the extra step of encouraging response).
OR
Consider taking everything on-line: the order forms, payment methods, everything. Our school is moving to use Paypal and it's starting to catch on. Maybe that would work for your school as well.
In the past, all of our event monies for fundraising, school activities, etc have been able to be handled through the school office. For example, if we were selling sweatshirts, kids could drop off their order forms and money in the office. The school secretary would set them aside, and an officer would pick them up. For some reason, this year, the principal has been telling us this is no longer an option. He says if any money comes in through the office, for auditing reasons, it's considered ASB funds. This has never been an issue in the past. We understand that the school has to protect themselves for auditing reasons, but aren't quite sure why this has just come up as an issue. One of our last fundraisers, only netted us $45 because so many parents had no way to turn in money. He also says the teachers can't collect it from the children either.
The school wants one of us to come up to the school every day before school to collect money from kids. This is not a do able option. Too time consuming for ANY of us.
We suggested a locked drop box near our display case, near the office or in the office. The principal has denied all these requests. so we feel at a loss for this, and aren't sure where to go from here. We've had a lot of issues with him this year, and feel it's kind of personal. He says if something were to happen to the money in the drop box, the school would be liable. Which makes sense, but we thought about writing up some kind of contract and having it notarized.. we are just running out of options.
We have a PO Box, but parents just don't have that kind of time. I know I don't! That's just one more thing added to my to-do list!
So I'm wondering, how do you get money turned in for your events and fundraisers?
