Hi, GJ -- Our elementary school (K-5) has been fundraising a year ahead for well over 15 years now. We've never had an issue with parents not wanting to give during their child's last year at the school since they understand that their child has benefited each year they've gone to school there from donations given by parents that have come before them.
Even if there have been "last year" parents who haven't given (and I honestly have not heard a peep that this is the reason why a family hasn't donated), Kinder to 4th grade parents are still contributing.
It's worked out wonderfully for our parent group to be able to finalize the next year's activities and budget in April/May, prepare in June/July for the first events, and be fully "ready to roll" in August without fear that the money won't come.
Some groups also look at this issue as making sure they have enough "carry over'' funds in the budget to at least get off to a good start in the following school year. (Meaning they don't have to fundraise immediately) In fact, some groups even work that into their bylaws. Our founder, Tim Sullivan, wrote a column about this last year and offering some good advice here:
It seems odd to me -- if your kid graduates this year, aren't you less likely to contribute, since your kid won't be there to benefit?
We do a direct donation appeal at the beginning of the year so we have a good sense of how much we have available. We used to just have "dues" (optional), collected at the start of the year, which gave us a good starting point for the first few field trips, enrichment, etc. before the "traditional" fundraisers.
Agree with Dawn. It makes sense to fundraise a year ahead for accurate planning purposes. Whoever set up the "year in advance" process up for your school's parent group was a forward-thinking, smart cookie.
Our school fundraises for the year head. It allows easy planning for the coming school year. We changed to this type of budgetting 4 years ago and it works much better then raising for the year you in. Our changed was spurred because we had a year where funds were very low and we had no money to spend.
I became Treasurer last year and the previous board has been fundraising a year in advance for the past several years. What this means is that all fundraising done during the school year is to fund the next year's budget so there is always a very large bank balance. I had always assumed that most organizations would fundraise for the current year and if you didn't make your budgeted income, you would adjust your budget and spend less. Then at the end of the year your bank balance would be pretty low (probably some carry-forward to start the year). At our year end, our bank balance has the whole next year's budget sitting in it (for example $25K). Does anyone else out there fundraise for a year in advance and carry large bank balances? It seems like we are "wasting" an opportunity to use these funds that are just sitting in the bank year to year. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
