To Cardinalmom,
I would think that you would either have the directory as a budgeted item or not. That's a pretty big chunk of change to give away. Well, not give away, but if it's not budgeted, you may well have something else in mind for that money. I know we run on a balanced budget so at the beginning of the year we project how much income and how much expenses we have.
But, you could split the cost and charge $1.50 (I like even numbers) and absorb the rest. Next year you could do what we did- sell business card ads for $10 each and that pays for the cost of the printing. jmho.
Our annual $10 dues entitles you to voting privileges (yippee!) and the school directory. We sell extra directories (to PTO members only) for $3 each. We also sell business advertising and "good wish" ads from parents to their students which are published in the directory and help defray the cost of publication.
I know many people join our PTO solely to get the directory. That's ok -- if that's the key benefit of PTO in their lives, then we have served them well.
Make the directories available online for free. Email is easier for everyone. For those families without access, charge a nominal fee (no more than $5)
We're a catholic school and our parent association's $20 family fee is due and paid at time of registration. This was implemented by our principal so we have almost all of our families paying their fee before school starts.
My question: We've just recieved our staff/student directories at a cost of $2.38 each. I'd like to give each family (about 97%)in good standing with our association a directory at no additional costs to them and some officers want to sell them. We have 270 families.
We've just finished our fall fundraiser ($8,500 profit) and I think our parents would appreciate not being asked to purchase something else.
We also do a directory... it's provided to PTO members only (another incentive to join the PTO).
Like JHB's, we get the information from the school electronically and then give all parents the opportunity to exclude their address and/or phone number; no cell phone #'s or e-mail addresses either. Names of the students are listed alphabetically; their grade and homeroom number is listed, in addition to parents' names, etc...
We also use a star sticker next to the parents’ names for those who signed a parent network agreement. This basically involves an agreement by the parents that says they'll be home when their kids have parties, and agreed to forbid the use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol.
We include the PTO Officers (all the committee chairs are listed in our tri-fold calendar), the school and district administrators, and all the voice mailbox numbers of the faculty and staff (this was new this year). Also new this year, we've included the Homework Hotline numbers - each teaching team (we're a middle school) leaves a message on their hotline telling the caller all the homework from their core classes that was assigned that day.
I guess this was a little more than the original question (sometimes I just get carried away).
Ours is similar to those above, but we don't do cell phones or emails (at least not yet).
We get the information from the school electronically (which is public information, available by written request and a small processing fee) and then use an "opt out" process.
Every effort is made to make sure parents can restrict any piece of information. If they have a written request on file with the school, their information is not included in the data set we get. Last year, we sent forms home allowing people to "opt out" and we posted master at the school for a week so people could verify info.
This year, we used a merge file and printed a personalized letter for each child saying, "This is the information that will be printed in the directory about YOUR child.... Return this form with any changes by XYZ date..." This was actually a lot quicker and is getting the best results.
We have an art contest and choose from student artwork for the cover and section dividers. We sell ads to local businesses. Ours is a 8-1/12 x 11, folded in half and copied by a copy center with a cardstock cover. It costs about $1.00-$1.50 per copy to produce.
