Here's an idea we have started doing this year: when we have family fun nights, or other activities such as the chorus performing at night, clubs can set up a booth and sell drinks/snacks to earn money. It doesn't take away money from PTO since our family nights are not fund-raisers, and it allows these groups to make a little money. They usually have families donate supplies so their profit is clear. Also, it helps get more families to attend whatever the event is!
I would say no there is no need for your pta/pto to be involved as long as they are not expecting you guys to write a check for anything.
Our recycling club holds their own fund raisers, itis the schools deal not ours, and is pretty successful.
Now that we've moved into the year a little bit, I have another question on this same topic. The chess club is now interested in perhaps having a fundraiser of their own, which I actually have no problem with. It would begin after our main fall fundraiser is done, and would eliminate our need to debate whether or not to give them the money. My question is, does the PTA/PTO board need to be involved, for any reason? The principal is on board with this; our PTA fundraising chair has no issue, and is, in fact, helping out. I have some concerns the money management part, but again, is that the PTA's business? Anyway, feedback on this would be great, if anyone has any additional words of wisdom on this topic! Thanks! :confused:
Thank you all for this great feedback -- it gives me some great ideas as to how to handle this request, and how to handle future requests. I appreciate your input! [img]smile.gif[/img]
We use a grant program. We set aside a certain amount of money for the program at the beginning of the year. Any staff member can submit a grant. It asks for dollar amounts and how many grade levels or students will be benefitted. Then all the grants are copied and distributed to interested parents, this may be board members or just regular members. They evaluate and prioritize the grants. The collection is then tallied up to see which grants recieved the highest ranking. We go down the list and grant the proposals that ranked highest until the money runs out. If we ended up doing better than expected with our fundraisers we just keep going down the list. That way we are not discussing some new request for money every month and it's open to any parent willing to read through the paperwork. The teachers and staff are also required to team up and really think about what they want. Last year our Student Newspaper submitted a grant and missed the cut by about a $1000. But every grade level and special received something and it amounted to about $17,000. You can't get more democratic than that. The people have spoken.
That is what some of our board members wanted to do was help the club with a fundraiser. Our principal said that we, as a school, already had enough fundraisers. The PTO had 3 last year and the library committee had 1. Plus, some of the grades had sucker sales after school to help pay for some field trips. She also said that isn't counting if a family has a son in cub scouts, a daughter in girl scouts, or an older child at a different school doing their fundraisers.
Helping with a fundraiser is a great idea if your school and/or district doesn't already have too many fundraisers going on.
