Thank you very much for this reply and sharing info on how your group handles this. The info is extremely helpful. I'd love as many comments as possible so that I can share this with my committee and board. Thanks!
Thisis my first year as PTO president also. (I was VP last year.) For many years we have given the $5 benefit to all the bookfair workers as well. This year after researching it, we decided not do that anymore. (For the same reasons you have listed.) Instead of doing that, we got a box full of books. We had a contest with feathers in a jar and the child that guessed the number closest in each class got a book. Each class teacher also got a free book. We felt this was a much better use of this money. Bookfair workers don't volunteer because of the $5. Also, as far as the voucher goes, we took all our proceeds in vouchers that you use from Scholastics catalog. We divided that among the teachers. I CAN'T IMAGINE YOUR CHAIRPERSONS GETTING A $300.00 VOUCHER! I think they must have been mistaken about who it was for, ours have never gotten ANYTHING. It should have been used for the school.
This has been my first year as a PTO president and I need advice/input from others on Book Fair volunteer rewards. Sorry in advance for the lengthy message. We conduct our Book Fair through Scholastic, and apparently they provide us with some sort of incentive money which in the past has been used to provide Book Fair volunteers with voucher coupons (I think each is worth a few bucks, maybe $5 max, for book purchases). There are several options on how the incentive money from Scholastic can be used--this is just one route which our chairpeople have chosen to follow for the past few years. I realize this is probably offered to other schools and PTOs, but it strikes an awkward chord with me as we do not offer any other type of monetary incentives or rewards to volunteers working on other committees--yearbook, our annual giftwrap fundraiser, etc. We have about 30 committees and many volunteers. We recognize our volunteers and chairpeople in other ways--e.g., public thank-yous, pictures and write-ups in our newsletter, an annual thank-you luncheon, etc. From a budget standpoint it would be impossible to be fair and impart some sort of "reward" like this to all our hard-working volunteers and from an ethical standpoint our board does not support this (where would you draw the line?). From a legal standpoint I assume monetary rewards would be out of the question, but my treasurer is checking with our accountant on this (we fall under 501(c)(3) status and do not charge dues or fees).
This reward situation has been fairly low-key and although it does not seem to be a big deal, I just wonder how I or another board member would respond if someone on another committee asked me why the Book Fair committee offered rewards like that and theirs did not.
I also understand that after our last year's Book Fair, there was a voucher coupon that was issued by Scholastic as a reward to the chairpeople. That reward totaled to over $300 in merchandise available through a catalog of sorts. Our chairpeople did not utilize this voucher, but they understood that it was a reward for them, and not something that for the PTO (or school) in general. Has anyone had experience with this in their school? At other schools hosting Scholastic Book Fairs--what do you do? Any input would be helpful. Thanks!
