Still another thought: ask the parent who wants you to recycle cartridges with them if he/she would consider giving your school 100% of the profits as a service to your community. That's what a couple did for our school.

Printer cartridges earned our school $600 last year. If this company can earn your group similar profits, I don't see why you would consider it a conflict of interest.

I agree with Lana and OLF. This is a different situation than when a parent owns a fundraising company (ie. avon, tupperware)where members must purchase something and the group gets a % of the profits.

You have people willing to BUY empty print cartridges that you would otherwise throw out. There are many of these companies out there and if you have willing people to chair and do the work, I think it is a win/win situation for your group with little or no effort. I would suggest a co-chair as OLF did just to keep everyone honest.

Don't overthink it, remember ...THEY WILL BE PAYING YOU FOR YOUR GARBAGE!


If you are uncomfortable with the parent member aspect, look into some of the larger national companies as this is a "painless" fundraiser that our group has been doing for a few years and it makes pretty good money for very little effort.

Our school embraces an opportunity where we can help our community and raise money. We do participate in the printer recycling and I would not have any problem if the parent's company was an established printer recycling company. Would you participate with a company outside of your community? Then why not one inside? You get a specific amount for each cartridge and it's all known upfront. I would not have them Chair the event though. Checks and balances. We have two families in our school who own restaurants. Once a month they sponser a school dinner. They give back to the school 10% of all ticket sales for school families who eat at their restaurant on a predetermined night each month. Its a no-brainer. The school makes money, families and friends get together for dinner. The kids run around and have a blast. It's a great time to just sit and enjoy the company and the food without having to do any work! It's also a great way to meet new families.

I find this a very interesting subject. We (PTO) has faced a number of circumstances in this and I would be very curious to see what others think of this matter. I personally believe in taking care of our community, but on the other hand I believe in doing what is to the advantage of the schools ($ and work wise). We all know how many volunteers we are bombarded with to do the work! Please keep advise coming in on this subject! I have been in office for 3 years now and have had to face/challenge these circumstances too much. Thanks!

We have an unwritten rule at our school that we don't do any business (fundraising) with any company that has a child in our school. We have many avon reps, home interior reps, candle reps and I too own my own business.

It would be a conflict of interest to use any of us at our own school even if we were to give our kick back back to the school you're still promoting your business and will in one way or the other profit from it.

Aside from that, if you have more than one rep how do you pick one parent over the other? As president I stay far, far away from that!

Help! We have a new family at our school and the parents own a printer cartridge fundraiser organization. We have not engaged in this type of fundraiser in the past. In any event, the parents approached us about conducting the printer cartridge fundraiser as an ongoing effort at our school, and offered to chair this activity. I am a little unsure about this opportunity as a parent of the school will directly receive income from our fundraising efforts. The only other thing that might be considered parallel is in our spiritwear area--a family owns a print shop and when we bid out the job (3 bids minimum) they came in with the lowest quote, and we have used them for printing. But this effort is not a fundraiser--we sell spiritwear with a goal of breaking even, and price it accordingly so as to not take in a profit. Has anyone else had an experience like this? In our bylaws we have a statement that the chair of a committee cannot receive a profit or kick-back of any sort from any type of fundraising endeavors, so it's fairly clear to me that one of the parents cannot "chair" this activity, but I'm still unsure as to whether we can engage in this effort. I have fielded this question over to our school district offices for their input, based on our principal's recommendation (as she was unsure too), and I'm planning on asking other local PTO's about this, but any info would be greatly appreciated. We are a 501 C3 organization. The twist of it is that apparently this family did run the fundraiser at a neighboring school that they resided near before moving to our area. The principal of that school retired in May. I am going to contact their PTO also. I'm thinking I might actually have to put this up as a question at a general PTO meeting for a vote (?)-- and that our board officers cannot make this determination--but I'm not sure.