Sometimes, in an effort to be politically correct, things get out of hand.

WE have a silent auction every spring, and I have NEVER heard of a child getting upset at the price. We have friendly competitions all the time, and no one gets upset (and trust me, I would hear about it if they did).

We ask for $20.00 per child, $35.00 family PTO dues, and hold MANY fundraisers for to meet our expenses.

Our school does grade level baskets--each classroom is asked to have a coordinator (usually the room parent), and each person is asked to donate an item related to a certain theme--1st grade might be art supplies, 2nd grade might be Barbie, etc. That way, once the donations come in, they are pooled, and the classroom coordinators get together to put together baskets that are "even."

In my other (larger) school, we split the grade levels up a little so we could have more variety in the baskets, but it was still the same concept. For example, with 6 - 3rd grade classes, 3 of them were asked to do travel games, and 3 of them were asked to do barbeque items.

I think if you do it like this, it gets rid of the competition factor, which is probably somewhat legitimate. I don't know if the parents or the kids would notice and care more, but people do definitely notice differences in something like that.

Be prepared for the fact that not everyone will contribute. We do the above for our bingos, and get maybe 50% participation. When we had a 10th anniversary auction, every parent was asked to contribute $3 for items to be purchased for grade level baskets, and they had about a 20% response rate.

I've never heard of a PTO asking families for $50.00 are you sure your not a PTA? Anyways, I would be mad too as a room mom to have to pay to belong to the PTO then pay for a basket item as well. Why don't you fundraise for your money instead of charging people money to join? By the way, what is your PTO budget? Prehaps you can put a limit on your baskets such as $200.00. That way parents would not send in really expensive items and ALL the classes would have baskets that were equal.

Help! We are a donation based PTO, request $50.00 per family per year. We are having a fall festival that is totally free, except for buying a pizza dinner(which pays for itself) We want to have baskets that people can bid on, but have several mothers who feel that baskets should not be done. They feel that since the baskets are put together by room moms based on donations from the classroom and parents, some baskets will be more grand than others, and kids will get their feelings hurt if their basket is not up to par. Several of the core parents feel this is silly, it is the parents who are more comtetitive. What do you all think? BTW, 1/2 of proceeds go directly back to classroom, 1/2 to Katrina fund. They also feel we should not ask for any donation because of the $50.00