Whenever possible we save unopened leftover items for upcoming family nights. We have found that serving food at these events insures that they will be well attended. We had a lot of donated canned drinks from our fall carnival. It worked really well for the admin. to save these and use for family reading night.

Fabulous idea on the late night snacks for the custodians...I'll have to remember that one...we do a presentation for them with something appropriate (we hope) like embrodiered school sweat shirts...personalize rain gear..but I'm sure they'd appreciate a late night dinner as well!!!!

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Unopened snacks go in the PTO closet until the next function. Left-overs or opened product are left for the custodians to have for their dinner on the 3-11 shift since most of our activities happen at night. I believe that they are the most overlooked employees of the school.

Now what my consern here, do you have storage for such an idea/policy? Anything the PTO does that needs food storage, we need to work with the kitchen as there is NO storage anywhere else. Don't get me wrong, I have it very good with the kitchen staff and we have workedout a great plan/ resolution, I'm just wonderingif before such polices are made to make sure you have a secured a location for such food items.

Pershable items are either left for everyone to "finish" off (we do many staff lunches when they have conferences to ease the school's budget) or we split it up to take home. Non-perishable items, sometimes we can store them in the pantry at school but often there is another event upcoming that could benefit from the donation. Chips, soda, buns are such items that are left over from the staff bbq we can give to field day to feed the volunteers.

Not sure if you have to change your by-laws but maybe ask the "cleaning crew" to set aside the unopened items for the next event. "Please any un-opened items in the [space approved here] for the next event. Thanks!"

The last thought I have on this, ask your donating parents to take what wasn't used and have them saveit for the next event. ahhaaha not crazy about this thought because A. do you really want people walking up and taking their donation back as they leave an event early; B. may cause hard feelings;C embarassing if Mrs. Jones grabs the chips Mrs. Davis swore she brought! (maybe too many church dinners as a child brought back that memory!)

Really all in all, what they are doing is not really bad, just not fair.

We don't ask for donations for every event. Sometimes we'll just ask for sodas, sometimes baked goods and sometimes we'll take the money out of our raised funds to buy the food for the event. I agree that constantly asking for food is a bit much. That's why we go the other way on occassion to give the folks a break. Still by May, everyone has pretty much pooped out.

The parents pay for the events via fundraising and the PTO asks the parents to once again donate food for each event. Flyers are distributed requesting certain foods per classroom. Not every parent volunteers to staff an event and most of the time it's the same people volunteering for each event - PTO. Most events have a decent supply of unopened chips, popcorn etc that are not carried over to the next event. Should the PTO ask parents to contribute twice to an event (fundraise $ & then donate food) or should the PTO use the raised funds to put on the event thus only buying what they need and save the hassle of mounds of left overs? Typically parents are asked to donate food (snacks etc) twice a month for something and are fundraising at a minimum once a month. Parents are fatigued and are begining to wonder where everything is going.