This year our school, Bridgeport Elementary, hosted our first Santa Night. Each family was asked to bring a non-perishable food item in lieu of admission. It went over very well, we filled several barrels with food and some of the children even brought in new toys! The local food pantry was very happy to have the donation especially so close to the holidays.

Our school, Sacred Heart Elementary, is a small Catholic based school which promotes service projects at every level. The Parent Guild for the school donates to many organizations and events. We hold basket raffles for the children. Usually we have four baskets per month with varying themese. These are donated by parents at the school. We sell raffle tickets for 5/$1.00. The proceeds of the raffle help others in the community. We have given to United Neighborhood, Catholic Social Services, Autism Awareness and food pantrys. The kids love the baskets, and it benefits the community.

We do an annual Quarter Drive to help our own school's families around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We usually raise enough money to give about 8 - 10 families about $100 to help with their Thanksgiving meal or Christmas presents.

We also hosted Relay for Life last year and will be doing it again this year.

We recently had a drive for the American Heart Association by participating in a record breaking contest for the most people jump roping in California. According to the Guinness' Book of World Records, we were going to beat Australia for the record. We had the students bring in a minimum of $1.00 to participate. By the way, we did break the record and raised money to give to the AMA!

We are also having a Haitian Relief drive right now.

Our school always seems to donate money when needed.

Thanks.

We host free Family Fun Nights each month but ask that our school families bring donations to our local food cupboard in return. We have a nice donation to bring each month!

This actually wasn't the PTA efforts but our Student Council collected food for our local food pantry all of November and had a contest between classes. They turned around in December and had a Stuffed Animal Drive and donated them to different shelters and hospitals locally and now they are doing a Clothes Drive that they are calling "Help Haiti". It has really gotten the kids involved in the needs of others and be more aware of how they can help those around them.

Lisa!

I couldn't agree with you MORE! I'm actually caught in the middle of it all with my opinion being how can you only ever lose by giving? That's the current thought process I'm dealing with right now.

I would love to see our school do more and be more to the community as a whole rather than only ever really ask for money for our own kids and school. And coming from a marketing and PR background, I can really see the financial (and otherwise) benefit to our group in the long run. It truly drives me a little nutso...

If there are any others out there who can share how giving to others has actually helped raise funds (or at least maintained) for your group, I would truly love to hear about it.

Thanks!