My company can provide you with monthly cash donations for your classrooms.
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Though the economic climate affects us all, your local businesses still need you.
If you have 65, 100, 400 families in your school... that's money to them and advertising for them. If you give money to a business, if they know you or your kids,
you should feel free to ask and you should expect them to give something.

If you get a bunch of little donations, bundle them up--
the dinner, with a movie and the free babysitting from a teenage sibling --that's a date night!

We use classroom baskets at our school and it works out very well! Donations are down for us too this year - but I think with better planning, we could have had a different result.

we are actaully doing baskets to raffle that class rooms are putting togeather with parent donations and letting them put tickets for what basket that they want to win another school just did this that i know a few moms from and they had some baskets that pulled in over $50 just an idea what dose it hurt.It is my 1st year so i am willing to try anything out to see if it works.

Hey mommynxs-
I think that ETROPOLI brings up a great point. Last year our donations were WAY down from businesses. We did more of the types of things etropoli was talking about -- even the teachers jumped in with more things like Cookies and Milk after school with Mrs. Smith. Long story, short -- even tho we had many fewer items to list we made the same amount of money. When we looked at our bid records from the previous year we noticed that we had more sheets/items but also more things go for under the value. So we're thinking that maybe it's better to have fewer better quality offerings.

try thinking out of the box. Give away opportunities instead of only items. A chance to get private "lessons" with a high school team such as cheerleaders, volleyball, football, etc. The top 3 bidders get 3 days of practice with the team of their choice. Or students can bid on having lunch for 1 week at a "party" table - a table decorated for the occassion and they get to invite 4-5 of their closest friends. Or the opportunity to be first in their class line, everytime for a week, including the lunch line. These are valuable to kids and cost you nothing.