PTA/PTO Advice
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Anonymous
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Best Fundraisers? Alternative sources of money?
Most exciting/interesting projects and initiatives? Working with an EOTP non-charter school with limited parent involvement. |
Anonymous
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I am on the PTO at an EOTP DCPS where parent involvement has been tricky. The best fundraisers we have are restaurant nights. My advice would be to find a restaurant in your neighborhood and ask if you can have a fundraiser there, then publicize it like crazy at the school.
What school? |
Anonymous
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If you have limited parent involvement - start with things that are NOT fundraisers as much as they are community building opportunities. A spring (or fall) fair with games and activities for the kids or a kids movie night.
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Anonymous
| If you're going to do a fundraiser, the EOTP schools tend to have lower income families, but the surrounding communities are far wealthier. Try to figure out a way to get the community involved so that you can raise more money. |
Anonymous
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figure out what the school needs and get outside groups in the community (businesses, the ANC, religious congregations, adult sports teams that play in the parks nearby, etc.) to help pay for them.
Keep the PTA primarily about community-building, with one or two low-buy-in fundraisers a year. Example would be a carnival where PTA buys pizza and drinks, you get a community group to rent a dunk tank and a bounce house, and you sell chances to dunk the teachers for $1 or something. Think about how you can help the school recruit more lottery applicants and in-bounds enrollees. Can you organize meet the principal coffees, weekend playground events, happy hours (could also be a fundraiser), or events at someone's house? Can you make/update a school website or facebook page? Get a piece published in the local newspaper or blog? Staff the myschooldc expo this fall? Organize regular open houses? If the school has a bigger enrollment, it will be easier to raise PTA money in the future even if the same percentage of students give the same amount of money. And if you recruit just a couple of families who are willing to give big donations to the school, it's a plus! |
Anonymous
| Help the teachers make pages on donors choose or get the school to set up an Amazon wish list, so people in and outside of the school can buy stuff. Make sure there are a range of things on there so someone can buy the $5 set of scissors and someone can buy the $400 set of guided readers. People like to donate more if they know what their money is being used for. |
Anonymous
I posted at 11:36 and I agree with this. The goal of your activities at this point is not to raise money. It is to build community and increase parent engagement with the PTA. Some other things: 1. How is your relationship with your school's administration? Having a productive and supportive relationship with the principal is very helpful. 2. Relatedly, establishing relationships with teachers in upper grades is very helpful. Some of my best friends at my child's school are teachers of 4th and 5th graders. They know which parents are likely to be more engage-able and are happy to make those introductions. |
Anonymous
| At our last PTO meeting, one of the participants suggested a "made by me" raffle. You sell raffle tickets for $1 each, and ask people to volunteer to make something - food, arts & crafts, whatever they can make. You then throw a big party and do a big drawing of all the winning tickets. The prizes are the food or the crafts that other people at the school make. |
Anonymous
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Start small (yes, focus on community, integration, fun - a yard sale & fall fair?) but be deliberate. In our early moves toward not just community building but fundraising, we started to nickel and dime everyone on all ends before realizing that this may just be plain annoying without raising any more. At some point, some just prefer to write a check and be done with it. So consider providing that option at the outset of the school year, as part of the (keep it modest) PTA membership fee.
Also, very importantly, before you engage in any fundraising efforts, be sure your PTA/PTO has clean and resilient bylaws and a robust/accountable treasury system. Nothing is too much on that end. It is very frustrating to see your first 5K siphoned away by a few notorious abusers. And when that happens with the next 10K, people may be done giving. So get that right from the start! Along with that, make sure you start getting your non-profit status so that anyone - businesses or individuals - donating funds, supplies or other things can get that properly written off. But don't let that hold you from raising funds. It only really kicks in when major donations become the norm. Just get it started; it'll take a while to get it accomplished. And before you get frustrated or envious, remember that your limited funds (probably indicative of a Title I status) can be an asset in applying for grants, for which you need your principal and teachers on board. |
Anonymous
There is a lot of good advice in here, but I have to laugh a little. PP, what you are describing is pretty far down the pike for someone who is only just starting with the PTA at a school with limited parent engagement. $5,000? We were excited to get $500. Non-profit status? I get that it's helpful for getting grants and tax deductible donations, but at my school, most people donate cash in $5-10 increments. I suggested that we raise the dues from $10 to $20 and was told that that was too much for most of our families to afford. The OP needs to start many steps back from where your advice will be useful. |
Anonymous
| Sure, smile, but what about someone walking away with those $500 or $450 thereof? (I've seen it, and that's where that advice is coming from.) |
Anonymous
I get that. Structure is important. It is not _the most important thing_ though. If you spend all your parent energy on creating a structure for an organization, you may find that you have a nicely structured organization with no parents involved. I speak as a person who has been creating structures as they come up for a PTO EOTP that focuses mostly on outreach and community engagement. For a long time, it was mostly just me. If I had filed for nonprofit status and created structure documents, that would have come at the expense of doing the outreach and community engagement. There are only so many hours in the day. |
Anonymous
The Maury PTA had financial irregularities that involved a forensic audit and the MPD. |
Anonymous
Do tell. |
Anonymous
What is it that you're trying to do? Whatever it is, start with clear priorities from the principal and a shared vision of what "parental involvement" should mean at your school. It can mean different things to different people. Some principals think PTAs are outdated and parent involvement is overrated or even counterproductive to academic goals. Have a frank conversation with the principal and the school business manager, and a few teachers, before trying to fundraise. There are lots of ideas and FAQs on the site www.ptotoday.com |