Bake sales, cake walks, bingo nights… traditional PTA (Parent Teacher Association) fundraisers are becoming a bit dated as more and more teachers, parents, students, and schools jump on the internet. In fact, an entire community of parent bloggers has emerged in the blogosphere, posting about the chaotic yet rewarding involvement in their kids’ lives. Besides the obvious love and affection for their children, what do these parents all have in common? They are busy. Very very busy.
This is why PTA online fundraising is gaining popularity. As Linda Hodge, President of the National PTA stated, “Your fundraising activities should support your parent involvement initiatives- not vice versa. Your involvement in your child’s school is much more valuable than the profits of any fundraiser.” While organiziing a large Sock Hop fundraiser can be fun, there is no doubt that finding a DJ, reserving the hall, hiring the catering company, and so on is subtracting from the time you could be volunteering as a reading advisor in your child’s classroom or chaperoning a field trip.
It is not surprising that one of Firstgiving’s most sucessful PTA fundraising pages is a non-event. For those of you who are unfamilier with this term, a non-event doesn’t require your time or presence, just your generosity. The Forest HIlls PTO and Boosters Council organized what they called “The Ada Vista No Show Ball” and received incredible results! The “Ball” raised $30, 623.00, surpassing their goal by $623!
To gain some perspective, I did a little research into a recent PTA fundraiser at my beloved elementary school. For their event, a “Casino Night” was organized and raised around $30,000, about the same as the No Show Ball. While there is no doubt that the Casino night must have been a blast, the costs of organizing and putting on such an event detracted from the overall amount raised, not to mention all the hours that parent volunteers must have spent.
So, if you are a parent or teacher, help your school raise more money and save time by helping your PTA jump on the online bandwagon!
Also, stay tuned for more new-fangled PTA fundraising ideas and tips!
A few years ago our PTA had some fundraising success with affiliate marketing programs. These are programs where you put links on your website that will direct your members to merchant websites like Amazon, The Sports Authority, etc. If your member makes a purchase on those websites, you receive a donation for sending them there.
The momentum of the program began to pick up throughout the school year. However, the following year it came to a halt. The reason being that there were no volunteers to continue to run the program. The chair person that started it wound up taking a full time job and there was no one else that had the amount of time it took to make the program successful.