Beyond the Bake Sale : The... | Buy

Education budgets across the country have been slashed, and parents of children in both public and private schools every-where are taking up the slack. Parents want their children's classrooms stocked with computers and their libraries filled with books. They would like to restore art and music programs. They also want to supplement the money available for field trips and sports equipment. Jean Joachim is an innovative fundraiser who has compiled foolproof methods from across the country that will raise the maximum amount of money for any elementary or secondary school. Beyond the Bake Sale is the first book to show parents how to: -Turn less prominent holidays like Cinco de Mayo or Presidents' Day into moneymaking opportunities -Sell school supplies, candy, and wrapping paper and take a percentage of the proceeds for their school -Organize a flea market, street fair, or harvest festival -Put on dances and other old-fashioned entertainments to benefit parents associations -Utilize student power in the community, by painting holiday window displays, handing out flyers, washing cars, and more.

Jean Joachim is part of the fund-raising team at one of New York City’s award-winning public schools, P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She has helped raise over $200,000 a year for the past six years. She lives in New York City.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
The Basics	p. 1
Fall Events
The Pledge Drive	p. 17
The Wrapping Paper Drive	p. 23
School Photos and the Magazine Drive	p. 28
The Halloween Harvest Festival	p. 34
Winten Events
Dances, Friday Night Pizza and a Movie, Kids' Holiday Shopping Day	p. 47
The Auction	p. 58
Spring Events
Car Wash, Handyman Day, Art Show	p. 93
The Book Fair	p. 101
The Just Kids Street Fair	p. 108
Yean-Round Events
The Flea Market	p. 143
The Ultimate Bake Sale	p. 156
Candy Sales, Sports Equipment Exchange Day, Alumni Club, School Store	p. 165
Tapping Corporate America	p. 174
Final Thoughts
Idea Bank	p. 189
Creating New Ideas and Getting Volunteers	p. 197
Important Phone Numbers and Web Sites	p. 207
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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Fall Events

1

The Basics

Money, Money, Money

“At 87, fund-raising has been elevated to an art that connects students, families, and staff. Fund-raising at P.S. 87 serves as a community builder. It brings together families and staff and provides vehicles for parents to be part of and contribute to their children’s education. A clearly articulated vision of the goals of fund-raising, as well as accountability and demonstrated evidence of how the proceeds both directly and indirectly benefit students, is at the core of the program.”

—STEVEN PLAUT, FORMER PRINCIPAL AT P.S. 87

The fund-raising events and activities in this book reflect fifteen years experience and fifteen years of making money and fifteen years of saving money. We have made plenty of mistakes in our fund-raising efforts, but we never got discouraged. I have learned that it takes a year or two to really get an event to run smoothly. You have to have patience, be creative, listen to other people, and be open to suggestion. We started small with bake sales and grew over the years to huge events that made up to $60,000. But it didn’t happen overnight.

If you are just starting out, your school or parent association may not have much cash. Some of the events described in this book require money to pay for things up front, like food for an event, or a rental hall for your auction. In each chapter that has an event or activity that requires a significant outlay of cash, we have created a special section at the end called “Just Starting Out?” This section outlines ways to start the event that don’t require much money. We have stripped the event down to the basics that are necessary to get it going. As your financial reserves grow, you can add on any of the additional, more costly activities.

A RESERVE FUND

I can’t stress enough the importance of putting some of your profits aside to form a reserve fund. At P.S. 87 we created a healthy reserve fund over the years for a rainy day. There have been times when we had to dip into that fund and were so grateful that it was there. When we did dip in, we worked hard to replace the money. A reserve fund is essential to any fund-raising plan that is going to grow and be a stable source of funds for school improvement year in and year out.

If you save half the money your parent association earns, you will quickly build a reserve fund. It was always our goal to have a year’s budget in our reserve. So if we expect to take in $200,000, which we do every year, then we need to have $200,000 in reserve. You can accomplish this by budgeting to spend only half of what you make. Put the other half in a special fund that earns interest so the money will grow over time.

If you need more money during the year, have a quick and easy fund-raiser, like a bake sale, instead of dipping into the funds you have put away. This is the only way you will have enough money to throw a major event that requires a significant cash outlay. Save your money for a rainy day and build your financial power.

THE BASICS YOU NEED BEFORE YOU START FUND-RAISING

Successful school fund-raising requires solid support systems, like:

1.a widely-read school newsletter that goes home to parents;

2.good relationships with the teachers and the administrative staff, including the secretaries and other support staff in the office;

3.active, reliable class parents;

4.a school handbook spelling out dates and regular fund-raising events for the year;

5.an up-to-date school phone directory; and

6.a school Web site.

1. School Newsletter

Our school newsletter, theBackPack News,has been around for fifteen years. It is a four-page newsletter, 11” X 17” folded once, printed in black on colored paper and issued weekly. By printing black ink on colored paper, we get the excitement of color but pay for only one-color-black-printing, which is much less expensive than four-color printing. Our regular features in theBackPack News (BPN)are:

• principal’s column

• parent association president’s column

• schedule of upcoming events

• classified ads

This invaluable tool is also important for publicity for upcoming fund-raising events. We request and thank volunteers, publish the success of our events, request donations, and let the parents know about changes in the school in theBPN. It’s a big job to get the newsletter set up. But once you have settled on a format, type style, basic departments and a logo, it’s not so difficult. We have a stable of different people who construct theBPNfrom parent submissions. Every week a special packet folder is placed in the school office for newsletter submissions. Each week the editor picks up the folder on Thursday afternoon. If you can get ten people with computer access to agree to edit and type four editions of the newsletter, you’ll have the year covered. Sponsorship should cover the cost of printing the newsletter. Sponsors receive acknowledgment and a large ad in the newsletter.

The parent association pays for printing of theBPN. But we defray the cost by selling sponsorships to advertisers like summer camps and insurance and real estate agents. For a few hundred dollars, a business can reach more than five hundred families. If you have just a few people selling sponsorships at the beginning of the year, you can run a newsletter cost-efficiently.

In the school office every Monday morning, a parent volunteer counts out the correct number of copies for each class and puts them in the teachers’ mailboxes. The teachers distribute the newsletters to the kids to take home every Tuesday. The deadline for submissions is Thursday if handed in on paper, or Friday by e-mail (since it doesn’t have to be typed in). Classified ads are free to all P.S. 87 parents. Nonparent classified advertisers pay $25 per ad. Help-wanted ads are also accepted free of charge. Ad length is determined by space availability, a decision determined by the editor of the week.

2. A School Web Site

A school Web site is extremely valuable as a tool to disseminate information. You will have a technologically savvy parent in the school who can construct the school Web site for free. Some teachers put their homework assignments on the Web site. That way, if children are absent or their memories are unreliable, the parents can access the homework assignments and make sure the children are getting it all completed on time.

A really efficient school Web site can contain the school newsletter, too. You can also sell advertising on the Web site.

3. Good Relationships with Teachers

Our parent association makes it a point to support and acknowledge teachers. The teachers are the lifeblood of our school. Most of our PA funds go to support our teachers and improve the school environment for our children. Teachers’ help with fund-raising is vital. It’s the teachers, not the parents, who hand out the forms and information for our wrapping-paper and magazine drives. In fact, it is the teachers who:

• collect fund-raising forms

• create class projects for the auction

• create class booths for the street fair

• create a quilt to be old at the auction

• offer to take children out for breakfast or pizza as an auction prize

• bring their classes down to bake sales and book fairs

• disseminate theBackPack News every week

And, of course, in addition to those and a thousand other things, they teach our children. So we do everything we can for the teachers.

On parent/teacher conference nights, throw a potluck dinner just for the teachers. In the evenings, the teachers are too busy with conferences to go out for dinner. Supply delicious, homemade food in the cafeteria so the teachers don’t have to go hungry.

We give free tickets to the auction to the teachers. Many teachers prefer to stay home with their own families than to spend Saturday night with the parents of the kids in their class, but still, the gesture is warm and inclusive.

We allocate class funds from our fund-raising for every teacher. Our classroom funds provide $200 for each teacher or a $400 fund for a new teacher or a $300 fund for a teacher who is changing grades. The teachers decide how to spend the money. However, receipts are required for each expense. All expenses are submitted to the treasurer for approval.

We also make sure to honor special requests from the teachers. Nancy Goldstein, an excellent third grade teacher, appealed to the PA board one year for money to print a book of P.S. 87 children’s poetry, open to all the children in the school. The expenditure was approved and a stunning book was produced.

Robin Ulzheimer, a fifth-grade teacher, won a grant to create a reading garden. When the money fell short before the garden was finished, the PA provided the additional funds to complete the project.

In our newsletter, we publicize many teachers’ wish lists for supplies, furniture, appliances, and books for the classroom. Our parents fulfill as many wishes as they can.

We host an appreciation breakfast for teachers every year.

And those are just some examples. A good relationship between the PA board and the teachers is essential. Ask your board to come up with eight ideas for showing teacher appreciation. Pick two or three and make them happen. After all, everything we do is about supporting the classroom, the teachers, and creating the best classroom experience possible for our children.

The same attitude holds true for the administrative support staff in the office. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed help from Anne Murney, Annie Nelson, or Emily Paxinos our school office administrative staff, and they have been there every time. From opening the locked PA closet door, to copying, to helping me locate a teacher, a child, or a parent, not to mention letting the PA keep all kinds of flyers, theBPN,auction donation forms, and everything else needed for fund-raising in the office. Auction and street-fair donations get dropped off there, too.

It is impossible to stress enough the importance of having the office staff on your side. So make it clear you appreciate them. Buy them a cup of coffee or a doughnut now and then. Remember to say please and thank you.

4. Class Parents

Class parents are parents who volunteer to be responsible for parent association coordination with other parents in their child’s class. We usually have two class parents per class. They are essential to successful school fund-raising. Class parents help out with field trips, straighten up in the classroom, and coordinate collecting for the teacher gifts at holiday time and the end of the year, too.

But class parents are also an important part of school fund-raising because they represent personal communication. Class parents call other parents or speak with them face-to-face at play dates, morning drop-off, or afternoon pickup at school. Class parents enable the school fund-raising efforts to reach right into each classroom to pull volunteers or donations and generate activity. Class parents become part of the parent network.

Usually the teacher selects two parents who volunteered from his or her class to become the class parents. These people are responsible for making sure that school fund-raising is being supported in their class. They are the ones who decide, frequently in collaboration with the teacher, what the class booth at the street fair will be. The class parents are the ones who contact the parents in their child’s class and urge people to donate to the auction. The class parents are the ones pushing the wrapping-paper sales and magazine drive. The class parents make sure the teacher gets a book wish list to the Scholastic Book Fair or the school day at Barnes & Noble.

Class parents create a phone tree by dividing their class list into four or five columns and listing people vertically. Then the class parent calls each parent at the top of a column, and each parent then calls the parent beneath him or her on the phone tree with the same message. Using a phone tree means that every parent, with the exception of the class parent, only has to make one phone call, and everyone in the class has been reached quickly and efficiently.

5. Staff Relations

Successful school fund-raising requires the help of the school staff. From administrators to custodians, you will need everyone to pitch in. Go out of your way to build bridges, include and acknowledge the school staff.

I can’t run a bake sale if Benny the custodian doesn’t get the big tables set up and the extension cord for the coffee machine. I’m stuck if Al doesn’t bring the giant garbage cans with lots of extra bags for my rummage sale. Many cooperative teachers have let us use classrooms to make coffee or store excess stuff. Office staff members have made copies and kept track of deliveries. Remember that without the support of the principal and assistant principals, you won’t be able to do anything in the school at all. You will need all the support you can get.

6. Handbooks

There are three kinds of handbooks that will help you with fund-raising: a parent or school handbook, a new-teacher handbook, and a community resource handbook.

Parent / School Handbook

This handbook is a collaboration between the administration and the parents’ association. A good handbook should inform the parents of all the rules and regulations regarding their child’s new school. In addition to basics like admonishing the parents to bring their children to school on time, the handbook also outlines the fund-raisers planned for the school year. You will need only two people to create the handbook: one who knows the school inside out and one who can type. They can even be the same person. Once a handbook is produced, it can be used for years with only minor changes.

Either the PA or the school can print the handbook and distribute it free to the new parents. Distribute it to new teachers, too, to get them acquainted with your activities early in the year. Ours is printed on three-hole paper so parents can keep it in a binder.

You can make the handbook whatever you want it to be. Here is what P.S. 87 has done, which might be a place to start.

1.A mission statement. We use the mission statement from our school leadership team and then add a paragraph about what makes us special, including our logo and slogan: One Family under the Sun.

2.A section on admissions, physical exams, list of all types of staff (by position rather than by name).

3.A resources and facilities section, including a floor plan of the school. This section includes brief descriptions of:

• library

• P.S. 87 Science Resource Center

• youth garden

This section sets up some of the special facilities that are provided by the PA so that when donations are requested, people already have some idea where the money they contribute might go.

4.A curriculum section, provided by teachers and the administration.

5.A brief section on kindergarten including the orientation period and a description of a typical day to make the new kindergarten parents feel more at ease.

6.A section on assessment, standardized testing, and frequently asked questions, zeros in on common parents’ concerns.

7.The parent association section, which starts with the PA board, school-wide committees, and finally fund-raising.

• This chapter details the annual fund-raising events and the month or season they take place in.

• We also include the following: Year-round fund-raising activities, like schoolpop.com and AT&T Points for School programs, A+ America/ Spring Free Technology for Schools program, Box Tops for Education.

• Teacher and parent association wish lists

• The flea market (see Chapter 11)

• A pie chart showing the distribution of PA funds.

• Arts-in-Action—This is a program paid for and run by the parent association that brings trained parents into the classroom to teach curriculum-based art lessons.

• Parent Network Committee

• Class parents

8.After-school program—Included is a brief description of our after-school program that includes sports, clubs, homework helps, and creative activities.

9.School rules.

Community Resource Handbook

The Community Resource Handbook began with questionnaires to incoming kindergarten parents about their skills, jobs, and hobbies. Soon it became apparent that we needed the resources of all the parents in the school. So a questionnaire was created to gather information about abilities, experiences, professions, and hobbies and was distributed to all the parents in the school.

A handbook was compiled from the questionnaires dividing parents into groups, like music, marketing, carpentry, writing, police, sewing, covering the diverse skills of the parents. The handbook was distributed to the teachers and put in the library. The teachers had a ready reference of whom to contact if they needed a bookshelf built, or a short lecture to the class on the stock market.

The book was extremely popular and became a resource for fund-raising, too. With this book, you can locate parents who have lighting experience to help with your haunted house, or who work for Fortune 500 companies if you need a specific donation, or who are professional actors to perform as storybook characters for your street fair.

Put your questionnaire in the first issue of your newsletter. Form a committee to gather this information and publish a community resource handbook.

7. The School Directory

It’s impossible to run successful school fund-raising without this tool. The school directory should list all the students by class, with alphabetical cross-referenced listings in the back. We list a cross-reference with parents who have different last names from their children in the back, too.

We also list all the names of the members of the parent association board and their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. We list all the important numbers for the school, like the office, the guidance counselors, and the nurse.

We sell advertising in the directory to cut down on the printing cost and so we can distribute the directory free to all families. Consider charging a dollar for a second copy.

The directory is where everyone goes to call for volunteers or donations. You can’t run programs or your child’s social life without it. The biggest problem with the school directory is getting it out quickly.

To get your directory out at the earliest possible date, start the directory at the end of the year. Get next year’s classes from administration and begin the directory during the summer. In the fall, you’ll just have to add kindergarten classes, a few new students in other grades, and make a handful of class changes. This will speed up delivery of the directory.

Phone Trees

A phone tree is a class list broken up into columns of names. You can usually fit four columns on a page. Each column has a student and parent lined up underneath. Then the person at the top of the column calls the parent directly underneath to pass along information, ask for volunteering, or ask for donations. Then that person makes one phone call to the person underneath her name, and so on. Eventually everyone on the list gets called and each person only had to make one phone call. Here is what it looks like:

Edna Brown
146 Chestnut Street
Edison, NC
Mary Brown
Kevin Brown
344-7988
?
Gary Barrett
422 Elm Street
Rhonda Barrett
Glenn Barrett
324-6659
?
Tiffany Cassel
112 Magnolia Lane
Clara Cassel
Michael Cassel

Once you have these support systems in place, you’re ready to beginning planning your first fund-raising events.

“Eagerly awaited events such as the magazine drive in the fall, the auction in late winter, and the “Just Kids Street Fair” in the spring, to name but a few, mark the passage of the school year as surely as any academic calendar. The benefits that accrue to students transcend the material improvements to their school. Children develop an appreciation for the priority that education represents for their families as well as perceiving their school as a community that is the basis of the formation of lifelong relationships and friendships.”

STEVEN PLAUT, FORMER P.S. 87 PRINCIPAL

BEYOND THE BAKE SALE: THE ULTIMATE SCHOOL FUNDRAISING BOOK. Copyright © 2003 by Jean C. Joachim. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.