One thing I’ve come to suspect, even in the relatively small town I live in, is that many schools, even in the same district, don’t communicate with each other.

Quick, can you name the principal at an elementary school your kids don’t attend? Ok, how about the name of their PTO or PTA chair?

Perhaps you are an amazing social creature and could identify these people, but I’m guessing the chances of that are pretty slim. Even in small towns, we tend to focus only on what is right in front of us. This generally makes sense, as we only have so much time to give, we have to prioritize and take care of the items most immediately important. An elementary school just six blocks away might as well be as far away as the moon.

However, as you prepare for this upcoming school year, I want to suggest that you change your way of thinking about this situation.

Here are eight questions I think you should ask about the other schools in your district. The answers you find could very well add new life and bring greater success to your own efforts in your kids’ school.

1. Who are the people involved on the other schools’ fundraising teams?
2. How long have these fundraising leaders been involved with raising money for their school?
3. Do the other schools have many parents involved or do they struggle to find volunteers for their fundraising events? If they are successful, what are they doing that you might not be to attract busy families?
4. What is each school’s biggest (most successful) fundraising event or sale?
5. If another school has the same kind of fundraising event or sale as your school does, are they more or less successful? Why or why not?
6. Do the other schools stick with one or two annual events for years or are they always looking to implement new approaches and novel ideas?
7. How diverse is their fundraising schedule? (How well do they mix up large events with small events, sales vs. events, passive vs. active strategies, etc?)
8. What is the key piece of advice another school could share with you that explains their success in fundraising?

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One of the first things you, as a fundraising volunteer, need to figure out before you launch an ambition fundraising plan is what kind of views your school’s principal has regarding the practice of fundraising.

You would think that all principals would be super enthusiastic about raising as much money as possible to fund all of the things they want for their school.

However, this is not the case at all. I have learned this from experience.

First, there are principals who feel guilty asking parents that he knows are struggling financially to give money to the school. As a result, they keep fundraising to an absolute minimum, never try anything new, only go with what they know works, downplays the importance of the event or the sale, and never thinks big. While I don’t’ agree with this mindset, I can at least understand their feelings of compassion for those who might not be able to donate.

And, then there are the principals who are so academic, so up in their ivory tower, that they view fundraising as “beneath” them, so they keep anything to do with raising money at a great distance from themselves. It’s something to be handled by volunteers, because he, the principal, has much more important things to think about. Since I was a principal of a school myself, I do know that there are many important things to think about, but fundraising has to be included on that list. And, it is my view that the principal should be the schools number one cheerleader for fundraising, simply because he or she sets the tone that everyone else follows.

A third kind of principal is the one who figured it all out years ago, created a system that seems to work for him or her and refuses to change it or put in any more thought to it. This kind of principal is not hostile toward fundraising, it’s just that he or she believes fundraising is a necessary evil, not that difficult to figure out, and they simply came up with a solution. End of story. I’ve seen this at a middle school that’s run the same candy bar sale for 25 years in the fall and the same fruit sale in the spring. Nothing has changed in a quarter century. They always hit their goal, but they never push any higher. This just shows me a stunning lack of creativity on the part of the principal. And I have to believe that it extends into everything else he or she does at the school.

So, if you are volunteering with a parent-teacher type organization, and it is your job to run a fundraiser, you should very quickly find out what kind of principal you are dealing with. Hopefully, he or she will be very helpful, understanding, and supportive of your efforts.

In the next post, I will offer some suggestions as to how you can possibly help your principal see things a little differently.

Photo by: falcon1961

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The focus of my blog posts this month has been how to prepare for the upcoming school year, in terms of fundraising. One of the most important things you can do right now is to make sure your funds will remain safe all year long.

No matter where you fit in the fundraising team at your school, you should be very concerned with the possibility of your hard-earned savings being stolen by someone close to your organization.

I know this is very hard to wrap your head around, but incidents of embezzling PTO funds happen quite regularly. In fact, I woke up this morning to see this headline in my Google Alerts:

Woman accused of stealing from PTO booked: About $8K allegedly taken

Whenever these kinds of articles pop up, I always wonder how long the embezzling had been going on before it was discovered. How long did the other people in the school not know what was happening? How many times was an illegal check written and cashed? How many times was the petty cash drawer robbed before somebody figured out something was amiss?

For a figure of almost $8,000 to have been stolen, the embezzlement must have been going on for months, if not a couple of years.

That means, nobody was paying attention to the school finances for a very long time. It also means that the guilty party in this mess had unchecked access to the organization’s finances. Obviously, this was not smart.

So, the first thing I think you should do at your school is to find out who is in charge of the money. Is it just one person? If that’s the case, things have got to change immediately, for everybody’s sake. Checks should always have to be signed by more than one person. There should be monthly financial reports that are prepared by more than one person and then checked by another person altogether.

I also think that, even though parent-teacher organizations are separate from the school office, they should use the school’s money handling policies and guidelines.

For every instance that money is being transferred from one party to another in a school environment, you must have the most transparent process possible. If you don’t know what to do, go get advice from your bank or your accounting firm. Let the professionals set you on a course of financial best practices and security, so your school doesn’t end up like so many that have fallen victim.

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I write a lot about fundraising, both in schools and with non-profit organizations. I’ve looked at the process of raising money from many different angles. One thing I’ve noticed that there is one particular human behavior that seems to pop up more frequently than any other when I hear about successful fundraisers.

That behavior is consistency.

It seems that many fundraising professionals or volunteers start off with great intentions in September. They have all sorts of documents ready to send home to parents, they’ve got their applications all in for the cash-back programs at the local supermarkets, they’ve made up attractive bulletin boards, they’ve developed some ideas to increase volunteerism, you name it- they’re ready.

But then, the school year starts, people get busy, a key volunteer drops out of sight, whatever. All those good intentions slip away and suddenly, the PTO newsletter is three months behind. When I see that happening, I can be pretty sure the school is not making the most it could be in their fundraising efforts.

So, as you are in the mode of planning your school fundraising calendar this year, I urge you to make consistency, sticking to your plan, your number one goal. It will support everything else that you do.

The best way to ensure your “stick-to-itiveness” is to have a strong support network, even if it’s just two or three people who will keep bringing up “old business”. It might help to rename “old business” to something more positive like “consistency issues”, but the point remains the same. You and your group need to keep up with all the projects you’ve started that are supposed to be on-going throughout the year, like newsletter publishing, bulletin board creating, Facebook updating, soup label collecting, returnable bottle accepting, and all the other things that aren’t time or date-specific.

The downside to being inconsistent in your projects is that parents won’t take you seriously in the long run. They know if you get all excited about something new, it will eventually lose its novelty and be tossed aside for the next amazing new thing.

I also think that by being consistent for the entire year, you’ll make more money. If you maintain a monthly push for soup labels and box tops, from September to June, you’ll make way more than if you start strong in September and peter out by Christmas.

I know this seems like very basic and obvious point, and it is, but really, it happens so much in schools, that I think it’s important to mention it here and do everything you can to guard against it.

Photo by: TooFarNorth’s photostream

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When I was the administrator of a private elementary school, I realized very quickly that the teachers on our staff were also my front-line sales force. Not all of the teachers relished this role, but it was a fact, nonetheless.

As you are planning your school carnival, you must start to think of them in this capacity, as well.

The simple truth is, if the teachers want something to happen, it happens. If they don’t see the importance of an issue, it “mysteriously” fades away.

This is why you do not want to alienate the staff in any way. You are counting on these people to make sure fliers get passed out on time, important announcements are stressed to the students, auction projects are well-thought out, well-crafted, and done on time, and that they actually show up to help on the day of the carnival with big smiles on their faces.

With the many responsibilities a teacher has, you’ve really got to make a strong effort to gain their full attention. Here are some suggestions:

1. Butter them up- a cup of gourmet coffee, a small plant, a modest gift card, or just a simple note of appreciation goes a long way toward winning a person over. You should have volunteers whose sole job it is to sprinkle the teachers with affection.

2. Be clear with your expectations- put everything that you want the teachers to do in writing. It’s way too easy for them to make a verbal promise and then get busy and forget. Teachers need clarity and specificity from us. If you want them to remind students to make sure their money is in for the pre-sale wristbands next Friday, put it in a memo and hand it to each teacher individually. Don’t ever assume that a teacher knows what we actually want to happen and when. continue reading

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