Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

When you are involved with a non-profit, it seems that every conversation starts and ends with the need to raise money. You’re either discussing how much you need to raise, how much you are currently raising, or how much was raised in the past.

When the board of a non-profit organization sits down at the beginning of the year to create an operating budget, it does its best to balance the needs of the group with the opportunities to generate revenue. Hopefully, much thought and discussion has gone into setting these priorities.

Once the budget it set, the director does his or her best to get the entire community moving in the same direction. In order to achieve real success, a non-profit needs everyone to be pulling in the same direction.

Or, at least that is what I thought was supposed to happen.

When I started working at the school, however, I encountered a situation unlike anything I’d seen before.

There, I met a donor who broke all the rules about being on the same page. Of course, I will not reveal his or her identity, so I will use the name “Donor X”.

Donor X had a child enrolled in our school. He/she was very pleasant and helpful at school events. We could tell that he/she was very involved with his or her family. Donor X also volunteered a lot in his/her child’s classroom.

One day, the teacher in that classroom came down to my office and told me that Donor X had donated a very expensive, brand new laptop computer, strictly for the teacher’s use. The cost of this high end machine was close to $2,000. I was floored. My first reaction was that it was a very generous and thoughtful gesture. Not being a wealthy school, our computer equipment was not always up-to-date, and this teacher didn’t have a laptop. Given the teacher’s situation, however, we didn’t think it was absolutely necessary to get her one. But, if she had received it as a gift for the classroom, we were glad she got one.

The next time I saw Donor X, I greatly thanked him/her for the very generous gift to that classroom.

But then a thought dawned on me. We had not asked for that laptop. In my list of school priorities, I could think of at least 25 items that would have been more important than a brand new, expensive laptop computer priced around two grand. But, a gift was a gift, and what could I do? So I let it go.

The next year, just before the start of school in September, the teacher who had Donor X’s child in her class, came down to my office and told me that Donor X had just given her a debit card, and that each month a very generous sum of money would be placed in that account. It would be up to the teacher to decide how to use that money.

Again, I was flabbergasted. What an amazing gift for that class! As a school, there was no way we could afford to give one class that much money each month for field trips, special treats, supplies, etc. So, the gift was thoughtful, practical, and benefited everyone in that class. Yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was a little put off, because here was another instance of Donor X’s gift not lining up with the overall priorities of the school.

Now, don’t for a second think that I was ungrateful. And I was thrilled that a parent would take such strong initiative and show such generosity.

But, let’s look at it from another angle for a second. I (as the principal/administrator) in concert with the entire school board, set our yearly plan for fundraising, which included a priority list of items we needed to fund. Then we put our plan together to make sure we could get those items. We counted on every family pitching in a certain amount for us to reach that goal.

I felt that it was my job to get everyone in the community on the same page, but for two years in a row, I was confronted with a “guerrilla donor” who made financial contributions based on his/her own desires. I wasn’t being very successful in my task of creating unity.

Donor X, in all fairness, did volunteer in other areas and did participate in our fundraisers, like the auction and cookie dough sales. However, if Donor X had this kind of money to donate, there were certainly more pressing needs than the laptop and the debit card.

I never did discuss this situation with Donor X, because in the end, I decided to just be happy and accept the generosity for what it was and didn’t read too much into it.

If I could do it all over again, I would have begun the process of inviting Donor X to become part of our school board, hoping that perhaps a more thorough knowledge of the school’s priorities would be helpful.

I’m wondering if anyone else has had an experience with a guerilla donor, somebody who picks and chooses what to donate to, regardless of the organization’s priorities. Did you have a similar frustration, or did I get worked up over nothing?

Hope to hear from you!

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