Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

With the start of school now upon us, it is important to make sure the most vital of your preparatory work is complete. In my opinion, the most important fundraising priorities are those which will set you up for year-long success. Therefore, here is a brief run-down of the five most important things you can do to prepare for the school fundraising year.

Get on the Same Page
You’ve heard the old expression: “The right hand doesn’t know what the left one is doing…”. Don’t let that happen in your school. The end result of this methodology is disorganization and poorer fundraising.

Therefore, before anyone plans any fundraising events or activities, it is vitally important to set up a meeting with all the groups and people who will be part of the overall revenue generating effort.

At this meeting, there should be in attendance people representing groups such as the PTA/PTO, the principal’s office, the school board, the Athletic department, the school band, and any other club that will be seeking financial donations throughout the school year. It is counterproductive to have this meeting if there are groups absent who need to be aware of the larger fundraising picture at your school.

The purpose of this meeting should be to set a calendar for the entire school year, including the summer vacation, if applicable. You want to avoid having fundraising events from different groups on the same day. It’s also not wise for one group to have a cookie dough sale, for instance, right after another group from the same school had a cookie dough sale. Many times, there will be an overlap in your target audience. Put yourselves in their shoes. Coordinate your schedule and tactics, and you will achieve greater success.

Develop a Plan for the Entire Year
Very few things turn perspective customers off more than being part of a disorganized plan. On the other hand, you can earn respect and greater participation if you and your team develop a coherent fundraising calendar before the school year begins.

When parents know that they can expect a World’s Finest Chocolate fundraiser in the fall, an auction in the winter and a golf outing in the spring well ahead of time, they can plan for them accordingly. You have demonstrated your respect for the families by thinking of their own schedules and calendars.

Planning ahead like this also helps on the volunteer recruitment front. You may have certain individuals in your community who would love to help with your golf outing, but without the proper advance notice would commit their time elsewhere. Make sure you’re giving your potential volunteers plenty of notice to block out time for your school.

Get the Right People in Place
This brings up the important point of developing your volunteer committees. Before you advertise that you’re going to have an auction in February, make sure you have at least a core of volunteers who are experienced in running this kind of a fundraiser and who are willing to commit to this effort.

Without this vital asset in place, there is a greater likelihood that you will have to alter your plans later on. This kind of disorganization is an example of the poor planning that keeps people from wanting to participate in your fundraisers, either as volunteer workers or as donor participants.

Another benefit of getting your teams in place early is that you can avoid going back to the same few people each time. It is very easy for a volunteer to become burned out when a school enlists their help for many of their fundraising events. There is great stress involved in planning and executing an auction or a major walk-a-thon, for instance. Individual volunteers should only be relied upon for so much leadership, before you risk losing them all together.

By planning your fundraising calendar at the beginning of the year and locking in your key leaders, you can do a much better job of strategically using a varied group of volunteer leaders. Everyone involved will be grateful for this forethought.

Craft and Promote an Opt-out Option
In a society that increasingly feels more and more stressed out, it is a wise strategy to come up with ways to reduce this tension, while still accomplishing your necessary goals. The opt-out options is a very effective way of doing just this.

Many families in your school will more than likely have multiple children involved in activities that involve fundraising. Whether it be school, band, swimming, soccer, or gymnastics, parents are going to be called upon to dig into their own wallets and solicit the donations of friends and co-workers on a frequent basis.

After a while, this routine can grow wearisome to people. Therefore, I would suggest coming up with a specific plan at the beginning of the year that would encourage them to just write you one all-inclusive check that would cover all of the various fundraising functions throughout the year.

For many parents, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the time involved and the imposition of asking people to support their kid’s school over and over again.

The risk of not offering an opt-out plan is that you might get parents who just give up on you all together. Every time a new fundraising brochure comes home, they’ll throw it in the trash and not help out. They just can’t be bothered anymore.

Why risk putting your community in this kind of a situation? Research an opt-out plan that works for your school and give parents that option right out of the gate. Many folks will be grateful that you did.

Develop Your New Family Outreach Plan
Perhaps the most important strategy for planning ahead is making sure you have a plan in place to recruit and develop new volunteers to carry your school into the future.

While it is vital to get your leaders in place as early as possible, don’t forget about going after all the support-type volunteers as well. These are the people who may only help out once per year or who have never helped out before. Maybe a work-situation has changed from the previous year, and a particular family might have more time to help now. Or, a families might be new to the community. It is also possible that they have just never been personally invited to participate. Some people are like that. A personal invitation is not hard to extend and the results could be terrific.

New volunteers should never be put in a situation that is too stressful or has too much pressure to perform. By keeping them shielded from these kinds of circumstances early on, you won’t scare them off from ever wanting to come back and help again, or even take a leadership role down the line. With volunteers, it’s wise to allow them to put their toe in the bathwater gradually.

Therefore, it is important to identify and then solicit those families who haven’t pitched in before. Just be sure to do this in a loving and welcoming approach. This will be much more effective then quilting someone into giving their time.

Conclusion
I’ve always remembered a piece of advice I got from a professional house painter friend of mine: “With painting, preparation is 80% of the job. The actual putting a brush on the wall is only 20%.”

With fundraising, I can apply the same wisdom. If you put a solid effort into the planning of your year, then the actual process of holding events will be much easier for everyone involved.

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