Tim's right--especially our first year we had no idea what the costs of programs are. Now however, after doing this for 4 years...as a group we understand what our costs will be for "routine" business and then add in any goal type fundraising. So your capture is correct in our case. We have an idea of what we need up front and then can target specific fundraisers toward specific goals. We didn't do any catelogue sales this year to give ourselves a break...so money raising is not our goal as a group...the enhancement of the school is and we pursue funding in order to meet the goals we establish in the first few weeks at the school.
I do have to add that pushing classroom adoptions through Adopt a Classroom is a big goal for us each year. It allows parents to join together at the grass roots level and pool money to "adopt" their classroom through the 501c3 program run out of Florida. SO that is a huge relief as far as the PTO donating money to each classroom and that grass roots approach has been tremendously successful for us. Last year we were 3d in the nation in ranking for contributions to our classrooms and this year we've raised close to 18k that has gone directly into our teachers hands. So this is almost a subset goal each year that doesn't change, and the families respond with gusto. We push it as an alternative to "another nice mug" at Christmas. Some parents can only give 5 dollars and some come out and adopt outright with our goal of 500 dollars. It's a great program to look at and does away with the requirement for receipts and reimbursments etc.
Focusing on the need in the planning (and especially in the marketing) is huge.
But I think the order is often more grey.
If a group is focused on a playground or replacing all the computers at school or the like (a really defined goal), then the process you're describing can be fairly strict.
But those really defined projects are not the norm. More typically, groups have a whole host of good work they do. Supporting teachers, field trips, arts & enrichment, family events..... So it's not a project-based need. It's more of a "help us make XYZ school a great place for our kids" need. And the gorups will try to get as much as they can to reach that goal.
The trick with that greyness is that it sometimes/often leads to groups just fundraising more and more, because there's always more the groups could do. And that's self-defeating. (long-run leads to less involvement and less $$ -- a vicious circle).
Just reading between the lines... what you're doing is determining what is needed, then you figure out what funding mechanisms to use; as opposed to raising money, then figuring out what to use it for. Is that correct?
I think the process is used all of the time however in a more intuitive way. For instance no one does a formal demographics report as to what might work or not work as a sales event or fundraising event however we do a cost analysis based on money, interest and importantly time. I say that because we did a Carnival our first 2 years as a PTO that was very successful (8K in revenue for a one day event) however we had a hard time getting volutneers because it was late in the year, a hard time picking a date because of sports events, and it occurred at a point in the year where it was difficult to expend the funds unless we had a waiting project. We were not constrained by that as we allow carryover, however other schools may be. That has moved us toward a Fall Festival at the start of the year when voluteers are not burning at both ends and a less stressful Bingo at the end of the year that still brings in 4k but doesn't pose as much conflict on those key issues above.
Certainly the first two steps are initiated when you come up with an annual budget that lays out what your programs cost. Ancillary things that you hope to purchase for the school are sometimes controlled (i.e. Active boards cost 5.6k per system installed in the school--if you want to purchase 2 systems as a goal for the first half of the year that means 11.2K plus the cost of your programs must be raised those first few months or come out of carry over funding.
Anyway--that's the way we look at things. In February we do a "state of the PTO" update for the membership that shows what we've spent, have to spend on events till the end of the year, what's in the "bucket" and what we'll be able to put towards our larger goal for the year. Our goal of 4 or 5 boards this year amounts to raising 30k in addition to the 9k is takes to run our programs.
I'm a parent. My wife is the Vice President of our schools PTA and asked to to help figure out ways to improve its fundraising activities. After speaking with two professional fundraisers, I found these two people used a process to raise funds. I'm just trying to determine if a similar process has been used in "the trenches," and if so, how well it worked.
