One of the members of this board is actually the PTO president of my old grade school, which is pretty cool because I live 300 miles away from there now and am so pleased to see what she has done. When they were raising money for their new playground, they sent letters to every business in town asking for donations and got twice as much money as they needed. I can't think of any better fundraiser than just asking for money-and asking everyone!
Our school is a private school and we are going through the same thing (looking at land, building a school). We have started an annual giving campaign or capital funding campaign. We are targeting alumni, friends, current families and businesses. We are allowing them to pledge and make payments over 6 months. We have a letter we send out letting people know that is this a donation. This is tax deductible. We are also looking at having a one time building fund expense of $1,000 per family. This amount can be paid for a course of 2-3 years. We have 100 families x $1000= $100,000. Every year when new families come in that is an additional $1000 towards the fund.
So I'm at a birthday party and a school board member and I are discussing the new piece of land the school is looking at to purchase and develop into a sports field. His question to me (that I am bringing here) "how do we go about asking for local support?" Sounds simple but we are looking for help with over million dollars and everything needed for a sports field-- EVERYTHING!
As a charter school, we are almost like a private school that receives funding from the district but not for stuff like this. Also since the PTO has only a $5000 budget (in a good year!) it's hard for me to see us finding the best fundrasiser in the world to fund this new project! I can write letters but can't write a check!
