My school likes to eat. We do a spiritnight once a week, and then do a Chick-fil-a biscuit sale once a month for breakfast. Parents can come eat breakfast with their kids. We don't make a lot, but it is only an hours worth of work.
Our parents come out anytime we have food. We even sell hotdogs or pizza at our regular meetings. Since we started doing that, our attendance has gone up. And we wonder why we are obese?
i just organized a bakesale for kindergarten t shirts for field trips. We offered cookies, cupcakes, brownies and whole pickles. We averaged 150.00 a sale. They sell most things for 50 cent. Plus the lunchroom offers ice cream on friday for the kids to buy. The shirts were paid for, with money left over, in a week.
The only problem I would have with an in-school fundraiser is that all of the funds are coming in only from parents, instead of other potential donors like family members and neighbors.
My group is in the same position as JHB. It might be a matter of working around a smaller budget.
If the parents have a negative attitude, I also agree that maybe more free events need to be worked in, so they feel like they're getting something in return as well.
Our PTA only does in-school fundraisers. We NEVER ask our students to sell anything! I am not a believer in having the children sell things. Our fundraisers include:
Book Bingo
Book Fair
T-shirts
Raffle Baskets in conjuction with a dance or dinner
Carnival
Garage Sale
Our parents were sick to death of fundraisers so we got rid of them entirely, and now families just make donations of $75 or more (entirely voluntary, but we have raised almost $60K this year!)
Since this kind of fundraising is not always an option, why not offer families a way to "opt-out" of fundraising....in other words, let them make a cash donation in lieu of fundraising. Those that think fundraisers are "evil" will likely take you up on it...and the response will let you know how parents really feel without having to ask them...
You could ask for the one-time donation at the beginning of the year, to bring in more funds up front....
We published a set of pie charts this year with our budgets from last year. So the first pie chart is how much money we brought in and where it came from and the second chart is where the money went. We also had a small summary along with it stating that while we tried very hard our fundraising efforts fell short by X amount and that we spent Y amount which was Z amount more than we had brought in. A lot of parents have told me that they were surprised that A. we didn't make as much as they somehow thought we did and B. that we funded so much more than they have ever imagined. Budgets are nice but a lot of people are visual and that was what helped us.
That said, we are also trying to have a lot more "free" events like Game Night, that involve parents and kids and dont charge any money. We look active and it brings more people into our events and they seem more willing to participate in our fundraisers.
