I have a question: We had a silent auction on class baskets with the money going to the teachers for the class. In the past, the money has been given to the school, into an account for the teachers to use. T
This year, because teachers thought the PTO kept the money, we gave them checks for their baskets. Now we are being told to track the teachers expenses to verify the money was spent on the class. If the supplies for the baskets were donated by parents and the bid money was donated to purchase a basket, do the teachers really need to verify their expenses? What is our obligation as a PTO? We simply collected the basket money and distributed to teachers? Should we have just given the teachers the money and not ran it through the PTO?
I am looking for suggestions to make this work smoother next year!!!
Thanks for any advise.
thanks for your thoughts,keep em' comin...
You see, I have a list of 30+ names to help with our Game Night which, part of includes the basket raffle, but the teachers volunteer to man the event, so really a few to no parents are needed the night of the vent.
but, I want to use those volunteers
My thought is, to match a volunteer(s) with their childs class. Then from a list of themes randomly assign (pick out of a hat), each class a basket theme and is given a small budget to supplement what parents donate. The volunteer can get creative, if a basket theme is homerepair, maybe have all the stuff loaded in a tool box. if the theme is summer the base could be a 30"blow up pool.
We can share the class list, get them in touch with the room parents. Get a little friendly competition going, pizza party for the winning class, dinner at a local restaurant for the winning volunteer.
We also have been getting donations from local businesses, and we have a person working on a letter writing campaign to get additional donations, and BEFORE the baskets are "picked" assign the donated stuff to the basket with the most appropriate theme, make sure the donations are evenly spread.
In the past we have rewarded the class who had the basket that made the most at the auction with a pizza party. Not sure about this year since some of the them are combining donations and baskets.
Ok, I reread your post a few times. I think what you are asking is how to promote it so that each class, grade etc knows that the basket that receives the most tickets will receive a special prize..so do whatever you want to do to make your basket look the most appealing?
If that is the case then yes, I am all for a little bit of friendly competition as long as everyone knows that going into it. This will also make for some very creative baskets! Other than baskets we used things like wrapped boxes, buckets, large bowls, luggage or duffle bags, coolers and those fold up/banana chairs filled with items. But I still think it should be for those items that get donated to you already wrapped....not ones that your committee people put together with singly donated items matched together. Hope this helps [img]smile.gif[/img]
Hmmm I'm not so sure about this. We ran our first tricky tray last October and part of the prizes were CLASS/GRADE baskets. Each grade was assigned a theme..WRAP IT UP, SNACK ATTACK, etc and we asked each child to donate an item towards the basket. Some classes did great, others maybe only 10 items were donated. We, as the wrapping committee, ended up adding several items to those baskets...so to crown one of those baskets a winner, wouldnt be fair. Actually, alot of our items came to us separately and we ended up matching them up with similar items and wrapping them up. I think if you want to have a best basket/most tickets it should be from baskets that get donated already together and wrapped...with all of the contents from the donatee. If I had to guess which of our prizes received the most tickets, I would have to say either the SPA DAY that a few girls chipped in and donated or the $200 gift card basket, donated by the faculty/staff. I do like the idea...but Im just not sure how to execute it without stepping on toes and having people feeling left out. Let me think more about this [img]smile.gif[/img]
Those of you who do basket raffles/tricky trays/whatever else they are called, Have you ever had a "contest" of which basket was best, ie: received the most raffles?
At my school, In the past each class has donated items for the baskets and my past PTO president and 4 or 5 of her friends put together/built all 46 baskets for our basket night.
At my aunt's work they do a basket raffle, each department builds a basket. After the raffling of the baskets they count the raffle tickets and the basket that gets the most raffle chances wins.
does anyone do that? by classroom? or the parent who volunteers to put the basket together? what prizes have you had? how do you do it? how do you promote it so as to get people to "design" each basket.
I'm big on having volunteers do as much as they want/I can encourage them do. I thought this might encourage them or reward them for doing a great job.
