Our pre-k thru 3rd grade school uses a pizza/cookie dough company, and in the past three years that I have helped, I have seen maybe one or two order glitches.The school makes a minimum of 30%, the higher the sales, the higher the percentage. We are usually in the 50% range. There is a minimum of seven items sold before the kids get a prize selection, although there is a trinket type item for every child who sells.
Our intermediate school sells candy, gift wrap, etc and that company has better incentives.Again, it's in the 50% mark, but the minimum sold for a prize is lower and there are added incentives. The top sellers get bonuses. And the student who sells the most gets to go into the money machine and has a set amount of time to grab all the cash he or she can. The students LOVE this and the winner usually gets over $100.
Our PTA uses this same company for our magazine subscription sale in the spring. It's a sliding profit scale also, based on sales. But because of the higher cost, only two subs have to be sold to earn a prize and there is a grand prize also. The rep also offers cash/candy/BK gift certificate as incentives during three turn-in order days. He is awesome to work with. There were a few glitches with the sale this past year, but it was our first time, so we had to work out the bugs.
I definitely would look into different companies. Shop around and see who has the best package.
Most catalog companies give you 50% of the sales and I would not use one that gives less then that.
We have used Kay Pierce for a few years now and have no problems with them whatsoever. We have had no errors on orders and they all come in pre packaged by the seller. Every kid gets a prize, the more you sell the better the prizes, but even selling 1 item gets you a prize. The top seller of each class gets a decent prize and then the top seller in the school gets a really cool prize. This year they also gave us a Nintendo DS to raffle off. All kids selling 12 or more items got to be in that raffle. They also gave each teacher who had at least 45% participation from the kids in their class $100 cash. There are a ton of catalog companies out there to use. You certainly can find one much better then the one you have been using
We do sales that are geared to our group, but I don't think I have ever had more than 3% mistakes/damaged items. We did have a company that flat out didn't have the items in the catalog. I have to say, the company didn't look secure enough, but the person that made the mistake by signing with this company hadn't done it before and wasn't given the opportunity to do it again.
I have always been of the school that the chair is in charge of the event. I let this person know when and how I can help, but that is why they are the chair and not you.
As fas as money is concerned, we look at 2 things, most groups offer 40-50% to the school and effort in vs. money out. Some things make tons of money but they are not events you can always find people who are willing to help you with. Others don't make as much money but aren't as stressful.
You might want to look around for a similar sale with a different group or poll your parents and see if they would be interested in doing something else that would be more profitable and less stressful.
Good luck.
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating-in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. --Anne Morris
I was just curious to know what the error rate was for some of the catalog fundraisers you had. The one we used was not geared for schools. It was used last year and there was alot of trouble. This year a different rep was used and I am still seeing more mistakes than I would like. There is such a low profit margin for this fundraiser I hate to see so much work go into it. I think it is hardly worth it. The kids (ok, the parents) sold over $16K worth of items and we are barely getting $5K. Our fundraising chair and others are STILL singing the praises for this fundraiser. I think we could do much better. It is also not something every one feels comfortable selling. We have probably had about 20 orders messed up. Not sure how many orders there were but I figure there were about 150 kids or so selling. Also there were only incentive prizes for the top 3 kids. Doesn't most fundraising companies offer more than that?
All orders were supposed to be in by December 12 so everything could be fixed by December 16 (our last day). Everything was supposed to have been seperated and double checked by the rep. Our volunteers had to go through the orders because they saw a mistake right away. Several orders did not come in until Thursday. The chair person was on the phone most of the morning Friday trying to get this straightened out. I did not want this fundraiser to begin with but I accepted the fact that I was in the miniority. Due to other obligations my chair person handled everything. Now I think she is aggrivated because I didn't help her very much. She also handled another fundraiser for us this semester. I tried to make myself as available as much as I could and answer all her questions. Is this not how it works? I thought a chair person was supposed to organize and execute events. Am I wrong? :confused:
