Our school has never allowed incentive prizes for the kids. Instead, our fundraiser company negotiated with us and we had two cash prizes for the "families" that sold the most. These were more of a parent incentive. Then, the company gave us some of the cheaper prizes and we just put everyone's name who participated in the fundraiser in a basket and drew names for the little stuff. This went over well I think.

Similar situation at our school--A parent (notice singular) sent a letter to the superintendent threatening a lawsuit due to our incentive. Our states Dept. of Education has a something or other that states "a child will not forfeit school rights or privilages if he/she does not participate in the fundraiser". This parent felt her child was being denied a school privilage b/c they did not sell in the FR. Now, this was an "above and beyond" incentive. Kids got their (cheap) prize from the rep based on how many items they sold but also if you sold more you got to attend a big party. So no more "above and beyond" in our district. However, the earn a cheap prize based on what you sell can still be used.

We felt the "big" incentive made a huge differnece in our sale but the kids still like the other prizes also. What would also get me is the entire student body benefits from the work done by (at our school) less than half. And ONE parent--who probably had not stepped foot in the building--caused everyone to change how they did things. She just had to say lawsuit.

So I dont know if you are referring to incentives being entirely done away with or just the biggies that single out kids who have worked hard.

I know fundraising is a necessary evil, i hate it too but i dont think most parents understand what a PTO/PTA/Parent group does that is not covered by normal school budgets. I hear so many say --I pay taxes I am not selling fundraising stuff. And I am not sure I realized the full extent until I got involved. Our school district is tightening the belt and thanks to our PTO, many extra programs are helping kids in their education. It isnt all "fluff".

Thank you so much for all of your ideas and information. It will be easier to meet with the other presidents now that I can, at least, offer other ideas! You guys are great!! Cindy

AT my child's Elementary School the Principal eliminated the prize program from the fall fundraiser. Sales of $45,000 with profits of about $21,000 decreased by half. It seems a few parents complained "It wasn't fair to everyone," so she just nixed it. It seems like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

At our new school, we only use one fund raiser with prize incentives based on amount of sales. In order to spread these around, we also asked the Rep to include prizes for groups (highest selling classrooms) and one for the whole school that didn't cost anything ( Principal dyes her hair purple if we get over 50% participation). This is great for morale and all the kids can enjoy it. Also, instead of giving a big prize to the top two sellers, we spent the money on the discounted cost of a limo, and any kid that sells over 36 items gets a limo ride for free pizza. The limo will make as many trips as is necessary. This spreads the prize around to more kids. You can also have drawings for big prizes in which every child is given a ticket.

On our Entertainment book sales, we got rid of the prizes offered by the company rep based on number of books sold, and instead bought a prize for every student in the school, regardless of participation. So, no one was left out. We also distributed the books at Registration with the parents signing for them so that the kids weren't handling it, and parents had the opportunity to decline to participate.

Finally, we had several parents interested in placing orders with kids who couldn't. The parents simply gave the teacher $5 for each child (the teacher told them how much she needed) and the teacher made a donation for the children without any orders on their forms. Donations count for prizes (we negotiated that from our REp). So these kids are included in the prize program, too.

There are always kinks, but I believe if you address the problems, you can find solutions. Don't nix the whole program. It always upsets me when reasonable rationale people who support something are ignored because they choose not to be the squeaky wheel. So, the decision is based on the few irrational people who probably are going to complain no matter what. I have found that many people who want to eliminate a program altogether because of the "injustice" to another group, won't actually step forward to do something to help alleviate the injustice of that group they are concerned about. Just use it as an excuse to pooh pooh's others ideas.

My suggestion is to approach your Superintendent with the strength of the large number of parents who are in favor of prizes. The Superintendent will NEVER make Every parent happy, so he should care about the majority. Offer alternatives to make the programs more fair and accessible to a greater number of students. Perhaps form a committee to develop District-wide guidelines.

WE once had a Superintendint who seemed to introduce policies or make decisions that were extreme in one way. Then parents would step forward to voice their views and a "compromise" ie: reasonable position was adopted. I think he did this to get parents involved. Annoying, but smart.

[ 09-20-2002: Message edited by: kwtorres ]</p>

I cannot imagine the kids getting excited without them having an incentive. My daughter bases her goal of how many items she will sell on what prize she wants from the catalog provided by the vendor.

If you MUST go incentiveless - remember that for the big fundraising companies this is built into their "profit" paid to you. Negotiate with those vendors to get a higher percentage of profit and then turn that into a push for parents - "in lieu of incentives, we have negotiated for 5% higher profit for our organization. It is possible we'll have to do less fundraisers based on this." Less times parents take things to work to sell, the more they may be willing to get behind it.

Wouldn't be my first choice, but it turns the situation around so that at least someone is enthused?

And those TWO parents - am I safe to guess that they are not the most frequent volunteers?????????

Amesco,

We don't use incentives in our school but I will tell you what we did this year to really boost sales and so far, it is working. We just had 2 back to school nights in a row. I spoke to all in attendance re: many of our upcoming fundraisers and then directed them toward a large display of amny of the things we would be selling in the upcoming months. Our school is a K-5 with about 366 students. People were very excited and checkbooks were open. I know this isn't a real answer to your problem, but we are very happy with this new initiative! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Good Luck!