Also edited for brevity. I am going to bring this up at our budget meeting next week.
Our next fundraiser is in 3 weeks, and we've already solicited and received about $15,000 of donations to auction, so I can't exactly cancel it. However, we have discussed (briefly) NOT doing an auction next year (which means by the next time we have one, I'll not be in this position anymore, yay!)
On the grants and such, we have a few parents (my neighbor specifically) who are harping on getting them - we have people interested in writing proposals but...we really don't know where to start. So thank you for those links. Even my husband (who has a PhD in engineering and writes a lot of proposals) has offered to write grants.
I think we need to consider what works for the least amount of work. We've found that local banks and businesses will often donate $200-$500. We haven't fully tapped that market. We need to look at grants.
As a Title I school (you nailed that one), we really cannot get blood out of a stone. Our fundraising abilities are severely limited. We would rather spend our time on educational and fun things (science nights, festivals, field trips, etc.)
There's a reason why we don't have much help anymore. There are a lot of parents in the upper grades (5th and 6th) who are so burned out from being on the PTA board that they don't want to do anything anymore. I totally understand that now.
The thing about the Title I school wasn't meant as an insult, it's just that the behavior pattern is so similar. I live in a very poor state, and I see the pattern all over.
Heads up on the grants. They are generally for one-shot special projects, and generally can't be used for operating budgets or salaries. It's relatively easy to get people to buy (or give) you capital equipment, but raising money for salaries is like pulling teeth. However, if you can get a bunch of equipment given to the school, it may free up money elsewhere in the budget to afford the specialist teachers. Also, read each company's standards carefully because you might be able to just ask for money.
I should probably teach you how to write grants. Cut and paste the following into a word processor file; it's the entire grant writer body of knowledge for planet Earth.
To get grants requires at least one adult willing to sit on their butt for 2 hours a night, every night, for a month, and type intelligibly in English.
Collect the following information and call it the Super Duper Grant Writer Kit:
* the school's address
* the PTA's address (if it differs from the school's)
* your federal tax ID number that can be used to prove you're a non-profit
* a digital copy of your tax exempt letter from the IRS
* some pictures of your kids
* some statistics about your school and neighborhood: grades served, kids enrolled, etc
* some evidence your school is Title I (use your imagination)
* key dates for football tournaments, art museum tours you'd like to have funded, graduation, band performances, etc
* a copy of last year's budget
* a copy of the last annual report
Make a big deal about giving The Kit and the instructions in this posting to carefully selected volunteers who can communicate well in English. You're going to teach them how to write grants.
Each adult takes on an assignment. Give "computer lab" to your husband, obviously. The remaining assignments are
"athletics department"
"music equipment"
"field trips"
"art supplies"
... and any other you'd care to name. Each adult gets one assignment. This is so that they don't duplicate effort.
The assignment is to sit on your duff for two hours a day, five days a week, doing the following:
1) Type words and phrases into your search engine, featuring the word "grant". For example your husband might use the words "computer grants for schools" (Finding the grant is about 50% of the work)
2) Or, brainstorm companies that are already operating in your community, that sell products or services related to what you're looking for... or that USE that kind of product. Lots of larger corporations have gift programs, you just need to hit up their Web site. After the first month pickings will get slim if you want to avoid companies the other grant writers have already hit up.
3) So, find the Web site of a company that has a grant you can qualify for (some do, some don't). Many companies focus exclusively on academic giving, or athletics, or fine arts. So a grant you don't qualify for MIGHT be useful to the person doing a different assignment: E-mail them the URL so they can follow up. When you've got a grant or donation you qualify for, go through the online application. You will use information or files in your toolkit to answer the questions you are given.
4) Plead creatively about how your poor, at-risk students need what you're asking for. (Use a word processing program with copy and paste, modifying the text as needed to suit the company you're soliciting). Note that if you're hitting up a retail company it's far easier to get products than it is to get money. If you have a couple skilled E-Bayers there may be ways to turn excess product *into* money, but save that for further down the road.
5) Say nice things about the company.
6) WRITE DOWN any names, URLs, E-mail addresses, etc. you visit. If your school doesn't qualify, write that down too so somebody else doesn't waste time barking up that particular tree.
7) Repeat steps 1-6 for a minimum of five (5) solicitations per day. If you expect to take a day off, get more solicitations done the day before. After finishing, E-mail all the other grant writing volunteers about who you hit up. This ensures you won't duplicate your effort.
8) Have someone-- YOU-- set up a Facebook site for your PTA if there isn't one already, and collect E-mail from all the volunteers who are writing grants. The second there's a "yes", blab about it all over social media and give the company a nice e-gasm for their wonderful corporate citizenship. Keep a record of what companies came through for you and write them a thank-you note that's also a receipt for their donation. The PTA Treasurer should sign it.
You now know as much as the $100k per year grant writers. Seriously: this is *all* they do. They keep it a big secret and act like it's voodoo because they know they can bill the living crap out of some poor charity for their "expertise", when in reality they're filling out online forms. Any high school dropout can do it, if they have The Kit and the ability to communicate fluently in writing.
People don't jump into it themselves because of all this fake hype surrounding the idea that it's a specialized skill. It's not. You just have to know enough about what you're raising money for to make an intelligent case about it in writing. Most of the corporate grants are freaking drop-down menus.
Expect a hit rate of about 10%. That's why I'm assigning you five solicitations per day. The yes or no answers usually follow two to four weeks after you submit the request. When the first "yes" comes in, it's a fantastic feeling, and then you get the idea that you're unstoppable as long as you put in five requests a day (and that happens to be true; if you were doing it "full-time" you'd write ten or twelve a day).
Now, go out and
get that money.