Fundraising is the key to our success!!!
We are seeking a fundraising chair/manager for 2010/2011 school year NOW!!!
The CJ PTA is seeking to form a fundraising committee to help find a solution to our current fundraising gap. We know it's a tough economy out there and we do not expect to fill the gap completely but we believe that with a little extra effort we can survive the downturn without having to cut the programs and activities that the students and families enjoy.
We are currently facing cutting some of our after school enrichment programs, including theatre, dance and some fine arts due to a lack of funding. We need to raise additional funds to make up for the 50% decrease in funds raised at our annual fall fundraisers like the Chinook Books, Sally Foster Catalog Sales, and the Movie Tickets.
We are seeking a volunteer committee to select, manage, promote and allocate new fundraisers for the CJ PTA. We also want to see this committee highly involved in the Night of Magic Benefit Auction because we still need help procuring donations for the silent and live auction. We also need help in selling program advertising and in promoting the auction to our community.
In the last few years we have not had to give much energy to our fundraisers, we put them out and the funds came in, this was a result of the excellent work of the PTA members who came before us. With this tough economy we need to be more proactive and find out what our community needs from us in order to ask for their financial support in return. The current PTA has had programs and issues as their focus and we are now redirecting our focus back to creating meaningful and successful fundraisers that the CJ community wants to participate in.
We plan on doing that in two ways, procuring donations and fundraising dollars AND gathering volunteers. Volunteer hours are so important. We always need volunteers, even in a booming economy, so even if you only have one hour to donate, even if that hour has to be at night from your home, we have jobs that need to be filled by volunteers. These hours are as valuable, if not more valuable, than cash. For detailed job descriptions please see the volunteers needed page or for more information about volutneering in general please see the volunteering tips page
Please consider chairing (leading) this committee and if you can't lead it then consider joining it. What does that mean? It could mean several things; Seeking out information on new fundraisers via the internet or around the community, some examples have been selling eco-lightbulbs or shopping bags, selling flower bulbs or selling cookies.
Reaching out to your workplace or community businesses to create partnerships, for example restaurants sometimes do "Chief Joe Nights" where they donate a percentage of their sales on one night to the school. Some organizations donate cash from every sale a customer makes, Subway for example has a school program.
Organizing and managing current fundraisers like the movie ticket sales, plant sale or the "I had a cup of joe with Joe" t-shirt fundraiser. Grant seeking and writing is a something we have never found great success at.
Do you have grant writing skills?
Would you be willing to take a class on grant writing to help us secure some larger funding for grant sources?
Would you be interested in just researching grants online and compiling the applications and information?
Promoting fundraisers by making flyers and distributing them at school or in the community
Promoting fundraisers by emailing family and friends and asking them to participate
Networking with other parents and community members to creatively fundraise in new ways.
Ultimately we will be able to provide for our budget obligations as a PTA this year because we have a rainy day fund, however we need to be able to replenish that fund for 2010/11. We also feel that we need to rekindle the fundraising fire and step it up a notch. Our school and our PTA has a reputation for being successful, innovative and strong. Let's create a new plan and blaze forward to create something even better than we've had before!
If you are interested in chairing (leading) this committee please contact Dianna Fontes at ptapresident@chiefjoepta.com or by calling 503 919 0953
If you are interested in participating in a current fundraising event, in general fundraising or if you have any questions Dianna as well.
We look forward to seeing you!