Q: I stupidly volunteered to be Parent Chair of the PTO at my son's preschool. No one else wanted to step up, so I figured I'd take on the Big Job, but everyone else would help out in little ways (I'm usually great at coordinating lots of people pitching in on a project so that everyone's actually contributing.) WRONG. We had one meeting where it was like pulling teeth to get people to even suggest ideas for fundraisers, and now that we picked a couple to run with, I can't get a single person to help me with ANYTHING. I'm losing my mind and getting angry and feeling like a failure. And I don't know how to turn things around. I'm not sure what my question is other than ...HELP!!!
A: Any time you're up for a job no one else wants (even when they flatter you tremendously by saying that you're clearly the best person for the job and everyone else wants to remove themselves from the competition because of how spectacularly great you'll be), make sure you fully understand why you're the only person in the running. This is just one of the situations you can find yourself in, and it's miserable, unless you've accepted the challenge knowingly.
But that doesn't help you now, it's just a reminder for your long future of parental involvement in the education sector (if your kid's in preschool, you've got at least a dozen more years of negotiating this terrain), and might help someone else avoid your frustrations.
So, the first question I have (and one that all those other parents should have asked the moment you brought up fundraising) is: How much do you have to raise, and why?
I'm always amazed at the range of funds that PTOs and parent Booster Clubs and other educational related volunteer groups have to raise - some need a few hundred dollars for minor incidentals, others need tens of thousands to essentially underwrite the full program. Being specific about how much you need to raise will help cut through whatever assumptions your fellow parents are walking in with (probably whatever they've experienced in the past)...assumptions that may be filling them with apathy or paralyzing dread.
Why you have to raise the money is also incredibly important to lay out for your fellow parents. This is your first pitch - and if your pitch isn't compelling enough to inspire other parents who've shown up for a PTO meeting, well, that's got to be fixed immediately.
One or both of these is most likely the culprit here...is the amount you need to raise reasonable? Is the reason you need to raise these funds important and urgent? If both of these are true and you've also ruled out communication breakdowns (i.e. - this IS something urgent, say, for the survival of the school, or preservation of teaching jobs, etc., but the parents just aren't getting it or responding...) you need to look at the next question that follows:
How much do you need to raise ---> why do you need to raise it ---> Who are you going to raise the money from?
You thought it was going to be "How are you going to raise it?"...but we're not there yet. WHO FOOTS THE BILL will shape how you go about raising the money.
A trap that many nonprofits fall into, but is particularly pernicious in the education sector, is tapping a very small pool of interested parties over and over and over again. The experience of donor fatigue in that case has very little to do with HOW you're asking for money, it's the total that this small pool of individuals is asked to kick in.
If you expect to raise all your money from parents and their friends (is preschool too young to make the kids participate in one of those awful gift-wrapping sales?), through events, raffles, sales of one kind or another, you're not alone...but maybe you should rethink how you're doing it.
Having a school community come together around an event, maybe dinner and dancing, can be fun! I've seen successful "gala" style events where everyone has a great time...but they worked because the folks in question were on the same page and wanted to get this particular reward for the money they knew they would be tossing in. But let's say that gala sounds like a miserable way to spend and evening. You could be sitting in a PTO meeting thinking "So, we need to raise $5,000, which winds up being $250 per family...but you want me to donate dozens of hours of my time to plan a party, buy tickets for myself and my spouse for $100, harass 6 of my friends to join my table out of sheer goodwill, spend $50 on a babysitter for the evening, all for the privilege of spending the night in a uncomfortable shoes and smiling when I'd rather be watching a bad movie on my couch." And when you break it down like that, you realize that this is one of the most inefficient ways possible to raise your money.
Once you take a look at who you're targeting as the source of your revenue (and be realistic here - you can't just say "local rich people" and expect them to magically appear and give you money while dancing and giggling...for that, you might as well send everyone out to hunt for leprechauns), figure out what fundraising mechanism creates value for THEM. People give money to gain something of value.
Don't forget: you're head of a PTO. Every parent is inherently short on time (or oblivious to that fact, if you're saddled with some of those Wonderplanet Moms). My bet is that if you can figure out how to successfully communicate the amount you need to raise, the reason you need to raise it, who you expect to raise it from and then focus your team on creating something of value to exchange for those funds...you'll have a group of parents who feel you respect the time they're giving you, and will be much more willing to help chip in.
Warning: if you have this frank discussion, you may wind up trashing some "traditional" fundraising tools that the preschool has used in the past. This may lead to bumped or bruised emotions. Tread carefully...but don't be overly cowed by things that just don't work.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes...
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