To Contribute to your school, click on your PTA in our PTA Directory below.  *** Do not use the big red contribute button above. ***

Our PTA, like every other PTA in NYC trying to weather the impending budget cuts, is ramping up fundraising efforts to maintain the caliber of school our community has built over the past decade.  To meet this goal --  by doubling our annual appeal to $500,000 -- we must think outside the parent body box and encourage all in the community to take a greater stake in ownership of our schools' successes by contributing and aggressively teaching friends to emulate.  Read More ...

This investment in our future goes far beyond our P.S. community and what is thought of as normal.  Even in good times, PTAs from schools everywhere raise at ton of money.  Don't be fooled by all the "Budget Cut" rhetoric in Albany and City Hall these days that this is something new.  We need only raise more and facilitate participation in a much broader way going forward. The main difference is everyone sustaining a greater individual effort rather than counting on the tax man.

Here are some ideas and steps needed to ramp up fundraising efforts for your neighborhood school's PTA:

1. Raising Awareness Beyond the PTA. The first step to raising money for your PTA is raising awareness that help is needed outside the parent body in terms of giving their money, time and recruiting others by word of mouth. *** You need not be a parent at the school or a parent at all to help fundraise. ***  Ask everyone to help in whatever capacity they can (i.e. friends, call in favors, ask bloggers to blog about it, etc.)  The success of our schools really takes a village as the saying goes and doing so will create a greater sense of purpose and community.
2. Call Your PTA. Ask them how you can help.  Again, you need not be a parent at the school or a parent at all to help fundraise. 
   
3. Call Other PTAs. Find out what the big fundraising PTAs do.  Start calling and ask them for fundraising ideas and events that work. Or review their fundraising appeals in the More Info links for the PTAs provided in this directory.  You don't have to reinvent the wheel.
4. Grant Writing. Grant Writers and those of you who know how to sniff them out please come forward.  Sometimes not so obvious grants can help.  For example, if you tie a fundraising event to the Arts you can apply for Arts Grants to cover some of your fixed costs of a larger fundraising event.
   
5. Direct Appeal. The best way to raise money is to ask directly.  You can do this in person, by mail, on the street, door to door, on the phone (individually 30 minutes per night or in organized telethon groups), house parties, soirees (with guests inside and outside of regular school circles) or via larger fund raising events.   When dialing for dollars, you'll need a general script to make your pitch so talk to your PTA how to perfect the all important "Ask" or about active appeals like drumming up pledges for a Read-a-thon to peg to individual students. If it's by phone, you'll have only a few seconds to capture the attention of the donor.
   
6. FREE Donor Lists. You'll need to know who to call or mail outside of your regular circles.  There are lots of "proven" donors in your neighborhood.  The best kept secret in town is your local politicians' donor lists.  They are published online here:
   1. NYC  -- http://www.nyccfb.info
   2. NYS  --   http://www.elections.state.ny.us/ContributionSearchA.html
   3. FED  --   http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/norcansea.shtml
   Here's how to extract their lists:
   1. Search for contributors to your local elected officials by their name.
   2. Download the spreadsheets when available i.e. NYC's  NYCCFB offers spreadsheets.
      
   3. Print lists or 'Save As' from your browser.
   4. If you have technically savvy friends, you can easily convert the html lists to spreadsheets.
   5. Look up the donors' phone numbers on Whitepages.com (I can provide API/PHP CiviCRM scripting automation to extract thousands of phone numbers).
7. Motivate Others. You need to multiply your efforts.   Recruit and train others to emulate.  Have fundraising telethons where friends join you with their cell phones in a social setting over some finger food.   It's a fun way to serve a vital role for your neighborhood school.
8. Fundraising Committees and Donor Development. PTAs can grow the size of their fundraising committees.  Frankly, there should be no limit to the number of fundraising committee members, especially those willing to find grant money and to cultivate donors including corporate gifts.  Politicians have large fundraising committees whose members make a lot of calls and host quite a few house parties, soirees and more formal fundraisers and galas.   The non-profit world pays their donor development professionals top dollar because they produce the lifeblood of their institutions.  There's no reason why PTAs shouldn't look into more formalized donor programs similar to those in the non-profit world, the only difference being a volunteer staff.  These programs must be managed via a centralized database program to develop and maintain relationships with donors over a lifetime.  In the non-profit world, organizations pay $10,000 a year per license for programs like Raiser's Edge to accomplish this.  The good news is that Joomla CMS and CiviCRM are FREE Open-Source Software that are more than up to the task.  In fact, I have managed all my communications, website (this very website) and online contributions for both of my campaigns on this very platform, using CiviHosting.com as my website hosting company (about $240 per year total cost for unlimited users).  Most schools should have parents in the IT and donor world willing to build out a comprehensive website and donor development program ... with a little coaching to toughen the skin for the rejections and help with the "Ask," including setting the amount.
   
9. Work the Press & Blogs. Ask them to make a fuss...again and again.  These are important "feel good" stories that the press is happy to report. Run some ads too, online and in print. I'm personally going to buy ads on a couple of blogs.  These efforts can jump start and help maintain the awareness of fundraising goals needed to overcome school budget cuts.
   
10. Demand More From Your Politicians. Call them.  Hound them.  Ask them to break the ice by contributing from their often bloated campaign committee funds.  They have this privilege through a very public process.  Many have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars sitting around for their benefit.  You'd be surprised how much cash they're sitting on and they win re-election 98.4% of the time.  And what better way for a politician to say they care than to fork over a few grand to their schools every year, especially when they're the ones passing the budgets that will cut some of your best teachers ;-)   Better yet,  ask them to contribute their Lulu's to save a teacher's job to best impact our children via smaller class sizes like City Council Member Steve Levin donates his entire Lulu to charity. ¹ Also, demand that they include the 'Love Your School' Directory in every tax payer funded newsletter they mail or email and go on PTA fundraising tours like they did for new voting machine instruction.  Incumbents are very good at fundraising -- don't let them fool you.
    
11. Tax Deductible + Employee Matching Programs. Remind everyone that PTA contributions are TAX DEDUCTIBLE and are often matchable by employee programs.  Always remember to ask donors to see if they have an employee matching program.
    
12. Take Contributions Online.   Click here to create an Online Contribution web page for your PTA with NYCharities.org.
13. Add Your PTA to the 'Love Your School' Directory. Click Here to Add Your School's PTA.
14. Demand of President Obama to End the Wars and Extreme Military Spending. President Eisenhower and Dr. Martin Luther King (also Click HERE, HERE and HERE) long ago warned of this day of reckoning.  For a tiny fraction of the Trillion Dollar Military and War Budgets, not a single teacher nationwide would have to be laid-off nor a single school enrichment program cut, greater economic and national security would be achieved -- both short and long term -- and every public employee in every sector in every state of the Union would keep their job.  Don't let Pres. Obama and Congress get away with tiny symbolic cuts in name only.  Vice Pres. Biden said in the 2008 Presidential Primaries that if you want to know what somebody values, look at their budget. Clearly, Pres. Obama values the military and war 20 times more than education. (Also Click HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).  When Bloomberg is announcing Teacher Layoffs between 4,700 and 6,166 -- in NYC alone -- enough is enough.  Demand that mayors,  governors and representatives everywhere lead in a national chorus pressuring the White House and Congress to put our children, our people, our cities and states, our infrastructure and vital services first.  Local politicians who say they have no authority or power federally are either ignornant of how democracy works or, more likely, full of bologna.
    
15. Continue to Make a Fuss (and A Stink if need be). ² It is a responsible expectation for everyone in the community, especially the parents, to make a fuss over school and education to our children every day.  No matter how bad the cuts get, how parents value education day to day will shape our children's future and understanding of the world more than anything else.  It works best when the buzz for learning resonates in our schools in an environment where teachers, administrators and political players make a fuss too.  When a link in this chain breaks, it's time to Make A Stink.  As long as there's lots of fuss, the money will come.  Think of protests in Egypt and our very own Wisconsin.
    

1.  Footnote From Citizens Union:

We congratulate Councilmembers Dan Garodnick and Brad Lander for refusing their stipends, and commend another nine who are donating their stipends to charity: Councilmembers Gale Brewer, Mathieu Eugene, Stephen Levin, Ydanis Rodriguez, Eric Ulrich, Jimmy Vacca, Jimmy Van Bramer, Mark Weprin and Jumaane Williams...

Read More:

http://www.citizensunion.org/resources/city-affairs/council-lulu-watch

2.  Footnote from my previous post:

Cathie Black's 1st School Assignment Fix D13