In Search of Catholic School Excellence

Thomas Boles: Welcome to In Search of Catholic School Excellence, the show where we spotlight the program's, people, and practices making a real difference in Catholic education today.

If you're a school leader striving to build a community of faith, excellence, and innovation, you've come to the right place.

Each episode brings you ideas that are working, stories that inspire and new possibilities for your school's mission.

Let's explore what's working and what's possible.

Welcome folks.

We're back.

I'm joined again with Becky Wong my partner in progress.

And this week we're talking about fundraising it's festival season and it just makes me think about all the work that goes into these fundraisers, these big festivals, how much the parents are involved.

You know, what's the output for the school?

What's the input for the school afterwards and, you know, can we make it better?

So we will kind of wanna talk about those in particular, but we wanna talk about fundraising in general.

And so maybe we can share some stories of things that have happened in the past at our various schools, as well as some things that we're doing with our current schools that we can maybe share with everybody else.

So.

Thinking about these festivals, Becky you know, I can think about this one that's coming up, I think it's even this weekend, and, you know, it's a big two day thing.

They've got lots of booths.

You know, the parents are in charge of manning the booth.

They're in charge of setting it all up.

They're in charge of breaking it all down.

It seems to me that they're also in charge of paying for all the stuff that happens, right?

So like their kids are there at the festival and they're spending, you know, a couple hundred dollars.

So it ends up being a very expensive weekend for the parents in terms of time and resources.

And it just seems to me like maybe that's not the best way to think about things.

If, if fundraisers are meant to you know, generate income for the school.

Are we also like killing off the people who are already paying us tuition.

And so I think that's a, a constant concern.

And so, you know, that's one of those things I wanna talk about.

How have you seen this play out at other schools, you know, in the, in that negative sense?

Or even the positive sense, like how have your schools worked around that?

Oh yeah, definitely.

Especially because it's at the beginning of the school year and it's one of the bigger fundraisers for a school.

Keep in mind, of course, we always do need fundraisers because it's essential in terms of operation costs.

But we can always think of it as an opportunity for the school and for the families to build community.

And that's the big thing.

We want a big turnout.

Totally agree with you.

We're always asking the same population, which is our school families for their time, for their money.

But when families know that it's for a worthy cause, especially at the beginning of school year, it's Fall Festival, October Fest.

Those are the things where it's fun for families.

They look forward to it.

So.

There's good and there's bad parts to it because it's literally like a month into the school year or two months into the school year, and someone needs to prep all that.

And a lot of time it's our parent groups that are in charge of that.

But what we can do.

Is to lean on the community.

So not just our families, but are there local businesses that you can invite to your festivals?

And I'm sure they're more than happy to join.

And a lot of times, you know, down the street there's a, a, like a small market or you know, some sort of convenience store or something, you know, there might be like an afterschool program or something.

Something like a Kon that you can invite them to your fall festival or some sort of community event so that it's not just focused on, you know, raising money.

It's focused on building community.

And in our last episode when we were talking about missions we have a lot of new families and.

A lot of our schools required service hours.

Like our new families are always wondering like, how can I help?

And they're most eager to, but they don't know how to jump in.

So this is a perfect opportunity to get your new families involved.

In the schools that you've been to, like, what are some events that you've seen that's just not like fundraising for the purpose of fundraising?

Well, yeah, I think that's, I think that's really the key though.

Like, you know, we want to build community and we want to, we wanna bring back alumni.

We want to include the businesses that are local, people who are in the neighborhood.

But it doesn't always have to be a fundraiser, you know, and I, I think you know, having an, an event, you know, there's lots of cultural things that you can do at your school.

There's lots of, you know, celebrations of education, of, of learning that can happen at school that don't have to be fundraisers.

And I think it's probably better to separate those two things.

Mm-hmm.

You know, maybe the big fall festival is a combination of those things.

But you know, we end up with a lot of these other little fundraisers that, that make up the operations that, you know, may or may not be fun for those families.

And so, you know, it's kind of nice to be able to say at the beginning of the year.

Hey, we're gonna have three events.

Mm-hmm.

There's gonna be three fundraisers this year, and that's gonna be it.

Everything else that we do is gonna be about us, you know, about being together.

And I think it's I'm stealing this from a John Miha interview, but he was talking about, you know, it's nice to have an event at.

Every month get some reason for families, not just the, you know, the kids being there every day, but for families to get together and have fun.

And I think you can do, you know, music night and you can do movie night, you can do you know, like food truck night and, you know, there's obviously gonna be a component of that, that could be a fundraiser, but the main focus of it is not to drive.

That funds, you've got those big events.

You've got your fall festival, you've got your black and white, you know, ball type thing in the spring, and maybe you've got one more thing, you know, whether that be like, you know, it was.

Gift wrap back in the day, or the cookies or whatever, or candy bars.

Yeah.

Remember everyone hauling two boxes of candy bars home?

Yeah.

My favorite, in eighth grade, we used to do we used to do pies, so we'd have the cookies, but it would be pies too.

And so they, they would be frozen and there would be frozen cookie dough.

Oh, right.

Cookie dough.

And that stuff was like just so good because you just, you know, you throw it in the oven for like 10 minutes and it's ready.

But like, there's.

There's those major events and everything else should be just about community and like, you know, as you were saying, as you were asking, you know, having cultural events, you know, movie night bingo, bingo for fun, right?

Mm-hmm.

You know, whether you make that a free event or you charge, you know, like $5 admission and you get people just to donate stuff so the kids can pull off.

Like it should be really simple.

You know, not to take away from those things that.

That will help you generate money.

But let's, let's tell our families at the beginning of the year, hey, we're gonna have just a few events that are fundraising.

Everything else is gonna be fun.

Mm-hmm.

Let's find sponsors for those other events so that we're not losing money on them.

But let's make a focus that we're going to, to invite our families back.

For something fun.

That's how you're gonna build the culture, and that's where you can invite alumni, and that's where you can invite the, the community.

We've talked about this in other episodes, but you know, I think it's so important.

You should know who's in your zip code, right?

Who's in your neighborhood, and, you know, maybe some of those zip codes are too big, but you should be making connections with the businesses, the community organizations.

All those people should have a positive feeling about your school.

And, you know, that doesn't cost a lot of money, but you might go and have a meeting with a parent at a coffee shop and they recognize it.

Like, Hey, I'm the principal next door.

Just wanna say we love your coffee shop.

Thank you so much.

And you buy a couple cups of coffee.

You sit down with your parent group and you have your meeting there, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you're, you're investing there.

That's not a fundraiser, but that's a, that's an awesome way to, to build community.

And so I think when you're having fun events is where that community stuff will happen.

Your black and white ball is total fundraiser and people will have fun, but there's no misconception about what the purpose of that evening is.

There's an auction, you know, the tickets are like $250 to be in the gym.

I mean, it's just, it's kind of crazy.

So I like the idea of, of keeping fundraising to those three events.

And having a bunch of other fun outside of that.

Oh yeah.

And a lot of times the schools would put that in their financial policies and schedule it and let families know to expect like, Hey, these are our three major fundraisers, and that's a mandatory participation so that parents can plan ahead.

And also parents will know like, oh yeah, those these fundraisers or all these mandatory requirements or whatever it is it helps keep the cost and the tuition down.

So again, it's just about the per and the way we see fundraisers.

And always remember like, hey we don't wanna have like a major fundraiser around holidays.

You don't wanna have a major one during Christmas because of all the outside and family commitments.

So just planning ahead, letting families know.

And also thinking about like, does every fundraiser have to be like a month long?

Can we have short ones?

Just like last year, one school asked us about like, doing a readathon.

I think we just did it in under two weeks.

The planning was like.

A month in advance or two months in advance.

There's a lot of planning, but the event itself was just a couple of weeks where it's nice and short.

It wasn't like a huge commitment.

It was still mandatory, but at the same time the focus was on reading and not just on the fundraising itself.

And the school asked us to come in because the previous year maybe there was not a lot of excitement.

It was just generally, I think they just showed videos.

It's something to that effect where we're trying to get the kids and the families focus on like, Hey, let's do something about reading.

Like what are some activities that we can build during this particular fundraiser where it gets the kids excited, the teachers involved.

So a lot of times we ask teachers to like, come on a weekend to, you know, the fall festival, you know, back in my teaching days, it would like be a Saturday and Sunday.

During December, we'll have to show up to a booth.

All the kids wanna see us and, you know, whatever game that we're like leading or the booth.

But this is nice because teachers don't have to come in on a weekend.

It's just something they include in their day.

Could be something as simple as like, shared reading.

Like a buddy reading like upper grades and lower grades, like kindergarten, eighth grade, just do a buddy reading time.

It could be just like fun activities during those two weeks.

And then we had a culminating event, you know, where we had raffles, we had what's it the book lady, she's really nice.

She brought her brought her cart that she had someone build out.

And yeah, it was great.

There was a lot of excitement around it.

And one thing that we do wanna focus on now is not just, you know, selling individual things, but we could take advantage of digital platforms.

One thing where we, I have to say that we did a really good job is that we saved the school a lot of money where we used, a digital platform to collect the money.

We use dfi, so it's a no fee fundraising platform where everything that went all the contributions that people made.

Went straight to school with the exception of, you know, the credit card fees, the usual credit card fees.

But Zey itself didn't have a platform fee.

And for our services, in terms of like, setting up the platform, it was pretty simple.

A lot of it was just like entering the student name.

And what was great is that every student had their own website or link.

It's almost like, it's a donation page where parents and families can just shoot the link out and, you know, someone across the country or another part of world, they could just do a quick donation, whether it's like five or 20.

Five, 10, $20 or they could even make a donation a bigger donation.

So those are some things where it's like, oh, pretty simple to do.

It involves everyone in the community.

And a lot of times we don't realize this.

I know there's a few families.

From the Readathon where they reached out to their company and got matching donations.

So it's great.

You know, the family donated a thousand dollars and the company donated a thousand dollars.

Of course, there's like a little bit of paperwork, but that's totally worth it.

You know?

You just doubled the donation, right?

Yeah.

What I love about that vent is one, the parents knew it was coming, so it was already one of the scheduled things.

Two, it wasn't more work for the teachers.

We had set up all that work for them.

All they had to do was play with the schedule.

It wasn't an evening thing, it wasn't a weekend thing.

They didn't have to go out and send off anything.

So like we, we lightened the load for them.

Three, it was about learning, right?

We focused, oh yeah.

We focused on the reading and not on the actual fundraising piece.

We were able to save the school a ton of money because between Z's, no fee and.

Are ridiculously low fee, they were able to take, you know, another 20% if not more home.

It just makes it so easy.

And the last thing I love about that is because it was an online platform, we were expanding the audience, right?

So it wasn't the parents like, and your, and you're, in fact, you're like, you're hoping the parents aren't contributing.

You know, especially, they had a low, they had a low minimum needed that the parents could have easily just written a check for and be done with it.

But the idea was well send us off to grandparents, cousins, friends, people at work and.

If you expand the audience, let them contribute, and maybe you're not hitting those people up from the family perspective.

They weren't hitting up the same people for everything all the time.

Right?

Like, you're gonna go hit your work folks up with a chocolate sale differently than you would for the readathon, right?

And so I think that was a great thing because if we can expand the audience and not hit our own families, they can find another place to find that money.

That's all the better.

Now, if the family contributes and they get like, you know, six other things or other people that involved, then everybody wins.

Right?

We can make a lot more money.

The school is saving a ton.

I mean, I can't even remember how much it was, but it was something like they were, they were being charged by the company between all the fees, 55% of the fundraising.

Went to the company, the school kept 45% and we got that back down to like they kept 85%.

So I thought that was just a win all around.

Not to mention how much fun did we have with the reading?

Oh yes.

I think the hard part was like picking the prizes where it was like relevant to the event itself.

And I gave the principal a menu of activities and they just chose during a faculty meeting, like, oh yeah, we wanna do these activities.

And we got the librarian involved.

And it was great because 'cause I know with some fundraising companies, they'll charge you.

For the t-shirts and whatnot.

So the librarian knew someone who made t-shirts for pretty cheap.

So on the last day, every student received a t-shirt and it was designed by a student, and we made that a contest.

So that was a lot, like a lot of fun.

Even for us, you, it was a lot of work on the back end, but at the same time, you know, the teachers got involved.

It's not just something that was forced upon them.

They're like, oh yeah, we like these activities.

And, you know, these days for the two weeks.

They had something planned could have been something as simple as 30 minutes as opposed to like a whole afternoon thing.

And it's so great that we got invited back.

Right.

So, and it's great because I had a whole list of activities.

That they didn't choose from.

So maybe, you know, they might be braver, like, Hey, let's try that picnic, you know, where all the kids are reading to each other.

But one thing I really liked about the read-a-thon is that it's not just raising money for, you know, operations costs.

When we choose a purpose, you know, make fundraising purposeful then families are more likely to contribute or they know where, you know, all that money is going.

Always be transparent, do updates.

And what's nice about like having a website, it's like for the whole school, you can see the progress and I know the principal kept posting in the newsletter like, oh, hey, here's our goal.

This is how far we've gone after a week.

So constant updates not just simply to remind people that they should donate, but to just talk about all the great work the teachers and the students and the school community have put into this.

In terms of purposeful fundraising, a lot of times when you have a goal and tie that in with some things that you're doing with school, and a lot of
times we're talking about school identity, like what makes your school unique, you know, like, Hey, let's do we wanna start up a new robotics team.

We want to build up our microspace.

Hey, the drama club's gonna have this play for the year.

It is a fundraising for something towards that, where we're trying to build up the school, then we're going to have more people involved in contributions.

And when we're talking about contributions, we don't wanna just talk about like, Hey, just donate this.

We want X amount of money.

But some people might not have that in their budget.

So a lot of times we can ask people to volunteer.

Like you said, knowing your community, like what are some talents we have?

You know, some families might be you know, an electrician, a carpenter, or maybe you don't want people to do your electrical in their school, but a lot of times.

You know, they could I think one time in the past we had a parent group paint, you know, the preschool yard, you know, do some artwork.

So I in one of my schools one of the parents works for Pixar.

It's very artistic, so they came and did a mural, you know, so there's a lot of ways to ask from our families, and it's not necessary, you know, always some sort of monetary, ask.

Yeah, but if you, if you keep that, so, you know, going back to this idea of like, let's raise money for the robotics team, or whatever it
might be, you know, if you are consistent with your fundraisers you've told everybody like, these are the fundraisers we're gonna do this year.

And if you have that kind of consistency, you can say, Hey, once a month we're gonna do a Friday lunch.

A pizza lunch, and that's gonna pay for the robotics program all year.

Our black and white is gonna go to operations.

Our fall festival is going to pay for new technology.

Like you can assign those things and people just know that that's how it's gonna get paid for.

Mm-hmm.

Then, then they're like, this is why we're doing this.

You know?

And I think that also brings up the other.

The other side of that is if you are consistent, you're not letting people just randomly do fundraisers.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you're not having the sports team all of a sudden asking families for a gazillion dollars.

You know, when as a parent I get like six different emails about fundraisers, I'm thinking like, who's talking to each other?

Right?

So I think that consistency can work on both sides.

One, it helps the families kind of plan these things out.

But two, you can also then allocate those time resources.

Like you said if it's gonna be a volunteer effort, you're like, Hey, I'm gonna need you for this particular event and that particular skill, and that's
gonna, you know, help us out and we can, you know, not worry about your commitment to that fundraiser or whatever, but you're consistent with it.

You can actually plan and then you can build.

Mm-hmm.

Not to mention, once you've got that first layer of fundraising down, you've got your, you know, you've got it all planned out and you've got, everyone's got their, understands where that money's going, where the energy is coming from.

Then you start looking at, well, how do we look outside?

Mm-hmm.

Are there community members that may wanna sponsor this?

Are there community members that may want to have a booth?

And that might, you know, that purchasing of that booth or renting of that booth quote unquote, might be something that would be something you can bank on every year.

And so maybe you're pulling in 10 spon sponsors for your event so you can start to think on another level because you've got that base level down.

Right.

And I think that's part of that planning is, is important.

And I know everybody's got a thousand ideas, but they, you've gotta put that together and be consistent and then hold to it.

You can't have the random fundraiser just show up outta nowhere.

I mean, it is one thing.

There's a disaster in the world and we're all fundraising to, you know, for relief.

That's a totally different ball of wax, but you know.

There's times where in a month there are six different little fundraisers and it's like, stop with the six little fundraisers.

Right.

And speaking of looking outside I know from my last school you know, with increasing costs and whatnot my principal was like, well, why don't we have a golf tournament?

And it's not just catered or just directing it towards our school community.

She was.

You know, well connected or she golfed herself, so she was like, oh, hey, why don't we have a golf tournament?

She was able to ask for sponsors or the school office was able to ask for sponsored.

It was it was a small event, but it still made about, you know, at least $20,000.

And what's great is that besides sponsorship.

She knew other people who were interested in golfing or you know, the community.

It was advertised in the school, but it'll be like one Friday afternoon.

They connected with a local golf club.

And made $20,000 and it wasn't directed towards our usual suspects.

You know, it's that same family or the same group of five families who keep putting together, you know, fall festival and you know, the, and whatnot.

But it was a different group of people and it was.

Outside of even the school community.

So that was definitely a relief for the school in terms of like not burning out our school families, but, you know, and it became the annual golf tournament.

And I know a lot of schools or the principals talk and they're like, oh yeah, we should start that too, because, you know, just look at your school population or just.

The community around you, like what's popular?

Should have a pickleball tournament or something like that.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Fun.

You can incentivize the families too and say, you know, you know, golf is a perfect example where you, you typically go out with a foursome, so it's like if you can get.

Three other people to pay.

Like, here's your team fee.

Mm-hmm.

Get three other people to pay your, your ticket's free.

Like as the parent, like you've already, you've bought in, you've spent 10 grand at our school, you're getting a, you're getting a ticket to the golf tournament, but your foursome needs to come up with whatever that fee is.

And then they call their three buddies, you know, and, and they can get it that way.

And I think, you know, if you find ways to you know, lay those things out ahead of time.

People are pretty creative themselves and it makes a big difference where they are having fun and you are gonna make some money.

But it's not like, you know, this weekend's the golf tournament.

Next weekend's, the bocce tournament, the next weekend is the pickleball tournament.

You know, like you just, you're hammering people.

You know, one of those things is, you know, folks raising tuition.

We have this participating, non-participating and it's, you know, I understand that some families don't.

Are working or whatever it might be, and they just, they want to pay it off.

But it's such a, it's such a negative one because, you know, they're just gonna pay their right and not, not fundraise at all and never participate in anything.

But then two, it's like you've also said basically we just need like a thousand dollars more from everybody and then like we, we don't need to worry about all this.

So that at that point you're kind of like.

Hey families.

What if we did this?

Yeah.

How about we all just have, you know, a thousand more dollars a year.

I know that's hard, but then we're not gonna ask for any fundraisers.

We'll plan events and we'll have fun, but we're not gonna do any fundraising.

You know?

And just, you can put that up.

And I wonder.

What people would do, would they then go look at another school and be like, oh, I don't have to pay that a thousand dollars.

I just have to work at a couple festivals?

You know, I don't know.

I'd be curious at like with if certain communities, if they would go for something like that, but I think it would be worthwhile to say let's separate these two things.

Right?

Can we separate the fundraisers from the fund?

Not to say that we can't have fund during a fundraiser, but like, let's just make sure that there's a distinction.

Mm-hmm.

And that we're building community that.

Actually wants to participate in those fundraisers as opposed to like dragging people through the mud all the time.

And then can we do it more efficiently so we can actually make some money?

I really worry about some of these things.

I know these there's a couple festivals that are happening, you know, outside of this weekend.

And.

It's gonna be a lot of work and not a lot of money.

Whereas, you know, if you had a, an advancement director at your school and they made three phone calls, they could get the exact same amount of money with three phone calls to, to donors, or, you know, you know, larger corporation type situations.

So then why are we doing this fundraiser?

Right?

And so.

You might say, well, we have to do it because it's a community thing.

Okay, well that's fine then let's not kill our families in the process of coming up with, you know, 40 grand.

Mm-hmm.

Let's, we can, we'll have a good event.

We can come up with 40 grand and that's all fine and dandy, but let's try to make this as, as simple on everybody as possible, you know?

So I think it's.

You know, the message gets lost in what we're doing and how we're doing it and everything is, you know, to try to make the budget work out.

Of course, everybody understands it's hard to run a school.

Mm-hmm.

But we just gotta be a little bit more deliberate about it, a lot more transparent about it, communicate what it is.

And I think if we can, you know, limit those things to what we've already said at the beginning of the year and not try to nickel and dime people along the way, I think they'll be a lot happier.

Oh yeah, definitely.

Just think about the sheer time and amount of work it takes for, you know, that small group of parents or whoever is near community that has to put into it.

Like with everything else, you know, the festival might be like a day two, but they were planning months in advance, you know.

It is like, is the, what you're raising, you know, equates to the amount of time you put into it as opposed to like, you know, maybe we need to raise tuition by like $500 this year.

You know, when you post it that way, parents might go, oh yeah, maybe we should just increase it by $500.

Yeah, and just have the festival for fun, you know, and not have the focus of like, we have to make X number of dollars.

I ran into a principal at, or one of our schools, like a couple of weeks ago, and their festival was really successful.

In fact, it made, you know, I believe like $20,000 more than the previous year, which she said to me was like, oh yeah, we did really well.

You know, maybe, another fundraiser later in the year doesn't have to be focused on, you know, making money, but it is just for fun.

And she was saying like, why don't we just have fundraisers and put the fund back into it, you know?

Yeah.

There's no pressure to like say, oh no, we depend on that, you know?

Second fundraiser, but she was like, oh yeah, maybe we can evaluate and just make it, you know, focus more student centered or family centered.

And I was like, that is so refreshing to hear that, you know, and just evaluate your fundraiser in itself, you know, and think about like, oh yeah, you know, maybe not just like force everyone to do those
catalog sales or cease candy or, you know, this can also become like optional events, you know, or, or just focus on like, I think you had me visit one of the schools and you invited me and I was like, oh, wow.

This is like a really cool art show, art stem show.

And there's nothing, there's no pressure to buy anything.

You're just there to look right.

At the student artwork.

And it was great because the the students were next to their booze talking about their activities or whatever they created, or you know, their painting.

And, you know, you could see a teacher just you know, directing and helping the kids out.

And it's like, it was so nice to go somewhere where not pressured to spend money, you know, but to really focus on, you know, the kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, and I think there's, I mean, there's lots of opportunities for things like, we talked to one school recently where they have, you know, they have volleyball or basketball, whatever it is on a Friday night mm-hmm.

Where they invite food trucks.

And the food trucks give them a kickback.

But like, people are already coming to the game and what they're doing is they're just hanging out and cheering on the other games.

Right.

There's food outside.

Nobody's required to buy anything.

It's there, but like everybody's hanging out, having a good time.

The school is still making a little bit of money.

Not a ton, but a And they had nothing to do with it.

They, there's no labor, right?

They opened up the parking lot had the trucks drive in.

They made, they didn't even put out chairs.

They're like, go sit on the bench.

You know?

But like, it's, it's you're taking advantage of a, of a school event and you're just enhancing it a little bit.

You can still make money in those little small ways without taxing those same people.

Now granted, it is the same people, but they're not required to buy.

You didn't say like, Hey.

You know, come down and spend all your money on Friday night.

'cause we have food trucks.

It's like the food truck's gonna be at the game.

Right.

We hope you'll stick around.

You know, we're gonna have, and like one of the smallest things you could do after these games, if you have that situation and this school has that kind
of the gym is right off the parking lot, so like they can bring the food trucks in and then you can open up like their they have a kitchen right off there.

Like buying tubs of ice cream is very inexpensive, but like you, after the kids' game, like you can hand out ice cream to the kids who play like it.

It's really inexpensive to be able to make that.

And they're probably making, you know, $1,500 out of doing no work.

Oh.

That's huge.

Every weekend.

You know, and you got sports all the whole time.

You know, so, you know, there's, I know we're talking about, you know, not trying to tax folks.

Mm-hmm.

But there's lots of ways to make money as a school without having to, you know, hammer, hammer your families over and over again.

And like, that's something they're gonna do on a Friday night anyway.

Like, I'm so tired.

We actually, our family wouldn't even go to that school.

We dropped by and we bought, we bought food, we for dinner.

Right.

We, we dropped in and watched part of the game because it was like.

I don't have to cook, I don't have to like, you know, figure out anything.

I'm supporting the school by buying the food there.

Like it was a total win-win.

And you know, I think that's, you're having a lot of fun and you're, you're doing these things, you know, at the same time.

So I think it's, there's more than one way to, to skin a cat as they say.

And I think hopefully people will.

We'll be able to take advantage of some of these other ideas.

Before we wrap up, I do want to talk about some of the things that we use on the tech side.

Mm-hmm.

Just because I think it's so important for folks to think about how they do their fundraising.

You know, in one sense you could take a fundraiser like a festival and you could hire somebody out to go run the whole festival so your families can just have fun and, you know, they can spend their money or not spend their money, but.

It doesn't become a huge thing.

Sometimes that outsourcing makes sense especially if you can get the same amount that you're normally used to getting and, or maybe even a little bit more because they're, they're more efficient.

But sometimes you might wanna look at these and I, I don't want to, you know, kill anybody's business model, but, you know, a lot of times with like the, the chocolate stuff, I mean, like, it's just they're taking such a big cut of the pie.

Mm-hmm.

The school should be getting, you know, 75 plus percent out of every fundraiser and it really should be.

More about the school.

These folks are making way too much money off of this.

So when you use a platform like Zaphy or you work with a local group, or you can find other ways to save money on the cost of the event, you can then make up a whole lot more.

And that's, you know, if a school's gonna make $60,000 off a fundraiser and they normally or if the fundraiser generates a hundred grand, let's just keep numbers easy.

And normally they get to keep 60, all of a sudden they get to keep 75, 15 grand.

More is huge.

And sometimes you can see a student, right?

Yeah.

It's like getting a new student, right?

So it's it's huge when you think about these things.

So we mentioned Zaphy as an online you know, they can take donations of, of all sorts of ways.

And so they, there are lots of different ways to do it, whether you're running a, you know, online website type of just collecting donations, subscription donations.

Those types of things.

And then obviously everyone, everyone knows about Square and how, you know, the fees are relatively low.

Everybody knows how to use it.

It's pretty easy.

Maybe, you know, folks are using Venmo as a way of payment, but like using those payment platforms makes it really easy.

You're not paying high fees in order to use them.

What are some other things that you've seen at schools in terms of the technology that could help save some money?

Oh, so we used to do we used to have a capital campaign, so a lot of times we'd like.

We don't expect families to like donate a big giant check for $10,000, but we can ask for a monthly, you know, donation.

It could be something as simple as like a. $20, $25 recurring donation.

And that's manageable for a lot of our families.

'cause my school was more of a commuter school where not a lot of the kids lived in a neighborhood just because of where it was situated.

There was not a lot of single family homes, but everyone had driven into school.

So, you know, having something like that where it's just almost like a subscription base, you know, just.

Small, like 25, maybe even $50, or some families are able to give like a hundred dollars a month.

That approach where it's not, you know, like, Hey, you know, you need to turn in $250 or $500 for whatever the event is.

And at the same time you were talking about like, oh yeah, people who opt out or the non-participating.

It allows families to give but not, or.

To give, but what they can.

And a lot of times you'll see this even in like parishes where the grandma's in the, the older generation, they're like, oh yeah, you know, I don't mind donating, you know, $10 a month to your school.

You know, just simple things like that.

I would say that those things add up, you know?

Yeah.

But well, in terms of technology just having that stuff even on your school website and making it available.

When we were talking about Readathon, you know, it was a two week event, but we kept the window open.

You know, to give people opportunity like, oh hey, you know, here's an extra week.

You know?

And at the same time it was nice that students who are close to the next tier of prizes, they were able to get that.

They're like, oh no, I just need $20 more to get to the next tier to get whatever that prize is.

So those are some little things that makes it more convenient for our families.

In terms of like, participating and donating definitely take advantage of social media.

It's all about word of mouth.

Just being able to spread the word and just like having it go wide.

How about you?

What else have you seen?

Well, I think, I think those, the things that we talked about, I think are the basics.

And I think there's some other companies out there.

I mean, obviously there's things like donors choose where, you know, teachers may want something for the classroom instead of having like a classroom fundraiser, they can put that out there and maybe people will select from it.

And I know that arrival to Zey, I wouldn't say arrival, but another company that's up and coming is, you know, give butter.

Mm-hmm.

They also have low fees and they haven't quite figured out everything, but I think those two companies are more agile than some of the bigger ones.

Obviously there's a thousand fundraising platforms out there, you know, for your auctions.

There's so many different things, but you want to maybe think about, you know, do we want, do we wanna spend money for.

A full featured thing.

Mm-hmm.

Or can we keep it simple and maybe save some of that money with some of these other things?

And I think, you know, especially what we've seen in Zaphy over the last year you know, it's one, it's no fee, but two, the functionality is getting better and better and better.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, maybe looking at some of these other platforms would be a good idea.

And I think, you know, just being really intentional about how you're doing it and not just.

You know, having it fly by, see the pants.

Another John Miha quote is, if your parent group is your fundraising group you've made a, you've made a mistake.

You, you're not gonna get as far as you want.

So I think it's important that, you know, the parent group is, is part of that building that community and, you know, setting up a place that they feel is comfortable for their kids so that they're sticking around for nine, 10 years.

But we really want to think about how we're doing fundraising.

You know, one, can we not tax our families?

Two, can we save money on the setup and the building of it?

And then three, you know, can we also have some fun things that aren't fundraisers?

Mm-hmm.

So I think that's kind of the moral of our story today.

Any final thoughts about any of this fundraising business?

Yes.

So, I think just three main points is just make sure your fundraising has a purpose.

You know, just is there a reason, you know, what is the reason?

Make sure there's clear communication.

Transparency is like the second things, just like, Hey, we're having this, even if it's like a scheduled fundraiser, that three scheduled fundraiser, mandatory fundraiser.

Tell everyone what it's about.

You know, are we raising books to money for books?

You know, we need to update our science series.

You know, something as simple as that.

But it's very meaningful.

Purpose being transparent and definitely diversify.

You know, are we always asking the same people?

How are we asking them?

Are they committing time, having.

Not just money, but just like volunteer.

And there's one thing I was thinking about when you're, we're talking about like outside vendors helping you run your fundraiser.

With my daughter's school, we didn't have them run the fundraiser, but we had a crab feed, which was super successful.

But we just had they just hired an auctioneer to run the silent auction, that one small part so that their fee isn't.

20, 30,000, but it's just one flat fee for their time.

The two, three hours or maybe just the hour that they're running the silent auction or the live auction.

It was actually the live auction, not the silent auction.

But it was great because you know, you have a professional running the auction, getting everyone excited, you know, they know what they're doing, you know, as opposed to is that parent or the pressure's, you know.

Off on the principal to, you know, pull this off right.

To mc the whole event.

So, yeah.

And that's not what we're up, that's not what we, we got into education for.

Right.

So those are like little things, you know, don't hand off the whole event to somebody, but just like get someone who's really good at one thing and h hired them to do that, like a DJ at an event, you know, hired somebody for a small part of it.

So that takes a lot of the pressure off of the parents too.

How about you?

Any last words or any last words, I suppose, you know, if, if anybody's listening to this and they're thinking about, well, how can I do this?

We'd love to have a conversation with you and just talk through whatever, you know, no, no charge there.

Information's always free.

But we'd love to, you know, help you think about that, how you can save money, maybe do something a little bit, different and maybe a little bit more intentional.

And definitely help you out with the tech side of things.

If we can help you set, set those things up, or at least give you a list of things that might work better for you so you have a, you can make an educated choice with your parent group.

I think that would be well worth the time.

So, I just wanna thank Becky again for hanging out and talking about fundraising today, and we'll see you all on the next episode.

Bye everyone.

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