Today I went with my boys to a birthday party at a bowling alley while my husband got some space to get in the zone on his fantasy baseball draft.
I enjoyed chatting with parents and playing arcade games with my kids--lots of fun, and no shoptalk about PTA with the folks that were there from our school.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the party next to us were serving juice pouches.
Juice pouches. When I see juice pouches, I see money. Regular mom one moment, fundraising fanatic the next.
You see, our school participates in Terracycle, a program that pays money for hard-to-recycle items like juice pouches and chip bags.
We get two cents per pouch--oh yeah, baby! You're looking at the 16 cents I scored at the bowling alley by grabbing pouches from someone else's party.
At least I restrained myself from digging through the garbage.
The other night my husband and I attended our very first auction.
It wasn't for our childrens' school; it was to benefit the private school where they attend after-school arts enrichment classes. It's a wonderful program and we wanted to support it. But to be honest, I also saw it as a reconnaissance mission. I envisioned coming home with my head filled with great ideas about how to get an auction started for our school's PTA.
The auction for the arts program was very business-like. Sure, it was a party, and the wine was flowing, but it was very clear that we were there to spend money to raise money for the scholarship program. We went, had a few drinks and some interesting nibbles, chatted with a few nice people, and left. We watched others bid on items that we are not interested in and can't afford. Not that much to report, really.
Our PTA has never held an auction. When I brought it up at PTA meetings a few years ago, I was told that an auction wouldn't be right for our demographic: working and middle-class families from a wide variety of racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. I thought "oh, come on, we can throw a party with the best of 'em"--but of course I got busy with other things and never pushed the issue.
Funnily enough, my experience at the arts-program auction made me agree with the former PTA brass at my sons' school. I don't think an auction, at least as an adults-only party, would work for our school, for the following reasons.
1) Babysitting. An adults-only party assumes that parents have access to childcare. The going rate for a babysitter in our area is $15 or more. So, many parents would not attend for that reason.
2) The alcohol issue. Our school has a significant Muslim population, as well as evangelicals and some Mormons and people who, for a variety of reasons, do not partake in alcohol. Again, that would cut out a large number of parents.
3) Money. We paid $80 to get in to the auction. We're on a pretty tight budget and that amount alone was a stretch. But at an auction, of course, you're expected to whip out your checkbook. We bid on a few modest items (like a gift certificate to a pizza joint). Even still, I'm happy that we were outbid! The big-ticket items in the live auction were bid upon by a select group of people--most folks sat on their hands. Our school has a significant number of students who receive free or reduced-price lunch.
4) Work. Like many PTAs or PTOs, a select group of parents step up to do most of the work. The auction we attended was clearly A LOT of work. On top of planning a snazzy, exciting party at a bargain-basement price, you have to solicit donations, entice parents in to attending, and make sure everyone gets what they won in the auction. And you have to make sure everyone is appropriately thanked.
I know that at some point we can craft an alcohol-free, family-friendly auction where items that people of all income brackets would be interested in. But I'm also happy to back-burner it for now. It's such a relief, sometimes, to just say no.
Last night our school had it's first Chuck E. Cheese night. If, by some chance, you're not familiar with Chuck E. Cheese, let me get you up to speed. Chuck E. Cheese is like a casino for kids. The food isn't very good, it's loud, and there are a lot of blinking lights and things to make kids and adults feel very overstimulated. Patrons purchase tokens that kids can use to play a huge variety of electronic games (that generate more noise and more blinking lights). Last night was a fundraiser: a lot of families from our school went to C-E-C, and C-E-C donated 15 percent of the proceeds to our PTA.
So, I expected to sit down this morning to write a groaning "I hate Chuck E. Cheese" post. But guess what? I didn't hate it at all.
In general, I love "restaurant nights" as school fundraisers. While they don't bring in a huge sum, they're not a lot of work. All you have to do is promote the event--hand out flyers, post it on Facebook, etc. Then you simply show up and eat dinner, with the added bonus of getting to visit with friends from school while you dine. At their best, it's like having a party without having to cook or clean.
Chuck E. Cheese turned out to be a blast. Yeah, the food was nothing to write home about, but it didn't matter. My kids were so excited to play that we all just gobbled down a few slices of pizza and hit the games. I didn't overeat, as is too often the case at restaurants.
Our local C-E-C has a wide of variety of games that require you to move your body, so in addition to not overeating, we were able to work off our dinner! The space was clean, the staff was friendly, and provides a good set of marketing tools, including a visit to the school from Chuck himself on the day of the event.
While Chuck E. Cheese's tag line is "where a kid can be a kid", there are plenty of games that are fun for adults. Move out of the way, kids--mommy's hitting the Skeetball!
In 2012, very often school isn't just the place where you drop off your kids for six hours--it is a community. A large and diverse cross-section of our community showed up last night. Classmates ran around with huge smiles on their faces while their parents took a moment to chat. I will happily endure loud music and blinking lights (but thankfully no cigarette smoke like a real casino!) to make our community even stronger.
I've noticed these collection bins in my area lately. At first, I didn't pay too much attention, because I have already have a place to donate household items we no longer use.
But it turns out that the company that provides these bins pays money for the clothes that are collected in these bins. The company is called USAgain. They are a for-profit company that pays for gently-used items, and then sells them worldwide. They make money, the school, church or business that houses the bins make money, and the earth benefits because lots of crap is saved from the landfill.
It all sounds good. I am always interested in ways to make money for our school that doesn't require someone to get stuck with a painful amount of work. And certainly, the USAgain format sounds easy. You call, they bring a bin, you ask families to bring their old clothes... that's it!
Sigh... here's the thing: Even though it's easy, we already have too much going on. We already work with Terracyle, another green company. We collect hard-to-recycle items like Capri Sun juice pouches and send them in to Terracycle, who pays us 2 cents for each pouch. It's not a lot, but you'd be surprised how quickly the pouches pile up.
We already collect boxtops. We celebrate a panoply of things: All the regular holidays plus Lunar New Year, 100th Day of School, Read Across America Day. We sell chocolate bars. We have dances and book fairs and potlucks and teacher appreciation breakfasts and ahhh... you get the idea.
So, even though this pretty bin seems soooo easy... I just have to take a pass. Parents' brains are cluttered with too many school-related things to do.
Oh, and as I've said and I will say again, I'm sure, I LOVE thrift stores! If everyone starts giving their clothes to this company, who ciphons them away to be sold worldwide, what is going to be left to search through in my favorite shop? Thankfully, in this age of excess, I'm sure there's enough stuff to go around to keep both the thriftstores and the USAgain bins filled to overflowing.
I don't have a lot of time to post today, so I'm just going to share my latest little bit of earning for our school's PTA, which I did through Boxtops Marketplace. It makes me happy and this is my blog, so here goes.
We're a family of vitamin takers. I often buy my vitamins through Amazon, because they've got the best prices. But this time around I checked Drugstore.com, and found that they were offering the same exact price on my desired item. Free shipping too!
So, I stocked up and spent $50. Drugstore.com contributes 5 Eboxtops, or 50 cents, per 10 dollars spent. So on my 50 dollar purchase, $2.50 is going back to our school. Yay. Thanks, Drugstore.com! Here's a snapshot of my earnings page on the Boxtops Marketplace:
As you can see, my Drugstore.com EBoxtops are pending. It takes 60 days to go from "pending" to "confirmed", because that allows time for items to be returned. It doesn't really matter, because General Mills only cuts checks twice a year anyway. The important thing is that the money makes its way to the school eventually.
By the way, an enterprising PTA mom in Texas somewhere made a great video that explains the Boxtops Marketplace in detail. Here is is:
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