Bake Sales, Auctions and Benevolent Relatives... How Do You Fund Your School?

By way of introduction, I would like to thank Scott McLeod for creating this space and for asking me to take part. I have enjoyed reading the posts to date and look forward to learning from the others who post here.

I am very fortunate to be the principal at  Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. This past week our PTA held their first ever auction dinner. About 100 folks showed up to have dinner, bid on donated items, and generally have a nice time and in the process raise about $7000 for our school. Now in the world of school auctions, and in particular the world of school auctions in my community, $7000 is not a tremendous amount of money. One of our local high schools consistently raises $300,000 annually with its auction. Another local elementary school just recently raised $240,000 with its auction. But then again, most schools in Portland don't even have an auction, so raising $7000 is kind of a big deal for us.

This funding is also very important to our program. This past year I had asked our PTA to help fund an Americorp position. The Americorps Volunteer position helps to lead our gardening and outdoor education experiences for our students, and without the position, we would not have the level of student engagement that we currently have now. I have asked our PTA to make the funding ongoing and they have  agreed, so the auction became especially important this year as a way to raise the funds necessary to sustain the position.

At my school we have also been the beneficiary of donations. For example one relative of a staff member recently donated $3000 to our school to help provide for artists in residence. Another parent, through her employer's volunteer match program helped provide a donation of over a $1000 to our school. Again, I am very grateful for these donations, but wonder about their sustainability. We seem to be working quite a bit in my program to cultivate and keep going these types of donations. 

When I think about the amount of work that parents and volunteers do in my building, about the amount of effort that goes into putting something like an auction on,  I am struck with the fact that we accept an inadequate level of funding for our schools as a given. We work with making due, and then rely on parents, staff and community volunteers to help us make up the difference. The sad thing is that at some schools they can do this, but for all too many of our schools they can't. 

Comments

[Joe Poletti]

Tim,

I just posted a similar entry at Haulin' 'Net. A school was able to sell thousands of candy bars to acquire a laptop cart.

Although I applaud their drive, I can't help but think there has got to be a better, healthier way to fund educational resources.

I'm neither a fatalist nor an alarmist, but how can I keep from thinking Digital Divide issues here?

Joe Poletti

[Tom Hoffman]

You know, you still need to get the author of each post in the RSS feed...

[Scott McLeod]

Tom, I know. See

http://tinyurl.com/2qjncz

[Chris Lehmann]

I think we can all try to remember to sign our posts at the end...

But to speak to Tim's point... we've only got 110 families this year, many of whom are low-income. We've just launched our first raffle, we run a school store staffed by parents, and we apply for as many grants as we can find. But I agree, I worry a LOT about sustainability of fundraising this way. How many programs can I count on finding money for? I love that you got the AmeriCORPS position funded that way. We're going to have a position next year, and our partner museum is funding it year one. I don't like having multiple programs that are dependent on such variable funding streams.