If you’re new into your term as a PTA committee, you’ll no doubt be full of ideas. But as we have found, great ideas for events can quickly become time consuming. We’ve therefore started to look at ways we can raise money with little effort so we can focus on the events that bring in the larger sums.
Here are a few of things that have helped us raise record breaking amounts for our school:
Give while you shop!
There are lots of ways you can get income from people as they go about their daily lives.
1. The Giving Machine is a website that gives charities a commission from retailers. It’s simple to get started - your community of parents and teachers just need to create an account and nominate your charity, then when they want to buy something from a holiday to a new bed they select the retailer they want to buy from and The Giving Machine directs them to the retailer, while banking the commission on any purchases for the charity.
2. Amazon has just launched Amazon Smile, which works in a similar way. It gives a percentage of purchases to a nominated charity on selected products. You need to make sure your charity is on their list – easy to set up – then get people to nominate you as their charity and always use smile.amazon.co.uk, when they shop.
3. There are also lots of community funds you can apply for at supermarkets, such as Tesco and John Lewis Partnership. We successfully applied to the Co-Op to be a local cause. Co-Op members can donate a percentage of their shopping to a nominated charity. The scheme runs for two years and we’ve nearly raised £2,000 this way.
Working with companies in the community
4. We have partnered with an estate agent who makes a sizeable donation in return for advertising in the newsletter. It’s easy to run adverts as they provide them ready-made each time and it means we can use some of the donation to buy great raffle prizes or put up cash prizes at Christmas.
Join a good affiliate program
5. There are lots of companies that offer PTAs a commission on purchases of school related items. The Stamptastic PTA Rewards Scheme is a great example. It gives PTAs a commission for purchases of their Personalised Name Labelling Rubber Stamps and Ink Pad for school uniform (a great alternative to sewing and ironing on labels (they also have lots of other great personalised and non personalised gifts on their website). They provide you with a unique code people use at checkout, ours is our postcode, which is simple to communicate and easy to remember. We pushed it hard in our newsletter at the end of summer term and put the free leaflets Stamptastic provides into every new starter pack. This summer we raised over £580 – in fact we had to double check we had read the total properly when we logged on to our dashboard!
These are just some of the ways you can earn money while you sleep. There is a little upfront organisation, but the effort definitely pays off.
Beaver Road PTA
Beaver Road PTA is an affiliate in The PTA Rewards Scheme! Have you heard about The Stamptastic PTA Rewards Scheme) In 2018, Stamptastic paid out over £16,000 in commission and handed out over £20,000 in fundraising vouchers! If you would like to find out more please click here If you would like to write a blog post for us in return for a £30 fundraising voucher for your PTA please join our Stamptastic PTA and Schools Facebook Group to find out more!)
