The PTA has been approached by Ms. Morningstar and the staff with several new funding requests for the upcoming year. These requests total $53,000 in additional expenditures, which break down as follows (with priority assigned by the teaching staff):
| 1a) | Fund Powerful Writers, which has been funded via another method in the past. | $10,000 |
| 1b) | Fund 40% of Mr. Prentiss' salary (and benefits) to serve as a computer lab resource. | $30,000 |
| 2) | Fund two tutors for 4th and 5th grade — we currently have tutors for K-3. | $7,000 |
| 3) | Provide late buses to support after-school activities. | $6,000 |
It is assumed that the PTA will continue to fund all of the programs that we have paid for in the past. These amounted to nearly $15,000 for the past year. So, if we choose to go ahead with everything, we'll be looking at spending just under $70,000 in the coming school year.
The difficulty comes in that we need to make commitment to these new programs in the next month or so (i.e. before we have the money in hand to fully fund them).
In the current year, the PTA has raised roughly $25,000. The amount of fundraising has been increasing slowly throughout the past several years. We have around $35,000 in the bank.
We've begun to identify several ways in which we might increase fundraising, such as:
- integrating fundraising into existing events
- creating new fundraising events (auctions, benefit concerts, etc.)
- increasing promotion and emphasis on the Annual Fund
- pursuing grants
- doing more sales
- enhanced community outreach efforts (to local businesses and community members)
- etc.
Of these, I believe that grants have the potential to provide the biggest monetary impact. However, the catch is that there is usually a relatively long lead time between applying for a grant and receiving funds. We are now only in the exploratory phase of identifying grants to which we may apply. There is also a learning curve to the application process that we have to surmount. Therefore, I don't feel confident that we can project to have any grant dollars in the budget for the coming year. Obviously, I'm hopeful that we will, but I don't think that we can plan on it at this point.
That leaves the prospect of almost tripling our fundraising goals using basically the same methods that we have used in the past. Our cash reserves provide some cushion, but it would be a shame to deplete that hard-earned savings. Ideally, I'd like to be in a position that we are funding one year ahead, i.e. we have enough money in the bank at the end of each school year to fund all or our expenses for the subsequent year.
Do you feel confident in committing to raising $70,000 next year?
Should we (as the fundraising team) recommend that the PTA consider sticking to a smaller budget, either by denying funding for one or more of the new programs or cutting some existing programs?
Should we just “go for it” and rely on our savings if we fall short?
