Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) around the country are constantly on the lookout for new and innovative ways to raise much-needed funds for their schools. Whether it is selling wrapping paper or magazine subscriptions, clipping coupons or saving box tops, conducting auctions or school carnivals, PTAs have developed a wide variety of money-raising techniques to fund new and exciting programs for their kids.
We all know that this never-ending push for more and more PTA fundraising is an enormous drain on the time and energy of parents who volunteer for these efforts. In some lucky schools, there might be 50 or 100 parents who volunteer their time. In many other schools, there may be only five or ten parents who devote untold hours to the fundraising effort. The demands on these volunteers is draining and every PTA faces some level of “volunteer burnout” on a regular basis.
Flex Academies knows that some PTAs use their afterschool enrichment programs as a fundraising vehicle. At these schools, parent volunteers directly manage the enrichment program and the program’s profits become a revenue source for the school. Some years the program can be very profitable for the school; in other years maybe it’s not so profitable.
When a PTA chooses to contract with Flex to manage its afterschool enrichment program, Flex offers the school the opportunity to use the program as a PTA fundraising vehicle. Flex’s process for PTA fundraising is very straightforward. We simply collect an additional PTA fee added to the tuition rates we charge parents for participating in a Flex program and then remit the added funds we collect to the PTA. For example, if our basic price for a Flex chess class is $150 per student, we instead charge $155 per student and then pay the additional $5 to the PTA as a fundraiser. In this way, every enrollment in a Flex program generates additional funds that the PTA can allocate to its programmatic priorities.
PTAs have complete control over whether or not they want to use their Flex program as a fundraiser. Of the 25 school programs Flex currently manages, about 40% (10 schools) currently charge a PTA fundraising fee. PTAs also have complete control over how large of a PTA fee they want to add to the Flex tuitions — $5, $10, $15 or $20 — and how the collected funds are spent in the school. As a result, the amount of money raised by an individual Flex school varies significantly, from zero to $15,000, with the average program generating $3,000-$4,000 per year.
Importantly, fundraising through a Flex program can generate a significant amount of additional dollars for a PTA with virtually no volunteer time commitment. The PTA simply receives a check, deposited directly into its account, from Flex after every Flex session. The parent volunteers who previously managed the enrichment program can now be freed up to devote their volunteer time to other PTA activities that could generate additional funds for the school.
Flex Academies is very proud of the role we play in delivering fun and motivating activities for students in our Flex schools. We are also very proud of the role we play in raising much-needed funds for our PTA partners.
Need a new fundraiser for your PTA? Let us take away the headaches.
