From school supplies to scholarships: PTA fundraising struggles because of COVID-19
Every fall in the Park Hill district, elementary students look forward to the bouncy house, cotton candy and game fun at their schools’ carnivals, planned and pulled off by Parent Teacher Associations. They’re big fundraisers, bringing in as much as $5,000.
But this year, because of coronavirus, they’re not happening.
Neither will the district’s fun run, which raises about $3,000. And those sales of trash bags, candy and wrapping paper, well it’s still up in the air whether those money makers will be possible because of pandemic safety protocols restricting close contact.
“We are losing a lot of our normal activities,” said Jessica Mayberry, president of the the district’s PTA Council.
Across the metro, PTAs, sports booster clubs and other school parent groups are struggling to figure out how they can raise funds when they can’t host gatherings.
Some of the fundraising simply pays for the cost of activities: school dances, equipment for football players, treats for holiday parties. But some also goes right to education. Raytown’s PTA, for example, raises thousands for college scholarships. Tonganoxie parents raised money for software for classrooms. Other groups fund career nights and help shore up teacher supplies. And experts say the activities that connect families to the school and foster school spirit spill over into excitement for learning.
Thousands of dollars are at stake. In North Kansas City, for example, parent groups spend an average of $35,000 a year supporting students and teachers.
The loss is a national problem, said Joseph Wolpin, owner of Fundraisingzone.com, a New York company that distributes fundraising brochures to PTAs across the country.
“This year is clearly challenging,” Wolpin said. “We are hearing from PTAs that they are canceling their programs. Sales will be down this fall, I’d say at least 35% down.”
And if, in this coronavirus economy, states have to cut school budgets, fundraising could become even more necessary.
As of now, parent groups have to be more creative, said Tash Davis, president of the Shawnee Mission Area PTA Council. Rather than give up on bringing in those dollars, she’s hearing that some groups plan to move events usually held in the fall to the spring, hoping the virus is contained by then.
Other groups are pondering ways to move to online fundraising.
“This is a whole new world for us,” Mayberry said, “and we have not quite figured it all out yet.”
Finding new fundraisers
In March, the Olathe East Football Booster Club’s biggest fundraiser of the year was well underway. A week later, the Kansas City area started feeling the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as cases skyrocketed and stay-at-home orders went into place.
The booster club raises enough money selling mulch each spring to cover around 75% of its expenses, such as purchasing equipment and meals for the football team, said president Steve Slade.
After the lockdown began, Slade said, the club had to call everyone who placed orders and return their money.
“So our fundraiser, where we’d raise between $8,000 to $9,000, was down to zero.”
The booster club’s second largest source of revenue comes from selling ads in game programs and obtaining sponsorships from local businesses. But when it became uncertain if high school sports would be allowed this fall, it was hard to sell ads.
“A lot of our sponsors are restaurants and businesses that are going through a difficult time. So we felt bad saying, ‘hey, give us a check,’ when their doors have been closed and they’re laying off employees,” Slade said. “So we really were stuck.”
While the club saved some money this summer since the team couldn’t travel and at times couldn’t practice, Slade said he’s still working out ways to make up the losses.
The booster club, like many other school groups, is selling face masks with the school logo on them to raise money.
Stacey Findley Bush, president of the Olathe North Boys Basketball Booster Club, is also selling masks with the Eagles logo. She said her group has partnered with boosters supporting the girls basketball and football teams to sell masks.
“It’s sort of a sign of the times. Everybody is impacted, so we’re all selling the masks as a community and splitting the money,” Bush said. “Everybody got dinged for spring and summer fundraisers, so we’re sharing the wealth. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
Both booster club presidents said the high school teams have incurred new costs this year due to COVID-19 safety protocols, making the fundraising efforts even more crucial. The clubs have purchased masks or neck gaiters for players to wear during practice.
Boosters also have provided individual water bottles and equipment for players, so they can more easily social distance. Club presidents hope to raise enough money to continue providing the extra equipment, as well as pay for the regular expenses, such as meals, travel and event costs.
For Bush, she’s planning for the winter basketball season, expecting the same disruptions that athletes are facing this fall.
“I have no idea if winter sports will occur, or if we’re going to have concessions at games, which raises money. We’re suspect on all of that now,” Bush said. “We’re doing the best we can under the circumstances. All I can do is continue to wear my mask and hope for the best.”
Slade worries that school districts will be forced to tighten or cut their budgets in the coming years due to the lingering effects of the pandemic, and wonders if that will put more pressure on fundraising.
“It’s going to be the way it is for a while, and school budgets can’t cover everything. It’s going to get worse when state budgets keep cutting. So parents will have to support extracurricular activities even more,” Slade said. “It’s not just sports, but band, theater, dance and cheer as well. Booster clubs will become even more important in the coming years, I think.”
PTAs working hard
Most parent groups aren’t starting the year from scratch.
“I’ve always made a point to say, keep a lot of money in that budget, leave with more than you came in with and that is helping a little now,” said Brian Mercer, president of the PTA council in the North Kansas City School District.
To build this year’s budgets, Mercer said, his parent groups are relying on their relationships with local businesses that have struggled to stay afloat through the pandemic. Pizza and sandwich shops in town offer a percentage of profits for every meal they sell when customers mention the district PTA.
“It helps them bring in customers and it helps us replenish our funds,” Mercer said.
PTA groups, most of which spend the bulk of their dollars at elementary schools, do have some good news. While they may not bring in as much money on fundraising this year, they also won’t be spending as much because many school events they normally pay for aren’t happening, said Samira Johnson, president of the PTA Council in Raytown Public Schools.
“For example, normally we would set aside money to fund field trips, pay for the buses or buy tickets to a museum so that it’s free for all children,” Johnson said. “ But there are no field trips right now, and I suspect they may be canceled all year. It’s so sad.” She said most schools won’t have in-person Halloween and Valentine parties that PTA groups usually supply with treats and prizes. Fall dances? Nope.
What worries her, she said, is that without their big fundraising events — the carnival, the fun run and yellow trash bag sales — they may be hard pressed to afford the three scholarships they give to seniors each year.
“We have thought about getting the community involved, maybe an online fund-us option to get donations, you know, asking them to just give us money with less of an exchange of goods.”
The district also won’t be hosting movie nights. Its annual fall Career Resource night for high school students may go online, but organizers are holding out hope for their annual STEM in the Gym event in the spring, where students and parents from all the elementary schools — about 500 people — are invited to a kind of science and technology fair.
Some book fairs may also be off, and those are money makers. PTA groups get a portion of the book sales from the fair. Scholastic, the largest provider of school book fairs, has developed options for schools that are teaching all online or in hybrids of online and in person.
Some parents, though said they just aren’t sure whether online alternatives will bring in as much money as the in-person fair where students get to browse and touch.
Tonganoxie Elementary School, the largest elementary in Kansas, is sticking with plans for an in-person book fair, “but it’ll look different,” said Chuck Mahon, principal. “We are looking for a really large space in the school where we can host it and still social distance.”
Park Hill “has not yet figured out how to do their book fairs if parents can’t come in and buy books,” Mayberry said. “I wouldn’t want to send my 5-year-old to school with $20. But if I could be at the fair with my child I might spend $20 on books.”
But it’s not just the big events that will be missed, Mayberry said. “It’s a lot of the little things you don’t think about at first too. Doughnuts With Dads and Muffins With Mom. We are definitely losing the parent engagement time.”
Years of research by education experts supports Mayberry’s concern that the engagement piece is as important as the fundraising. “When parents are involved at school, the performance of all the children at school, not just their own, tends to improve,” according to a report by the national Committee for Citizens in Education.
“What parent teacher clubs do is unbelievably important,” Tonganoxie’s Mahon said. “They are invaluable.”
Parent groups, on top of everything else they do, often buy extra supplies for teachers. And in districts with significant numbers of low income families, a portion of their funds are spent to bridge the equity gap between the poor and the more well-off students, Mahon said.
His school’s parent group took to social media at the start of this school year with a big push for its first fundraiser and asked families to eat at a local restaurant that promised the school a portion of each sale.
He said the parent group really came through last year when the school could not afford new software and a variety of technology equipment.
The Parent Teacher Club “was able to pick up some of the cost because of the money they had raised. That is one thing, and there are a lot of things, we would not be able to do without the support of the parent teacher group.”
