It’s fall, school is back in and it’s time to start the fundraising efforts that PTA’s launch every year in an effort to raise funds for the school. When I was a kid, I didn’t pay much attention to the fundraising efforts beyond what prizes could be won. My daughter was thinking in a somewhat similar vein when she brought home her fund raising package on Friday.
But I thought about it over the weekend and last night, she and I sat down to discuss the FUNdraising that needed to be done and why it needed to be. I asked her if she knew what fundraising meant and she answered with a pretty straightforward: making money.
Making Money, But Why?
She was right, it did mean making money – but money is just a nebulous concept for a child and I wanted to her to understand that it wasn’t about making greenbacks so much as affording for future opportunities. The goals for fundraising in our PTA this year are to improve the playground at the school including adding shaded areas with misters and benches. The idea is to give our teachers the options of teaching outdoor classes in a comfortable and cool atmosphere.
The other goals include adding water fountains to the outdoor playgrounds so the kids have easy access to water without having to bring water bottles or returning inside the building. They are also planning to give each grade level a substantial amount in order to purchase materials, supplies and more to add to their classrooms and supplies.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the fundraising efforts this year. As I explained this to my daughter, her eyes began to light up. She thought that was a great idea, and why shouldn’t she? She’s in Kindergarten, she’ll be at this school for the next four to five years of her life. She would love for it to be the best school possible.
An E for Effort
Now that she knows why we are fundraising, she is offering a number of her suggestions of her own. She’s asked to call her relatives who live out of state and she actually spoke to her grandmother in California and asked that she buy just one thing to support the effort for the school. Then she asked me if there was something else she could do to support the school if she couldn’t sell much.
I told her about the other fundraising efforts including using our grocery cards and cutting off box tops. It’s become a real project for her now. We’ve inspected our pantry to check out the boxes we have in there to find out which ones have the box tops we can cut off to donate for the school. While each box top alone is only worth a few pennies – the school raised more than $2,000 with their box tops last year.
My daughter is excited about the idea that she can be a real contributing member of her school – that the little things that she does can make an impact on what will happen at her school in the years to come. She likes the idea of being a part of a larger community and she even made the suggestion that she could be the reason another kindergartener got to do something.
Working together, as a family, we can make a difference and help our daughter to learn how she can make a difference. The next time you get that fundraising package and think, great – now I have to go and sell things – don’t do it alone. Involve your child, teach them what it means to be a contributing member of their community – because that’s what their school is – it’s their community and they have the right and deserve the privilege of being a part of making it better.
Related Articles: