School Fundraising: Setting Goals

Children and parents alike are so conditioned to the regular notion of fundraising that they start dialing the phone or dropping off order forms before knowing what they are working toward. Setting goals is an essential step for all parties involved.

The school has a list of established goals for the students to accomplish; and most of them are based off of materialistic rewards. School fundraising can be an educational experience if you, as the parent, set your own goals and guide your child to make individual goals that will lead to a successful outcome.

As my previous articles have discussed, treating school fundraising as a sales experience will help your child immensely when making presentations for school projects, applying for colleges or grants, and entering the job force. There are several tangible and intrinsic outcomes to work toward—and the hard part is really honing in on three main goals for each fundraising event. Limiting your goals to three will help you go deeper on each one.

Below are brainstorming activities to help both of you narrow your goals.

What do you want your child to accomplish?
-Begin by thinking short term. If there is one quality your child improves on through this process, it is a success. Does your child need more self-confidence? Does your child need to work on presentation? Or doing things for the good of the cause?
-There will be plenty of more fundraisers and activities to continue honing in on these attributes. Settle on one. Write it down. And write why.
-List specific examples of why your child needs to work on this skill. Is it a reasonable goal? How will it serve your child in the future?

What is something tangible your child would like to obtain?
-Have your child look through the list of rewards offered for this fundraiser. Is there a toy your child really wants? Is your child working to raise money toward a trip or event? Find the main tangible your child is working toward and write it down.
-Have your child write how this reward will be a benefit. Will the toy be fun to play with? Is there a reward that can be donated to a local charity? Will your child have to do fewer chores to make it to a travel experience or event?
-Help your child decide how much money or how large of toy sounds reasonable and yet is a high enough goal.

What is something intangible that your child would like to accomplish?
-Begin by reading my article “Fundraising: Focus to Help Others.” This explains the importance of altruism.
-Help your child think of one way this fundraiser can help someone else. Who or what is this going to help? Why is this important to me?
-Form this thought into a goal, making sure it is reasonable to accomplish.

Congratulations! You have a great start to making this fundraiser a successful learning experience. Write your three goals down and keep it with the fundraising materials. Make notes along the way so you can track how you are accomplishing these goals. If you find any of them to be out of reach, take notes on why; this will help you form clearer direction in the future.

Fundraising is really an extension of education at home. I will continue to share insights on how to make this experience profitable in many ways for you and your children. Eventually you will have an interactive resource that will help guide you in much more detail on this subject.

"School Fundraising for Mommies" is under development through MommiesLine.com. The book covers how mommies can help their children master the art of sales through their school fundraising experiences by developing planning, selling, and networking skills.

Good luck creating your three goals for fundraising!

Imagine what would happen if we set three goals for ourselves each day.
…and accomplished them!