Involving the broader community in your school’s PTA fundraising can help spread awareness of your fundraising efforts and give you access to more resources. It can also improve participation and give you more chance of hitting your fundraising targets.
By engaging with the wider community, you can help to foster an increased sense of involvement in your school with local groups and businesses. This in turn may help strengthen community bonds and even open up new educational experiences for your students.
We’re big fans of raising money for good causes at easyfundraising As well as advising you on how you can make the most of your PTA fundraising, if you register your school with us as a charitable cause, your supporters can earn money for you with their regular online shopping.
Establishing Connections with Local Businesses
Local businesses can provide financial support, expertise and resources, and can offer educational and career experience for your school. Engaging local businesses in PTA fundraising can enhance the fundraising activities you offer and can help to boost how much money you raise.
Seeking Sponsorships and Partnerships
Your school has plenty to offer local businesses in return, including helping to build brand visibility and community recognition, and providing opportunities for positive public relations.
But when approaching local businesses with sponsorship and partnership opportunities, it’s important to tailor your offerings to them. You should provide opportunities that best address their specific business needs. Make sure you clearly communicate what you can offer, and take time to talk with businesses to understand which opportunities would best meet their business goals – for example associations with specific school activities that match their brand and their products/services.
What Sponsorship Opportunities Can Your School Offer to Local Businesses?
You could ask businesses to sponsor:
- School events throughout the year, including sports days, science fairs, awards ceremonies, and arts performances such as plays or recitals.
- School clubs, like sports teams, STEM programs, and other extracurricular societies.
- Student support programs, including mentoring initiatives and internships.
- Community outreach programs.
- Signage and physical advertising around your school’s campus.
- Physical areas of your school, like science labs, campus theatres, or sports facilities.
Engaging the Wider Community in Fundraising Events
By actively involving the community in your school’s fundraising efforts, you can create a shared sense of purpose, build stronger community relationships, and improve the success of your fundraising. You can engage the community by raising awareness with local media and by creating fundraising events that appeal to wider groups.
Inclusive Event Planning
You should try and plan fundraising events that appeal to broader sections of your local community, rather than just school families.
What you can offer will depend upon your school, and what will appeal will depend on your community. But examples could include open houses and school tours, art exhibitions from local professional artists, music performances from local bands, or opportunities to meet well-known alumni.
Leveraging Local Media
Local media can be an effective way to spread awareness of your school’s fundraising initiatives throughout the community. Local newspapers and online platforms, like local news sites, community blogs, and social media groups can help you reach interested people who wouldn’t usually be associated with your school.
Key to engaging local media is to provide them with stories that will appeal to their audience. You should try and find ways to craft interesting narratives for your events and learn how to write appealing press releases. See if any parents of your students have experience with press relations and ask if they can volunteer their expertise.
Collaborating with Other Local Organisations
In addition to local businesses, there are many other community organisations that can lend a hand to your PTA fundraising. These can include community centres, sports clubs, associations like Scouts and Girlguiding, community welfare groups, charitable organisations, Rotary Clubs, and local government bodies and members.
Finding Shared Goals with Community Organisations
Collaborations with community organisations will be most successful where you can identify shared goals that can be met jointly for your school and the organisation. A local sports club, for instance, could run a charitable training session at your school for anyone interested in playing their sport, with the aim of recruiting new members to their club.
Joint Fundraising Initiatives
If you can establish common goals with community organisations, you may look to hold joint fundraising initiatives. This can be a profitable fundraising approach for both of you. As well as identifying shared goals, with joint fundraising efforts it’s important to clearly assign responsibilities, decide who will contribute what resources, and jointly develop promotional plans.
Keeping the Community Informed and Involved
Rather than one-time partnerships at events or single sponsorship programs, you can try to build ongoing relationships with community organisations through continued communication.
Regular Communication
Timely communication throughout a network of community stakeholders can keep people feeling involved and committed.
You should use communication mediums suitable to your partners, like newsletters, emails, and social media updates. You can share details of new fundraising goals, the progress of ongoing fundraising projects, and success stories and awards for notable contributions.
Celebrating Successes
It’s important to focus your community communications around your successes together. This could be recognising when targets have been achieved or exceeded, giving an overview of successful fundraising efforts or highlighting significant donors. The latter could be people who have dug deep into their pockets or been generous with their time.
Making success stories a central feature of your community messages will demonstrate the impact of your PTA fundraising initiatives. It can boost morale and motivation, and will help create a positive and supportive atmosphere in which people are recognised and rewarded.
Utilising Online Platforms to Facilitate Community Support
Online donation platforms can also provide alternative and convenient ways for supporters to give to your PTA fundraising campaigns.
Promoting Online Donations with easyfundraising
Our easyfundraising platform offers a way for the wider community to donate to your fundraising initiatives.
Community members can join easyfundraising, and when they shop online with our 7,500+ partner retailers, those retailers will donate some of what they spend to a chosen cause, such as your school’s PTA fundraising. All donations will be taken out of what’s already being spent and won’t cost those users any extra. All in all, it makes easyfundraising a cost-effective approach to raising money.
You can easily share links to our site via email and social media. We also have a dedicated toolkit to help with your communications and promotion.
The Power of Community Support in PTA Fundraising
By integrating the wider community into your PTA fundraising, you immediately increase its potential. Whether that’s by boosting awareness of and participation in events or giving you access to more resources. All of this combined can have a fantastic impact on the potential for donations.
Working with the broader community can also strengthen ties with your school and outside organisations, as well as provide new opportunities and experiences for your students.
With the advice given here, we hope you have plenty of inspiration for seeking fundraising prospects in your wider community. And don’t forget to register your PTA fundraising with easyfundraising to offer your supporters a unique, easy-to-use and free method to donate to your school.