Dads, Dirt, and Donuts

This Saturday afternoon we're hosting "Dads, Dirt, and Donuts" (our Spanish translator turned that into "Padres, Plantas, y Pan Dulce" for our Latino families, which is so brilliant it makes my head hurt), a school beautification event that is embarrassingly split down gender lines. But in this case, I'm happy to set political correctness aside because it keeps me from having to dig around in the dirt. Dirt schmirt.

So...the Dads will bring their gardening tools along and plant the area between our Kindergarten playground and the parking lot. And we'll give them some donuts because we're nice like that.

Do you notice something about this event so far? It'll be an excellent community-builder, but as is...it's not raising money! Unable to let a ducat-producing opportunity pass by (if you're keeping up with California budget news, you know that we're still looking at some devastating education cuts), I've added another component. While the Dads do their thing, their parenting partners and kids will paint decorative portrait tiles that will be used to beautify the campus. Our local small business partner in this endeavor is All Fired Up: A Paint Your Own Pottery Place.


All Fired Up is providing all the supplies we need and firing the tiles for an amazingly reasonable price. I've marked the tiles up to turn a little profit of about $500.

I'm liking this type of small fundraiser more and more. They're invariably the kinds of things that the kids love, they require minimum planning, have virtually no overhead, and create a social opportunity for parents. Win, win.

Walk-A-Jog: The End Is Nigh!

For an overview of this large Spring fundraiser, please click here. To learn how this fundraiser makes the big bucks, please click here.

I was clearly over-confident about my ability to both tend to my Walk-A-Jog duties AND blog about them. You'll forgive me, then, for this decidedly un-sexy bullet point post:

• We have more than 250 kids walking the course! If their pledges average out to just $20.00, that will translate into 5,000 sweet, sweet ducats for our school.

• After asking our PTA President to send out an e-mail in which we said, "Um, no volunteers, no jumpies," people actually started stepping up. So much so that I was able to shorten the jumpy shifts by 30 minutes. Lesson: threaten and ye shall receive. I joke!

• I just put the finishing touches on the volunteer schedule. Since I am not an excel-inclined person, this was no mean feat. Now I wonder how many no-shows we'll have.

• Am working on the silent auction bid sheets. Turns out the minimum starting bids will be considerably higher than I thought, which will translate into at least 2,000 sweet, sweet ducats for our school.

• Obviously, I love to say "sweet, sweet ducats." Indulge me.

• I also managed to have a parent volunteer take over the job of setting up a budget cut information table, complete with petition. Since we've heard that petitions and letters don't do much good (the only thing that does is editorials and articles because the Governor's minions google his press clippings), I think I will try to pitch a story to a local paper. Something like, "Budget Cuts Cast Pall Over School Carnival." Whaddaya think?

• The kids do get some swag at this event. There is, of course, the famous Walk-A-Jog t-shirt (this year in lime green and blue!). We used Brown & Bigelow, and were quite happy with the service. We have neon Walk-A-Jog 2008 pencils, which we ordered from Oriental Trading Company, mardi gras beads (left over from a fundraiser we had last year), and some other whatnots.

That's all for now...