Get Parents Involved in Fundraising with These 4 Tips

How to make parents effective advocates for your cause.

Picture this: As the school year begins, your high school football team staff is assembling a few fundraising ideas for the season. You think back to the challenges you faced last year—overextended staff members, technology that hindered your efforts, and lackluster results—and wonder how you might improve this time. One staff member suggests leveraging help from players' parents.

By motivating parents to support your school or team’s fundraising efforts, you can raise more, reach a wider audience, and try more exciting and elaborate school fundraisers.

In this guide, we'll explore four of the most essential tips to consider when getting parents involved:

1. Communication is everything.
2. Offer many ways to get involved.
3. Show your appreciation.
4. Listen to feedback.

To get started, we'll discuss the most essential elements of inspiring parents to engage: strong communication. Let's dive in!

1. Communication is everything.

Without an organized, comprehensive approach to communication with your parent volunteers, your campaign can quickly unravel. To make sure everything runs smoothly and each volunteer knows what to do, it's essential to communicate every detail parents need to know about the fundraiser and the roles they'll play in it.

Here are a few of the most important things to share with parents:

• Fundraising concepts and goals. Explain the central "theme" of the fundraiser and why you chose it to give parents more context. You should also share your SMART goals for the campaign as well.
• Fundraising method. Share about how you will be fundraising and the donations you'll receive (cash, materials, etc). For example, will you be crowdfunding? Are you launching a product sale? Your chosen method will impact how parents talk about the campaign and the available volunteer roles.
• Volunteer roles and responsibilities. Finally, lay out which roles you'll need parent volunteers to fill. Describe each role, its responsibilities, and examples of the specific tasks. If possible, add an estimate of the time volunteers would need to allocate to the role.

Remember to set up any necessary training or orientation sessions to inform volunteers of safety guidelines, teach them how to use your fundraising technology, or walk them through performing their assigned tasks. And don't worry if you aren't able to communicate every small detail at the start of the fundraising process—you can always provide details as needed in emails or during PTO meetings.

2. Offer many ways to get involved.

Some parents may have more time to volunteer depending on their circumstances than others. To ensure that anyone interested in helping out feels like they have opportunities that align with their schedules, offer a variety of ways to get involved.

For example, let's say your school is holding a read-a-thon fundraiser to cap off with a fun event to honor the top readers. 99Pledges' guide to read-a-thons recommends creating participant pledge pages for each student, asking each student to collect donations from family and friends, ensuring students track the minutes they spend reading, and totaling up the minutes read at the end.

During each step of this process, there are different ways parents can support your fundraising efforts, including:

• Donating books. Parents can comb through their kids' bookshelves and donate or swap books they no longer need. This way, students will have access to new books they've never read and may even find a new author or title they wouldn't have read otherwise.
• Spreading awareness. This is a quick but highly effective way for parents to support fundraisers. Ask parents to share about the campaign on their social media pages or mention it to friends and family. You'll quickly reach a much broader audience, with every parent talking about the fundraiser to a potential supporter.
• Organizing the event. For parents with more time, assemble a party planning committee for the post-fundraiser event. These parents can plan the food and decorations and assign different roles at the event, like serving snacks or stocking refreshments.
• Supporting students at home. Ask parents to nudge their students to build up their reading minutes at home. It's easy for students to spend their afternoons and evenings on screens, and the fundraiser might get pushed to their back burner. Ensure parents check in and remind them to pick up their books.

Most importantly, make taking action as easy as possible. For example, if you want parents to share about your fundraiser online, consider offering them pre-made digital fundraising flyers that they can post online. When participating in your campaign is this convenient, they'll feel much more inclined to join in.

3. Show your appreciation.

Parents volunteer time and energy out of their busy schedules to support your campaign. In some cases, they might even donate money or materials. To show that you understand and value their work and sacrifice, show them how much you appreciate them.

While you should communicate your gratitude throughout the fundraiser by always thanking parent volunteers, consider ending the campaign with a more significant gesture. Handwritten thank-you letters or personalized emails are a great option as they are affordable but still meaningful.

Fundraising Letters' guide to volunteer thank-you letters recommends including:

• A salutation that greets the parent by name
• A show of appreciation in the first line of the letter
• Acknowledgment of the parent's work and their impact
• A brief mention of future involvement opportunities
• Contact information so they can follow up with you
• An appropriate closing (e.g., "We hope to see you at [X fundraising event]" or "Happy holidays!")

These thank-you letters will show your volunteers how much you need and value their efforts, highlight the impact of their work, and motivate them to continue supporting your fundraisers.

4. Listen to feedback.

To make parents feel valued members of your school or team's support system, listen to their new ideas and implement them when possible. Their unique perspectives can offer new insights your staff may not have considered.

For example, a parent might suggest offering other ways to raise funding, like a monthly giving program or business sponsorships. Or, they want to help you redesign the volunteer training and orientation process to provide a smoother experience for new volunteers.

A few easy ways to collect this feedback include:

• Sending out surveys
• Asking for feedback during meetings
• Creating a physical "suggestions" box

The goal is to make parents feel heard, so always aim to validate constructive and productive feedback with thoughtful responses.

While it requires more prep and planning, inspiring parents to help with your school's fundraiser is vital to reaching ambitious goals. Their support lends the helping hands you need to accomplish big things like organizing larger-scale fundraising events—or, if your needs are smaller, can help alleviate some of the burdens from your staff members' shoulders.

For happy fundraising, always remember to communicate and show gratitude for your parent volunteers' support!

Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.