Should Your School Fundraiser take Personal Checks?

The pros and cons of accepting personal checks.

If you allow people to write school fundraiser checks as a payment method for brochure orders, you may already know the pros and cons. Some new sponsors may be undecided on how they should handle them. Some will tell you they’ve had few to no problems, while others enforce certain restrictions or don’t accept checks.

For the most part, people’s opinions usually come down to socioeconomics. While middle to upper-class neighborhoods usually accept checks, poorer areas tend to lean the other way. Perhaps you’re undecided on whether you should accept checks or not. We usually encourage sponsors to accept them if at all possible. If you don’t, a form of payment is eliminated, which may discourage buyers.

Regardless, if you’re still on the fence, here are some things to consider when dealing with fundraiser checks.

Have a Returned Check Policy in Place

Even if you’ve had little to no problems with checks as payment for school fundraisers, you should still have a policy in place. And don’t feel that you need to keep it a secret. People should immediately understand the consequences if there’s ever an issue. This will help discourage the writing of bad checks, making your life easier. Here are three things that we recommend that you include in your policy:

1. Make checks more trackable: Returned checks can be challenging to track because they’re usually written by someone not associated with the student. Some schools encourage parents to tell buyers to put the student’s name somewhere on the check. This way, you can track a bounced check back to the student, who may then be able to track down the person who wrote it.
2. Enforce a returned check fee: Since most banks will charge you for bounced checks, why should you absorb the cost? Let people know upfront that you’ll pass any charges on. Some schools charge a flat fee.
3. Place a temporary hold on orders: We recommend that schools only do prepay brochure fundraisers. This means that all money should be collected before sending your order for processing. This gives you time to deposit checks before receiving your merchandise. Then, if any issues arise, don’t release those orders affected by bounced checks.

And if you let people know your rules up front, there should be no surprises on the back end if you have issues.

See the notice about insufficient funds in our school fundraising guidebook for more information.

Should We Accept Personal Checks or Not?

If you’re unsure whether you should accept fundraiser checks, ask yourself the following question. Is the additional time spent dealing with insufficient funds worth the additional money you bring in? If it is, keep accepting checks, but if not, perhaps you should consider enforcing a ‘no checks accepted’ policy.

Is There a Payment Compromise?

Everyone wishes they could have the best of both worlds. Some schools accept checks only through cashier’s checks or money orders. This is fine; however, realize that people will still forget and end up submitting personal checks anyway. This even happens if you’ve clarified that you don’t accept checks. We’re all creatures of habit and tend to forget sometimes.

See our brochure fundraisers.

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.