Annual Report: PAC Fundraising Officer Jordi Fraser
Armstrong Elementary School Parents’ Advisory Council
Reporting Period: June 2024 – June 2025
Submitted by: Jordi Fraser, PAC Fundraising Officer
Overview
We run a variety of fundraisers throughout the school year.
Apple box fundraiser
Our first fundraiser of the year was our davidson orchards apple fundraiser. This fundraiser requires minimal time to set up and run. We get an email around June with our next year’s order by date and pick up date.They will email us pdf with flyers to print and hand out to each classroom in late august. Note that in order for us to get delivery to the school we must sell a minimum of 80 boxes. We unfortunately haven’t hit this number in the past 2 years of running it and so someone with a truck(me) has to drive to davidson orchards and pick up the apples on the pick up date and bring them to the school. We made 694.00$ this year. We typically run this fundraiser for 2 weeks and I always put the cut off date 1 day before the orders are due to the supplier to give me time to pull numbers. This fundraiser is run through munchalunch and requires someone with admin privileges to set up and pull reports. Pam, Nicole, and myself(currently) have admin privileges at the moment.
Wrapping Paper fundraiser
Our second fundraiser of the year was our wrapping paper fundraiser threw dfscanada. Madison Reynolds has been heading up this fundraiser for the past 3 years and has done a wonderful job. You apply for the fundraiser through their website and they ship to the school all the order catalogs to us. We run this fundraiser for about 2 to 3 weeks in late October early November to allow ample time for orders to arrive before xmas break. All orders are to be placed online through their website and are delivered to the school already sorted and labled. We made approximately just under 400$ last year which is less than previous years totals. For more information on set up, you would have to reach out to madison as she has taken care of everything each year and i just help with heading out the orders once they arrive at the school. Note: Please have the check, orders and catalogs mailed directly to the school and not your home address.
Christmas bake sale and 50/50 draw
This fundraiser takes a lot of hands to be successful but we have an amazing group of parents who support it through baking, sorting baked goods, and or selling baking and 5050 tickets. Once we get confirmed xmas concert dates you must apply for the 5050 licensing as it can take a few weeks to get an approval back. It costs 25$ for the application and when you submit, print your receipt and hand it to the treasurer and they will issue you a reimbursement check. Typically about 3-4 weeks before the concerts I will send out a facebook post asking for bakers to sign up for a day to drop off their goodies. Please note and it is very important that all baked goods coming into the school are 100% nut free. About 2 weeks before the concerts I made a second post asking for volunteers to help sort/ sell goodies and 5050 tickets. Each day of the concerts I ask the parents to drop off their baked goods to the breakfast club room in the morning by 8am. You and at least 1 helper will sort any baking that has been dropped off into bags or on plates. ( we must purchase bags/ plates and not use the breakfast club supplies.) Any supplies needed need to be pre approved by the pac. I typically pick up supplies from the dollar tree in Vernon as its most cost effective. You will need to get more bags, plates and labels next year as we dont have alot leftover from this year. I have a small container in the breakfast club room with all the leftover supplies from previous years. Save your receipts as pac will issue you a reimbursement check for this. This is a huge money maker for our school raising around 1200-1500 dollars over the course of 3 days of concerts. For the 5050 part we run a draw each day of the concerts and stop selling about 5 mins before the concert starts and the librarian allows us to use her office to sort the cash into two envelopes. This typically takes only a couple minutes and so you can still enjoy the concert. When counting money you need two people present to sign off on the totals. This ensures accuracy and avoids any unnecessary issues. At the end of the concert the principal will call you up on stage to do the draw. We need to save the winning ticket as well as collect the name of the winner for our report. At the end of the 3 days you need to submit a report of all 5050 earnings on the gaming website. Tammie has submitted the final report the last few years. Make sure to keep the money and bucket of tickets with you at all times.
Seed packet sale fundraiser
We also in collaboration with the garden project did a seed fundraiser with west coast seeds. Mary Jane Duford headed this fundraiser up to raise funds for the garden. The orders unfortunately do not come pre sorted per customer so when they arrive it does require a couple hours with a few parent helpers to get them sorted. I dont have the exact number this fundraiser raised but i believe it to be a success and would recommend chatting with mary jane about running it again.
Freezie Friday Spring fundraiser
This fundraiser is a huge hit with all the kids at the school and we typically make between 200-300 dollars each friday. A sign up sheet gets placed in the office and parents will come and sign up for the Fridays they can help with. You need about 4 parents per friday to run this smoothly. We set up two tables (one by the bus line up and one just outside the library doors). We sell freezies til about 2:30 each friday so we can also catch some of the lenwood students walking home who get out at 2:10pm. Money gets counted and handed off to the treasures to put in the bank account. We also reached out to the wholesale club in Vernon for a donation of freezies and they graciously donated 20 boxes to our school. I would reach out again in march to see if they would be able to donate again next year. Shaun one of the managers at wholesale club is who i spoke to as he has children who attend aes. Make sure to give yourself lots of time for the freezies to freeze each week and take them out of the boxes. I used my personal freezer at home and would bring 4 frozen cases Friday mornings to the school to restock the freezer.
Line Dancing
This fundraiser was headed up by Nicole. This was a new fundraiser this year to try and those who attended loved it but the attendance numbers were very low. I wouldn’t run this again with the profit for the pac being too low for the effort put in.
Burger and Beer night
Our last fundraiser we typically do is burger and beer night. Unfortunately it didn’t fit into the calendar this year but Pam and Nicole have run that fundraiser for the last couple years and it can be very profitable for the pac.
The time commitment is quite low with the fundraisers we have chosen to do the last few years so it’s easily doable between the director and vice director and parent support. Lastly, I always hold a sub fundraising meeting outside of regular pac meetings in the fall to brainstorm any new fundraising ideas and then bring those forward to the pac to talk about. This helps to reduce the length of pac meeting times. We also have a fundraising email that I will forward the passwords to the new director and vice director once appointed.
Sincerely,
Jordi Fraser