West Middle School collected money online for teacher appreciation gifts from PTO with ease. Interested in collecting for your entire faculty and staff? Look no further. Follow the steps of West Middle School and delight your teachers with Cheddar Up’s easy online platform that simplifies collecting money from groups.
How did they raise money for teacher appreciation gifts from PTO?
West is a fabulous middle school with great students and families that support the school in numerous ways. They have a dynamite parent-teacher organization that works hard to raise funds for the school and to show appreciation to the staff who nurture and guide “tweens” through some pretty difficult years.
That said, the PTO had never gotten involved in holiday gift giving the way most elementary schools collect funds for group teacher gifts. The idea of reaching out to and coordinating funds collected from families of 1,200 students who each interact with as many as 7-8 teachers a day was daunting. This past year, however, armed with the power of Cheddar Up the PTO presidents, Heather Sabatier and Kelley Digby, took on the task…The results were truly astounding.
For this Holiday Gift Giving Campaign, West Middle School raised approximately $17,000 for teacher appreciation gifts from the PTO. And EVERY single staff member received a gift of at least $25. That means everyone from the principal to the orchestra teacher, from the security guards to teacher assistants was recognized and appreciated by the parent community.
West Middle School raised approximately $17,000 to distribute among the faculty and staff and EVERY single staff member received a gift of at least $25.
Create your own collection for teacher appreciation gifts from PTO
- Create a custom payment page using Cheddar Up.
- Enter the names of all personnel in the school you’d like to include. Make your form more user friendly by organizing names by grade, subject, role or service area.
- Create a custom URL that is easy to remember and type.
- Share the link widely in email, school newsletter, and social media
- Watch the funds roll in! Gift Giving DONE!
The collection was set up so that every individual who worked at the school had their name represented as an “item”. Payers could choose the person(s) to which they wanted to contribute funds.
However, the genius in the collection page construction was that “buckets” for teams of teachers, or groups such as “Cafeteria Staff” were also created. Payers could choose to give an amount to these “buckets” and the funds were divided evenly among the members of the group. This encouraged parents to give to staff they may not know personally, but were appreciative for and may otherwise go unrecognized. It also made giving a gift of perhaps only $1 or $2 dollars a worthwhile effort, because the final combined sum was a significant amount.
In this first effort to coordinate teacher appreciation gifts from PTO an incredible amount of $17,000 was raised. This translates to approximately $15 per student.
“Incredibly fulfilling…. the teachers were surprised and thrilled to receive such generous tokens of appreciation. I received numerous emails from teachers and staff who were extremely appreciative.”
— PTO president, Kelley
Start your staff giving campaign
Coordinating teacher appreciation gifts from PTO can sound like a big undertaking, but with Cheddar Up it’s a breeze. Get your collection started today.
