Why the best spring fundraisers get booked before Thanksgiving

I have run this sale since 1994, and every year the same thing happens in January. A PTA president calls me the second week back from break. She wants a spring fundraiser. She wants it in March. She wants the full catalog, the online store, the prizes, all of it. And I have to tell her that March is already spoken for by the schools that called me in November.

That is a calendar problem. Here is why it happens and what you can do about it this month.

The spring calendar is shorter than it looks

A spring semester runs from early January to late May. On paper that is twenty weeks. In practice, you lose most of it.

Take out the first two weeks of January, when nobody has their head on straight. Take out testing windows. Take out spring break, the week before it and the week after it. Take out the book fair, the science fair, the spring musical and the Saturday of the 5K. Take out May, because once field day is on the calendar, families have stopped reading the backpack.

What is left is a handful of clean two-week windows in February, March and early April. Every school in your district is looking at the same handful. The ones that call me first get first pick.

What booking early actually gets you

When a school books before Thanksgiving, I can do four things I cannot do in January.

• Pick the window around your calendar instead of around what is left. I look at football, concerts, the book fair and spirit week with you, the way I describe on the how it works page, and we land on two weeks nobody else is touching.
• Get the spring catalog into your hands the day it is ready, so your board sees the products before they vote.
• Build the online store, the packet and the kickoff script over winter break, when I have the time to do it well.
• Line up delivery for a day the gym is actually free.

A school that books in January gets a store, a packet and a script too. It just gets them faster and with less room to move.

The numbers behind the rush

This fall I ran 40 fundraisers that sold more than $700,000. Nearly every one of those schools picked its window months ahead. The ones I write about on the results page, the 1,400-student charter in Charlotte that sold $45,000 in eighteen days, the 600-student elementary in Lexington that sold $35,000, both had their dates locked long before the first packet went home.

A good window is not luck. It is the single biggest thing you control before kickoff. I would rather give you a great one than a leftover one.

What a PTA needs to decide before Thanksgiving

You do not need a vote on every detail. You need three things.

1. A rough goal. Playground, field trips, teacher grants, whatever it is. One number is enough. We refine it on the call.
2. Two or three weeks that could work. Pull up the school calendar and circle the quiet stretches between late January and mid April.
3. Someone who can say yes. A president, a treasurer or a principal. One person who can tell me “that window, go.”

That is the whole conversation. Fifteen minutes on the phone and your spring is on my calendar.

What it does not commit you to

Nothing is paid up front. There is no deposit and no minimum. If the board changes its mind in January, you call me and we move the date or drop it. I have never once held a school to a window it no longer wanted.

What booking does is reserve my attention. I run every sale myself, from my desk in Greensboro, for schools in any state. I can only do that well for so many schools in the same two weeks. The reservation is for you, so that when spring comes, your sale gets the same care the fall ones got.

If you are reading this in January

Call anyway. There are always a few windows left, and a two-week sale in late April with a tight calendar still beats no sale at all. I will tell you on the call what is open and what I would do with it.

But if it is still November, you are in the best spot you will be in all year. The school fundraisers page walks through what the whole-school program looks like. Then book a call with Mr. Money and let us put your spring on the calendar before the turkey comes out of the oven.

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