Tell me why...
New provincial school fundraising Guideline
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012The Province of Ontario has recently published the new rules, regs and best practices around how School Boards should police the ways a school raises money for school purposes.
For the most part, it is a pretty innocuous doc. But the two bullets in bold concern me.
- Supporting schools to develop fundraising plans;
- Setting a limit on the number of and extent of fundraising activities in each school;
- Co-ordinating activities across schools and community organizations;
- Limiting the impact on classroom time for staff and students and administrative time for school principals and support staff;
-
- Supporting donations to board-level funds, or matching programs among schools and/or school councils (for example, a percentage of every dollar raised is allocated to a central board equity fund or put towards board-wide programs that benefit all students);
- Addressing shortages, overages, and cancellations; (students participating in fundraising activities should not be held responsible for any loss that may be incurred);
- Depositing fundraising revenues in school accounts as opposed to accounts held outside the school, to mitigate risk; and
- Minimizing administrative expenses associated with conducting fundraising activities.
What really worries me is that we will see a hit to fundraising totals if donors see that a portion of their generosity is being funnelled from the school to a central fund. It will also be hit if we are forced to cut back on events because of an arbitrary limit of the number that we are allowed to have.
The purpose of the central fund is to provide other – less affluent, I suppose… or maybe with an inactive parent community – schools to be able to access monies (that were generated through the efforts of others) to “level the playing field”. Or, as I like to call it “lower the bar”.
And what about fundraising efforts that are already underway? Will they be grandfathered?
The existing Board policy is not at all that detailed and will have to be re-written to deal with this new reality.
Lots of questions but no answers so far. I’ll be keeping tabs on this issue.
Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario
