Are you a BTFE coordinator?

[jessiesaves]

Great to hear some ideas that other schools do. I've held the position for 2 years now. My school does nothing to compete, or anything. They have collection bins in each grade's breakout area, and then the alp program from the highschool end of the building "sorts" the items collected (BTFE, box tops, tyson etc) I've thought about bringing up a change, but that hasn't worked in the past.
Last year I was the PTO president, and I'm pretty sure I made some enemies. I was 24, walking into a group that has been running things since I was in that elementary school. Lets just say our meetings were spent in heated discussions with basically nothing accomplished by the end of the year.
I was able to stay on as CLFE coordinator because they think of it as a crap job. I've attended a whole 2 meetings this year. I hate to pull away, but butting heads wasn't getting anything done. I send in reports on label counts & balances, help with the bookfairs, and bring dishes to conferences. At this point, hopefully keeping my foot in the door will pay off when the current group learns to accept new ideas or they retire!

Good luck to all you other coordinators, I love the job. It gives me a night a week to veg out in front of the tv while I clip points and glue them on collections sheets. (that way I can still follow the storyline w/o losing count!)

[jessiesaves]

After re-reading my post, I'd like to add that there are many things my pto does accomplish.

Buy all school supplies for k-5 (not including backpacks)
pay for all fieldtrips
pay for alllyceums
pay for all author visits
Feed all teachers k-12 four times a year on conference nights
Run Bookfairs
Take all high AR scoring kids to a movie at the end of the year (this program works great, over the past 4 years its gone from 20 kids to having to attend 2 different showings! Not bad for an elm school of under 400!!)

I do still volunteer when I can, I just don't sit thru those meetings!

[mmandjsmom]

Wow, jessisaves! We'd love to have you help our PTO. Too bad people aren't interested in new ideas at your school. We are always looking to shake things up & pulling teeth for some fresh volunteers.

[~~Who,Me?~~]

I do it for my son's school. He goes to a very small school, only about 60 kids. He started last January, right after the holidays. I knew they collected but I was never receiving any info about it, so I volunteered to do it. Turns out they didn't even have a coordinator!

I am very proud to say that for all of last year, the school earned........$90. No, that's not a typo, it was $90.

For this year, just for the collection period that ran through October...$700! I did $225 of that myself, just in catalina deals and trades. Just making people aware and running small, silly contests works.

On my blog, I have a page dedicated just to BTFE. It contains a whole bunch of links to the various BTFE printable sites plus some other resources. Makes it easy to have it all in one place. I have it set as one of my favorites and I use it all the time.

I also have a blog just for the school and btfe, but I don't keep up with it. With just 60 kids, we are able to make copies & send home in backpacks.

[CW&M Mom]

I'm fairly certain I am one of only a few that send them to my school. And this year most of mine will be going to the Joplin School District instead. For as much as our school needs them...Joplin is only about 30 minutes from my kids school and they need them way more. Since they lost But there are some special point system catalina's that a store does here...that Joplin can't use that I will continue to collect for my kids school.

Joplin School district basically lost 260 classrooms. So everything that were in those classrooms including all the teachers personal supplies were destroyed and the insurance does not cover there personal supplies.

[cody82414]

this will be my third year (starting in October)

here is the thread from year one. Total collected was just over $3000.

year 2 the school collectively made $3611.00 from BTFEs alone.

And this year I have set the goal at $4334.00

[cody82414]

for the first 2 weeks of school
I sent out an introductory letter that went home with every student.
On the backside, I printed a 10 BTFE collection sheet.
got 125 sheets back in those two weeks!!
Student count just under 400.

I chose two random entries
one boy and one girl
and gave them each a tshirt with the BTFE logo ironed onto it.
They were awarded at this morning's assembly.

When we return to school on Tuesday
I am beginning a challenge between grades.
I have not done this sort of competition before,
so I am hopeful to get the interest of some who have not yet participated.

We will have something special for the grade that collects the most
at the Halloween parties at the end of October
just in time for mail in!!!


I hope that everyone's campaigns are going well
and that this is another successful year for you all

[sbp]

amazing how much can change in 3 1/2 years. lol Our previous BTFE coordinator moved in January, so I told our PTA president that I'd be interested in taking in on if they wanted me to..

The biggest changes I've made is to send home a flyer at the beginning of each month to keep it in the minds of all students and parents. We had parents saving them, but not sending them in... Can't really make money off them if they never get to us. From the November deadline to the February mailing deadline we only collected $195.00 worth. In March alone, $491.70 came in and so far for April (we lost a week due to vacation) $128.20. The collection sheets aren't mandatory - the majority of our parents like to send them in loose, in ziplocs, but the sheets are definitely drawing attention so it's worth it to me to take the time to go to the school and get them copied and delivered to the classrooms for distribution in the Friday folders.

I've also started a monthly classroom challenge. I posted on freecycle that I was looking for a trophy that someone no longer needed. A lady replied that she had several for me to choose from but that they all had a horse on top. lol Our school mascot is a colt, so it was perfect as is for our traveling trophy. In March, the first place classroom beat out the second place classroom by 3 boxtops!!! According to the principal, there's alot of talk around the school now about boxtops!!!

I went to the BT University in March and came home with some goodies and lots of ideas that I'm trying to get implemented. This year we've already met our goal of $1500 but next year I'm thinking we should go up to at least $2500!