To all parents and students,

 

 

After years of being a parent, I have become quite tired of mindless fundraising.  It irritates me when my daughter is asked to participate in selling something that I know I do not need…….so why do we ask others to buy it.  In that lens, these are guidelines we use when determining fundraising with the Stillwater Bands.

 

 

1.  Does it benefit our community?  In our fundraising, we want to maximize the benefit to the Stillwater community.  We always ask, does this fundraising event benefit our citizens, local businesses and most certainly bring maximum gain for the efforts of our student musicians.

 

 

2.  Is this respectful of the student musicians time? Our student musicians have joined the Stillwater Bands to make music.  Anything that takes time away from this must either be directly connected to the ensembles success (i.e. selling tickets to a concert) or should have the strongest monetary gain for a desired purpose with the least amount of time committed.

 

 

3.  Where does the money go? – The money raised must be able to be directly applied to the program or to the individual students fundraising for travel. We do not like fundraisers where half the money goes to an organization outside our community unless it provides a unique service that our community businesses cannot provide.

 

 

This is the philosophy that guides our planning for Fundraising in the Stillwater Bands.  Let us know if you have any ideas on things we should consider.