The St. Vrain Valley School District is taking a closer look at how school sports, clubs and activities raise money at a time when crowdfunding and third-party fundraising is becoming more popular.
“This has become a big issue with school districts across the country,” said Greg Fieth, St. Vrain Valley’s chief financial officer. “We’re trying to standardize it. We vetted seven or eight platforms and can tell schools here are the positives, here are the negatives and here’s a good time to use it.”
School parent-teacher organizations and foundations with non-profit status are separate from the district and aren’t restricted in fundraising methods.
Last school year, St. Vrain sports programs reported raising about $28,000, including the value of items donated for auctions.
Altogether, the district reported $285,024 in donations of money, goods or services last school year. Those donations went to everything from end-of-year celebrations to music and theater programs to classroom supplies.
Parent organizations brought in an additional $170,700.
Ideally, Fieth said, schools would use the district’s internal system, which includes a donation button and requires only a 3 percent credit card fee. All the rest of the money goes directly to schools.
The district doesn’t want its employees to use third-party fundraisers that aren’t transparent about the percentage they keep in fees.
“We want financial transparency,” Fieth said.
Difficulty in tracking funds
One of the companies that teams have used in the past that doesn’t provide that information, district officials said, is Snap Raise, which specializes in sports fundraising.
Erik Finnestead, spokesman for Seattle-based Snap Raise and no relation to the Silver Creek High principal with the same name, said the company discloses its overall pricing structure and sets a ceiling of 30 percent for fees, with the actual amount depending on “an individual team’s goals.”
The company helps the team create a video, then collects emails, Twitter and Facebook accounts from the players and coaches to send out requests to donate. Donation is completed online, through the Snap Raise website.
Finnestead said the company has helped raised more than $650,000 for clubs, performing arts and sports programs in St. Vrain Valley and is asking the district to reverse its decision.
While third-party companies make it easy for teams to solicit donations, Fieth said, he wants schools to watch out for high fees and not use companies that don’t tell donors up from about the exact percentage taken in fees.
Fieth said teachers and parents also will jump on a crowdfunding site like GoFundMe to raise money for classroom needs or trips.
A parent, for example, recently started a campaign to raise money to send robotics students to nationals. A music teacher also is looking at crowdfunding as a way to find donations of instruments.
One of the challenges of those sites, Fieth said, is the money raised is donated to the school by the person who started the campaign — instead of directly to the school — so it’s not tax deductible for individuals who donated.
It’s also difficult for the district to track the money and make sure it’s used as intended.
An annual jog-a-thon, when student families are going to donate regardless of platform, also isn’t the best time to use a site like GoFundMe because of the extra fees, he said.
For personal fundraising, GoFundMe takes 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per donation. For charities, including the parent organizations that typically organize fun runs, the fee is 7.9 percent plus 30 cents.
Other sites charge higher fees or require that a target donation is reached in a certain time period or all donations are returned.
Boulder Valley nixed third-party fundraising
A popular platform with teachers is DonorsChoose, a speciality fundraising site for educators that’s also a non-profit. The site vets all requests for projects, purchases the required materials using the donations and sends them directly to the schools.
Several local teachers have fundraising campaigns up on the site, asking for money to take middle school students on college visits, to buy flexible seating beyond desks and to buy books for classroom libraries.
Along with a credit card processing fee, DonorsChoose asks for an optional donation that goes to keep the site running.
The neighboring Boulder Valley School District nixed all third-party and crowdsourcing fundraising about a year ago because of similar concerns.
Instead, district employees are asked to use the district’s RevTrak system for fundraising campaigns. The system is used by schools to handle both student fee payments and donations.
“The tool helps to ensure that district policies are followed, money is properly accounted and that these funds go where they are intended — our students and schools,” said Boulder Valley spokesman Randy Barber.
Michele DeBerry, Boulder Valley’s executive director of secondary schools, said the school athletic directors agreed last school year not to use third-party fundraising because of the high fees and potential accountability issues.
“We had to balance the ease and convenience with the associated costs,” she said. “The costs far exceeded the potential and couldn’t be justified.”
Another concern, she said, was the money went from the families to the company and then to the school, so the schools didn’t have direct control.
Instead, she said, sports teams are using a variety of fundraising tactics, from old fashioned car washes to letter campaigns to selling restaurant discount cards, holiday wreaths and butter braids.
Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa
