VOLUME 22 ISSUE 4 • 2020 | WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG/IMC | ©MONTESSORI LEADERSHIP
alumni, and other friends of the school to
help with fundraising. If your school is a
nonprofit and you have a Board, you can
involve some or all of them as well. This is
optional, but it can be very helpful.
• Prepare a list of possible donors
among your current families, alumni, community
supporters, etc. and estimate how
much each one might be able to give. When
you are doing this, don’t forget to include the
grandparents of both your current students
and your alumni. Because grandparents are
older, they often have more resources, and
if they are close to their grandchildren, they
may be especially eager to help. You should
also include local businesses and foundations
on your list and plan to approach them
as well.
• Make a commitment to the fundraising
campaign yourself, and then ask
your staff and members of your Board
and/or the fundraising group to make
commitments consistent with their financial
situations as well. These can be
small amounts, but it’s important to get
100% participation. If the people closest
to your school won’t help, it is difficult to
ask others to contribute.
• Approach the donors on your list
individually, using the 3-step approach
outlined by Tim Seldin and Dr. Valadia
Wise from the International Montessori
Council during their “Fundraising During a
Crisis” webinars.2 Here is the script they
suggested:
1) Invitation to Talk: Whoever
knows each person on your list best should
email or text a message like the following:
“Many of the families at our school are
in trouble and can’t make it without your
help. This is important to me and I think it
will be important to you. Can you give me 5
minutes of your time?”
2) Tell Your Story: If they’re willing
to listen, you and the person who knows
them best should meet with them (in person
or virtually) and tell your story. Then,
without being specific, ask if they’re interested
enough to get involved. You might
say, “Without specifying an amount, can I
count on you for support?”
3) Seal the Deal: If they say “yes,”
ask how much they can contribute and how
they would like to structure their donation
– as a one-time gift, a monthly pledge, a
stock transfer, etc.
You can modify this script to fit your
own circumstances. If you are raising
funds for health and safety equipment, for
example, the message in step 1 could say,
“We are facing substantial costs to purchase
the health and safety equipment we
need to keep our students and staff safe
during the pandemic.” But whatever your
needs, the basic 3-step approach should
remain the same.
If you’ve never done fundraising
before, it can feel daunting to ask for money
directly this way. It is by far the most
effective approach. One fundraising group
that I know estimates that face-to-face
conversations like these are effective 50%
of the time. By comparison, requests made
by phone are effective 25% of the time,
and requests made by personal email are
effective only 5% of the time.3
You do need to be prepared to have
some of these folks say no, at either the first
or second stage. But, if you can overcome
your hesitations, you may be surprised by
how many people do want to help. To make
this easier, you and anyone else who will
be involved should practice asking for support
this way until you feel comfortable. It
may feel awkward to practice this at first,
but it will really help when you meet with
someone and ask for their support.
One other thing to keep in mind is that
people who make large donations usually
want to be able to deduct their gifts from their
taxes. If your school is not tax-exempt, you
can create a “Parent-Teacher Organization” or
a “Friends of your school” group and secure
tax-exempt status for it. You want to be sure
to talk to a lawyer about this so you set it up
in a way that meets all of the applicable local,
state, and federal regulations.
• If you don’t already have a lawyer,
retain one to create a liability waiver and
to review your enrollment and nancial aid
policies, contract language, etc. Retaining
a lawyer isn’t strictly related to generating
income, but it’s an important step in this
situation because there is so much uncertainty
at this time. Having a lawyer review
your policies and craft a liability waiver
consistent with the laws of your state can
save you a lot of trouble down the line.
EXPENSES
Hopefully, the combination of tuition
and fundraising income will enable you to
meet your budget goals. If it doesn’t, or if
you’re not sure it will, I would encourage
you to do the following:
• Estimate how much your current
families, and any new families, can aord
to pay. This may be hard to gauge, but
it’s critical. The best way to do this is to
contact each family as part of your regular
communication and ask them gently and
diplomatically about their situation.
3 David Weinberger, ioby.org (www.ioby.org), “Introduction to Community Crowdfunding” webinar, March 25, 2020.
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