Starting Where Everyone Is: Back-to-school Night

There’s a moment at the beginning of every school year when something almost unheard of happens…everyone shows up.

The families that we spend the rest of the year trying to catch through emails, SignUpGenius links, newsletters, volunteer requests, fundraising appeals, and increasingly desperate reminders are all standing in the same building, eager for the new year.

Back-to-School Night.

Most of us use this night to transfer information: the schedule, where to drop off, everything your child needs, how we’ll communicate, the rules, the calendar, and don’t forget to label the water bottle!

At Anastasis, we discovered that this night held the potential to be so much more. Because the people walking through our doors weren’t just parents and guardians.

They were designers, dentists, business owners, photographers, gardeners, and accountants. They had grandparents, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. They knew people who owned restaurants, printed signs, built things, fixed things, and knew how to get things done.

They had gifts we didn’t know existed, because we hadn’t thought to ask.

We had a full year ahead of us that was going to require a lot of help.

Historically, at our Back-to-School Night, we would have a row of clipboards listing all the volunteer opportunities, waiting for someone to take notice and sign up.

We learned that’s actually a pretty terrible place to start. The clipboards sat largely untouched, with a few faithful volunteers filling in spots here and there.

That changed one year when, feeling a little jaded about how the previous year’s attempt went, we decided to try something different.

Before Back-to-School Night, we made a list of the opportunities we knew were coming that year:

• Volunteer roles.
• Events that needed leaders.
• Projects that needed underwriting.
• Things we needed donated.
• Places where a particular skill or connection could make something possible.

We had our learners create a poster for each opportunity.

Then, we took photos of every sibling group in the school and printed their faces onto round Avery sticker labels to hand out to families as they arrived at Back-to-School Night.

The posters lined the lobby and hallways that families would pass through that evening. Each poster helped them see what it takes to create a successful school year. Rather than signing their names on a clipboard, we asked families to place their stickers on an opportunity they could support. And as they placed their child’s faces on the opportunity, they were reminded of who we were all there for.

In our first year of doing this, not only did we have every volunteer position filled for the year, but we also raised $35,000 in underwriting and sponsorships to support our needs. Families could see exactly what was needed for the year and put us in touch with their employers for event sponsorship, their network for a connection to a resource we needed, or another family member who LOVED reading to kids.

It’s so easy in education to make the mistake of beginning from a place of lack and scarcity. We need volunteers. We need sponsors. We need $10,000. We need someone to run this event. We need someone to donate that thing.

It’s from the place of lack that we look at our community and wonder who we could get to do this.

At Anastasis, we began addressing these needs from a place of abundance. Who is already in our community (who, by the way, cares about these kids!)? What do they love? What are they unusually good at? Who are they connected to? What could become possible because this particular group of humans happens to be gathered together?

Your community is the asset in the deeply human sense that communities are full of people who know things, make things, love things, have relationships, and genuinely want to matter.

Our job is to make the possibilities for their contribution more visible and invite them in.

Before you add another fundraiser to your calendar, try mapping what already exists. Do you know the builders in your community? The artists, photographers, grandparents, business owners, organizers, people who love throwing parties, or people who know everyone? The person who will happily spend three hours making something beautiful but would rather disappear into the earth than sell wrapping paper to their coworkers?

They’re there already, but you won’t find them on a clipboard labeled VOLUNTEERS NEEDED.

You have to notice them, then build invitations that help people recognize themselves.

I’ve been writing a book called Fundraising Was Not on My BINGO Card: A Small School’s Guide to Community-First Fundraising.

It’s the book I wish I’d had when I started a school and discovered that, apparently, school founder also meant fundraiser.

I’m also building a companion journal full of the experiments, prompts, ridiculous ideas, lessons learned, and tools I wish we’d had.

And now that schools are back in session, I pulled out the Back-to-School Night section to share. It’s seven pages designed to help you look at that first gathering differently, including our Sticker Wall plan, a Community Asset Map, Community Activation BINGO, and prompts for designing your own experiment.

It’s free because before I invite you to purchase a book about community-first fundraising, it seems only right to start with generosity.

GET THE FREE BACK-TO-SCHOOL COMMUNITY ACTIVATION KIT

How does your community approach Back-to-School Night? What have you found wild success from that someone else could learn from in the comments? If you try the Sticker Wall, or create something even better, I’d love to hear about it.

Happy back-to-school season!!

|Kelly Tenkely|