First DRSS Annual Fundraising Campaign Successes

By Neeti Prasad, 8^th Grade

This year DRSS organized a fundraising campaign. To learn more about this fundraiser, I talked to Mrs. Sara Collins, Director of Development. I asked Mrs. Collins about why our school had to set up this fundraiser this year. “To understand why we had to assemble a fundraising campaign this year, it’s important to realize how DRSS is funded.  DRSS is a public school, and our operating revenue comes from the State of Ohio in the form of per pupil funding.  While the state funding helps to sustain our operations, DRSS wants to grow.  We have a strategic plan, and we pay close attention to long-term sustainability. That includes continuing to provide students with innovative curriculum and programs and enhancing their educational experience with technology and rich learning opportunities,” she told me. 

To raise additional operating support, conventional public schools are able to have levy taxes since their students all go to one district. However, DRSS is a regional school which means that we are have students from more than thirty districts, making us ineligible to have a tax levy. For all those reasons, DRSS organized the first ever, community-wide fundraiser. “We asked all of our stakeholders – parents, partners, volunteers, staff, board, and alumni –  to participate and invest in the school’s long-term success.”

Everyone tries to plan ahead for any big event that they are hosting. It wasn’t any different for this campaign. Mrs. Collins and her team started assembling for this campaign about a year ago. During this time, she worked with staff, board members, parents, and community partners to look at and understand the school’s financial needs, prepare a timeline for the campaign, create a plan to communicate this fundraiser to others, and developed a compelling case to persuade donors to donate to our school. She also set up a “secure and convenient way” for donors to make donations online.  

“It was critical to speak with many people and create awareness of why DRSS needs to conduct an annual fundraising campaign for operating support.”  To communicate and create awareness about this campaign she visited and talked to the staff, board members, parents, and community partners. To spread the awareness to stakeholders, she created weekly “special messages” for each group of stakeholders through e-newsletters and social media. Every week she would update them on our progress toward our overall goal of $25,000, to encourage them to support us. 

“One of the most exciting parts of this year’s annual campaign was working with our community outreach director, Arch Grieve, to create a list of “Fifty Reasons the Future is Bright at DRSS.” Those Fifty Reasons had photos, video clips, testimonials from students, teachers, community partners, parents, and alumni. The Fifty Reasons were shared on social media, showing the different educational experiences and successes that students have at DRSS. This helped build more support for the campaign.

Mrs. Collins clearly dedicated a lot of time and hard-work to make this fundraising campaign possible, but was there a lot of success? “The first community-wide annual fundraising campaign was a success in multiple ways.” She was very happy that the school exceeded its goal by raising a total of $28,000 from donors.  “We had 100 percent participation from DRSS staff members and Board of Trustees members, as well.” 

DRSS welcomed 12 new donors to its Innovator Level of giving, which means that they made a donation of $1,000 or more. She also said that this campaign has given awareness to the DRSS community of the exceptional education DRSS students receive and why “additional operating support is critical to the school’s continued success.”

“It was a pleasure to witness the success of this first annual campaign, and I offer sincere appreciation to everyone who participated this year.  Every gift made an impact on the students and school, no matter the amount, and because more than 200 members of our community donated, we exceeded the campaign goal.  That’s amazing, and the future is bright for DRSS!”

I would personally like to thank every donor who supported our school to better our education. I would also like to thank Mrs. Collins for putting in so much work and effort to make this campaign successful for our school. 

You can learn more about the campaign and continue to donate online at www.daytonstemschool.org/annualcampaign.