More than a year ago, I got mad at our local PTO for having an Amazon-sponsored book fundraiser. I tried to explain, nicely, why that was a really bad idea on many levels. The first being, Amazon doesn’t actually support the school. They don’t help with auctions items ranging from the third grade spelling bee, the eighth grade trip, or having story hour for the entire kindergarten class on their annual field trip to the bookstore. The second is, Amazon’s business model is to put independent bookstores out of business. Sadly, I have yet to conquer the allure of the Scholastic Book fair, it’s just too big and too much money (that’s a blog post for another day).
Every time I saw someone from the PTO I would explain just a little more in depth about what their working with Amazon does to us and the other local businesses in town. It really boiled down to the fact that every local business needed the PTO’s support; if they wanted to be able to shop at our stores, they actually had to patronize them. I got an email last week from a PTO member who wanted to talk to me about working with them this year.
Their plan is simple: feature a different local store every month as a fundraising base for the PTO. The beauty of this plan is the organization. The PTO is working hard to get everything in place so that all the event dates can be included on the first school calendar of the year, the one that everyone puts on the fridge. The parents are extremely about making these events successful.  We are both hoping that this monthly support idea will be a win-win for all involved. And, after the initial setup there’s little to do but promote at school, in the local paper, via social media and at the bookstore. It’s just not rocket science. It’s kids and books.
The best of this plan is that the school will be driving business to the store. Not every parent shops at all the stores in the village, but they’re much more likely to visit a store for the first time if it means 20% of their purchase will go back to help fund their kid’s PTO. And, it’s easy for the shopkeepers. We will have a kickoff wine and cheese preview complete with book talks. The parents will have the store to themselves for two hours and then the in-store book fair will run for 10 days. In-store book fairs are easy to do as their is no schlepping of books to the school. These are really aimed at parents who will come to buy early holiday presents for the family. I was struck also, by the kindness of the PTO liaison who suggested that we run this promotion during a slow time for the store. That was really thoughtful of her and she understood why we couldn’t run this during December.
So, after a year of feeling despair about the school not “getting it,” I now feel very optimistic about our new venture. I’ll have a blog update after the event at the beginning of November.