Fundraising

I am a teacher. I am not a salesman. I can tackle a GSA in a conservative region but the idea of raising money scares the bejesus out of me. It makes me want to vomit.

Again my advice is to be as open with your admin as possible. Money is easy drama. 

There are few starter things your need to work out. You need to check with your Finance Director in order to officially set up an account for your GSA. Don't just start accepting money and spending it on your own. It's so important to follow procedures in order to be able to do big things. Not cookies for every meeting things, but perhaps big things like a field trip or a guest speaker.

I recommend emailing a request to them for an account. This process would be easier if you had either a parent or a community process already showing support because then you can add to the request that interested parties are ready to start fundraising or donating but you want to make certain that you go through the proper channels. You want to make yourself the good guy as much as you can. 

When I tried to do this myself, I emailed twice simply asking for an account with no response and gave up for about a year. I didn't push the issue or bring it up with anyone else. I figured that since it was a just a social club then there wasn't a need to fundraise. But then a supportive parent encouraged me to try again. It made me sit down and think about the weekly cost of cookies and juice and the times that the kids ask about things that all of the other organizations have like t-shirts or a Homecoming float.

I tried it again with the advice I mentioned above and it worked. I was given a response within the day saying that it had been created. Of course my first attempts could have been lost in the internet maze and never read or the director could have been too busy to respond but it really seemed like trying again with some backup really helped.