Monday, March 7, 2011

Online Money Saving Ideas for Schools and Districts

Lots of schools and districts are coming under financial stress. From our perspective of working online, we've pulled together some suggestions of money saving ideas and revenue generating ideas that might help.

Also, if you think of any web-based systems that might help schools and districts get through tough economic times, we're eager to see them. Please leave a comment or contact me directly.

• Move online for cost savings
  • Use email newsletters. They're free. No copying cost and no postage cost. Send snail mail only to those without email addresses. Also consider that when funding is threatened, it is particularly important to keep the community informed of the great work you're doing.
  • Don't print what can be viewed online.
  • Use your website for posting employment opportunities.
  • Publish course materials and handouts online. Save copy expense.
  • Open an online school store for supplies, spirit items, event ticket sales, lunch money payments, etc.
  • Hold an online book sale of books donated by the community. Link to book descriptions by barcode.
  • Use online staff development and training courses to save travel costs.
  • Maintain alumni association for donations, volunteer support and project support. Enable alumni members to update their own information and to contact other alumni.
  • Consider virtual field trips to museums, the White House and other online destinations.
  • Use VoIP thru computer lab and email for alumni donation campaigns.
  • Ebooks for libraries with readers on computers and phones.
  • Use online payments and email billing to save mailing and processing costs.
• Do more with less
  • The greatest share of school expense is the salaries and benefits for staff. Unfortunately this means that if states are going to impose large budget cuts, staff layoffs are inevitable. The school's challenge then becomes, how to do more with less?
  • Share resources more efficiently by sharing information about times of use and times of availability.
  • Encourage greater collaboration among teachers by sharing online lesson plans and materials.
  • Make the discipline process more effective by tracking discipline referrals, assigned consequences, detention rolls, discipline histories and notifications to parents.
  • Have easy-to-administer online discipline consequences for students who misbehave only rarely.
• Share knowledge for efficiency 
  • Use wikis to build knowledge bases for tech support.
  • Use faqs, wiki knowledge bases and short online how to videos for self service solutions to technology questions. Link to YouTube videos when available.
  • Use the local media for publicity for opportunities to be found on the website.
• Increase volunteer service by students and the community
  • Use tech-knowledgeable students for tech support.
  • Create a student community service requirement. Include school service among the opportunities.
  • Advertise on your website for volunteer help and part time help.
  • Use online signup sheets to make it easy for parents and others to sign up to help on everything from bringing potato salad to a picnic to enrolling in a parenting class.
  • Coordinate student projects with area businesses. Use website to match education needs with community needs.
  • Organize volunteer security for events thru the website.
  • Solicit donations of unused laptops for student use. 
  • Set up a nonprofit local education fund (LEF) for donations.
• Find new revenue sources
  • Website ads and sponsorship.
  • Rent out building space for community events. Use online facilities reservation system for internal an community event reservations.
  • Offer online adult courses and email tutorials for revenue generation.
  • Sell surplus equipment on eBay.
  • Consider school branded credit cards which return a donation.
  • Negotiate multiyear contracts with vendors.
• Share information to coordinate with other schools and districts for cost savings
  • Co-op buying with other schools for lower per-item cost.
  • Consider an asset management system for efficient use of equipment.
  • Block booking of speakers and events for lower per-school cost. Use shared calendar for coordination.
  • Enrich classroom experience by sharing Internet video connections with other classrooms across town or around the world.
• Keep looking for ideas
  • Solicit money saving ideas from staff, students and the community. Offer an incentive such as 10% of the savings to the submitter.

Do you have some money saving or revenue generating ideas for schools and districts? Please leave a comment. We'd love to see them.

Posted at 9:46 AM (permalink) 6 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: cost savings