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Register for a FREE webinar; results of your survey responses; new support tip video available online; WebStore of the month and new WebStores; plus more!
Not Subscribed to The Board? Subscribe today!
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Register now for your complimentary webinar!
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Fundraising 2.0: Quick & easy ways to attract online donors
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As our valued customer, we'd like to offer you priority seats to the final webinar in our series that explores how schools and district administrators can benefit from using technology and marketing practices to develop new revenue streams. This webinar will focus on how your school or district can easily create an online presence to:
- Maximize the reach of your current fundraising programs
- Open up new avenues for local businesses to provide financial support
- Automate donation-related reporting
We’ll show you how simple it can be to leverage readily available online tools to create a Web site for collecting donations and promoting your school or district fundraising programs. You’ll also hear success stories and suggestions for maximizing your efforts to improve your school’s bottom line. Always a popular topic, we want to make sure our customers have the first chance to register before registration is full, so save your seats now!
When: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 10am – 11am Pacific Time (1:00 pm –2:00 pm Eastern Time)
Cost: Free
Register now for this complimentary webinar! Space is limited.
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Did you miss our previous webinars? You can view them on-demand by following these links:
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Drive New Revenue for Your School & District with Partnership Marketing
Cities, communities, schools and universities are effectively managing their budget issues through the implementation of partnership marketing strategies. Learn how the City of Long Beach, CA, leveraged its access to the private sector to raise critically needed funds through a partnership with Coca-Cola, and how schools and districts just like yours can create fundraising partnerships with long-term benefits.
View this webinar on-demand now
How to Boost School Funds, Fitness and Community Support
This webinar focuses on how your school/district can partner with athletic events to:
- Raise funds to supplement your school budget
- Promote an active lifestyle to your students & faculty
- Enhance morale and unity among staff and faculty
- Partner with local businesses to solicit both participation and financial support
You’ll learn how simple it can be to build relationships with non-profit and corporate partners, promote participation, raise money and awareness, and extend community outreach.
View this webinar on-demand now
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In today's tough economy, we understand many schools and districts face new challenges. At ActiveEducate, we strive to continually update our knowledge and understanding of our customers’ goals in order to better meet your needs. In September, we sent you an online survey, inviting you to participate in letting us know what your school and districts are doing to address budget concerns.
Here’s a look at what your responses told us:
- If your school or organization has experienced budget decreases this year, what is the approximate amount cut for the year?
- 16% - no budget cut required
- 27% - $100,000 - $500,000
- 9% - $500,000 - $1,000,000
- 25% - $1,000,000 - $5,000,000
- 23% - $5,000,000+
- To make up for budget shortfalls, what is discussed more: cutting expenses or generating additional income?
- 91% - cutting expenses
- 9% - generating additional income
- Is your school or district open to adopting fundraising practices that other non-profit agencies have been successful in using?
- What methods would you consider to raise additional funds or to decrease costs? (Select all that apply)
- 71% - decrease staff
- 45% - decrease extracurricular activities
- 38% - launch new fundraisers
- 33% - new or additional student fees
- 25% - tap into public funding
- 22% - explore corporate sponsorships
- 17% - increase transportation fees
- 15% - increase meal charges
- When thinking about accounting for student fees, please rank in order of importance (beginning with highest level of importance):
- Money collection and safe cash handling
- Accurate financial reporting
- Iron-clad audit trail
- Built-in audit tools
- Time savings for bookkeepers
- Financial education/hands-on business experience for students
- What’s your view on the economic future for education? Sample responses:
- There is A LOT of competition from the private sector! This doesn't help us - we will constantly have to find ways to reduce costs and recruit students.
- We need to spend the money wisely!
- Getting back to the basics and eliminating all the special programs; just K-12 education and the three R's. Hopefully, we've hit bottom with better times right around the corner, but nobody can really know.
- I believe it will improve soon.
- I personally think education needs to get back to basics to insure that ALL students coming from our system are able to be productive/responsible/accountable citizens.
If you didn’t participate in our survey, there’s still time! We appreciate your time in helping us improve our understanding of your current needs and concerns. You can fill out the short survey by following this link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=viAR5rP37E5sfd_2bbYLZU3A_3d_3d
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Featured WebStore of the Month
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Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA
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Crescenta Valley High School had the highest number of transactions online across all of our WebStore customers in the month of September! Here’s what Amy has to say about how she’s been able to implement the WebStore successfully at her school.
Items Available:
We offered all of our back-to-school items online, such as ASB cards, PE locks, PE clothes and even some class fees. I never thought people would go online to pay $5.00 for something – BUT THEY DO! Every little thing counts, so I will continue to add more items throughout the year. I even have parents calling to ask me if they are able to pay for certain items online. As a result of selling our Homecoming tickets online, we have seen fewer kids standing in line during lunch and after school to buy tickets because word has spread about the online option.
I have also asked the teachers not to collect money from students any more to further streamline our processes. Teachers are thrilled that they are no longer tasked with handling money and, when they want to offer field trips or other items online, I can easily set those items up on the WebStore.
Messaging to Students and Parents:
To promote the availability of the WebStore, we mailed out flyers in our registration packets over the summer and also handed flyers out during our Back To School Night.
Now in our second year offering online sales, parents really like using the WebStore system because it’s easy to use and they can view pictures of items prior to purchasing.
Main Benefits of the WebStore, according to Amy:
The WebStore has been extremely helpful in terms of volume. We have over 3,000 students at our school and offering online payments to parents and students means less transactions that I have to process during the day and less students spending their time standing in line. For parents, I think the main benefit is being able to log on to the WebStore and see past purchases. Being able to track if their child has purchased an item has saved me a lot of phone calls from parents.
Amy’s Advice:
Just do it! I never thought parents would go online, but they do! People are now used to doing everything online so it’s time that we offer the same convenience to parents and students at schools. This is the best thing that schools can do if they have a large student population, as it means fewer transactions processed by hand and more convenience for parents and students.
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Technical Support News
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Blue Bear Webinar Training Schedules Released
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We are pleased to unveil our new Webinar schedule for November and December. Webinars are a great way to get your questions answered and brush up on functions you probably haven't thought about in a while.
Webinars are informative, half-hour presentations and, best of all, they are FREE!
Click here for the complete webinar schedule. Upon registration, you will receive a confirmation message with complete instructions on how to participate in the Webinar you have selected.
If you have any questions, please send us an email or call (858) 605-4824.
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More how-to help for Tracks and Schoolbooks users
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What’s new on The Blue Bear Blog?
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Give me a Shortcut! Series Part One - SchoolBooks Settings
I am one of those people that likes "settings." I like to change the options on my cell phone so calling, using the calculator, and locking keys are as easy as possible. At home, I find myself changing the temperature on my freezer to get it "just right" often enough to realize it. So, it should come to no surprise that when I think about making SchoolBooks work faster and better, it would start in School Settings...
View the article
Free Webinars on YOUR schedule! They're here...
Want to learn something? Over the years, we’ve offered a continuing series of educational webinars on various software and accounting functions, but we have always had a challenge getting people to show up! I’m sure that quite a few of you have heard me complain more than once about the relatively low attendance (considering that we have several thousands of users!) at these free webinars. When asked why, users consistently respond that either the time frame doesn’t work or they simply don’t have time during the day to attend any webinar because of the demands of the job. Want a shortcut to on-demand access?
View the article
We hope you’ve had a chance to visit our blog. We’re posting new information weekly and monitoring the blog daily so we can reply to any questions or comments you post.
Visit The Blue Bear Blog at http://bluebearsoftware.blogspot.com/.
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Team Member Spotlight
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Carrie Bartlett, Trainer
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With over nine years experience on the team, Carrie is an expert in training customers on how to use Blue Bear Software products. From JumpStart online training to onsite training, she loves working with customers to help them learn our software and make the most of their investments. In her spare time, Carrie enjoys traveling, spending time with her family, and visiting parks and beaches, especially the Wild Animal Park!
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ActiveEducate, a part of Active Network, delivers industry-leading online fee payment, registration and data management tools for schools and districts, administrators, finance personnel and students. Active's simple, web-based technologies help improve efficiency and reduce the costs associated with managing school fees, activities, events, merchandise, fundraising, after-school care, and more. Learn more at www.ActiveEducate.com.
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