Book Fair



Rev 1.9- 11/14/11

Julie van Gelder- [mailto:sc@vangregory.com sc@vangregory.com ]

Sangeeta Balakrishnan, Laura Li and Bev Caballero

Logistics
The Book Fair will be held in the GLC from 10/6 through 10/12. The fair will be open from 9am until 3pm (but closed for lunch). Scholastic will deliver on 10/3. Tear down will be 10/13. Bev, Hallie, Ric (and maybe Sangeeta B) will do set up and tear down (so no additional PTO volunteers are needed here).

Bev will be at the fair at all times and will be running one of the cash registers. We need PTO help to oversee the fair and maybe to run a second cash register during busy periods. Bev’s daughter Hallie will be available at brunch to help run the 2nd cash register. The other people approved for cashiering may also be needed to take over at this time if Hallie is not available.

The book fair is open 9am-3pm, but the book fair is closed at lunch (12:25pm to 1pm). For time slots and number of volunteers needed in slot, please see the Jobs: Volunteers section below. There is a master data set for volunteers online at www.tinyurl.com/scbookfair. Volunteers are asked to sign up online.

 There will also be a virtual book fair which will be online at: http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/stevenscreekelementary under ‘Visit the Online Book Fair’.

The books that are ordered online come to the school within 3 business days after the end of the sale (this would be on or about 10/28). They will be labeled by student and Bev will distribute them.

The online wish list pilot was completely successful. Two teachers had their wish lists online this year. We can have everyone’s list online next year. The instructions for getting the wish list online are appended to this document.

Jobs
Scholastic ordering and coordination: Laura

Interface with Scholastic to order books and trinkets and to arrange for delivery and pick up. Work with Bev to order the sales items. Report financials and settle profit with Scholastic. For this task, you need to submit our book sale profit via the website, and make sure the selected profit share is deposited into our school account, and an invoice is issued to our school based on the report. Laura will be working together with Bev on this, but please note that Laura doesn’t actually handle any money or receipts.

Set up a virtual sale through Scholastic. The online sale has to overlap the school sale by at least one day and will be turned on for testing 10/5 and announced to parents 10/6. The online book fair home page is: http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/stevenscreekelementary. Access the online book fair by clicking ‘Visit the Online Book Fair’.

Set up: Bev, Ric, Hallie and Sangeeta B will do setup.

Set up the book fair by unpacking the boxes that are delivered from Scholastic and set books, etc on shelves and tables. Set up cash registers. Order extra tables from the District if needed.

Tear Down: The set up team above will also do tear down.

Pack up all unused items for return to Scholastic. Return library to its normal configuration.

Volunteer Planning: Sangeeta B. and Julie v.G.

Work with Bev and Cherri to define and fill the volunteer slots. Work with the co-presidents to identify people who can act as cashiers during busy time slots. Sangeeta will contact volunteers who helped last year and solicit their help for this year. She will also contact volunteers who signed up at the beginning of the year to help fill in the slots. Jooners sends out reminders to volunteers, so we will no longer send out separate reminders. We believe there is a catch with Jooners. It appears that Jooners is free for the first month or two, but thereafter you have to pay. This will need to be investigated next year.

  Volunteer Acquisition: Cherri H (PTO General Volunteer Coordinator)

Provide on line volunteer sign up at: http://tinyurl.com/scbookfair. Deliver a copy of the online volunteer registration to Sangeeta B and Bev by noon the day before the onsite sale, so that volunteers can be checked in each day during the sale. Sangeeta contacted last year’s volunteers and encouraged them to help out again this year.

Publicity: Bev, co-presidents and General Volunteer Coord.

Co-Presidents call for newsletter blurb, including volunteer instructions from the General Volunteer Coordinator. The newsletter blurb and volunteer information is on the PTO website. A message will be forwarded to the Room Parent Coordinators for distribution to rooms (many room parents won’t quite have their email lists yet….). There will be signs outside the library advertising the book fair times which Bev will put up. Bev and Hallie will also distribute signs to the classrooms. Julie and Stephanie also asked Karen to update the marquee with the dates for the book fair.

Volunteers: Stevens Creek Parents

Most volunteers will help arrange books, help kids find what they are looking for and maybe help kids count their pennies. There may be a need for additional help at a second cash register. The PTO co-presidents will pre-approve people who handle money (as usual). Bev will also ok the cashiers. Cashiers will be trained on the day of the sale (we have only a few cashiers to train and they are coming to help multiple times).

The volunteer time slots and the number of volunteers needed are the same every day of the sale and are as follows:

9:00-10:30am – 1 PTO Volunteer needed

10:30-10:55 (brunch) – 4 PTO Volunteers needed

1:30-2:15pm (after school) – 2 PTO Volunteers needed

2:15-3pm (after school) – 2 PTO Volunteers needed

Teacher Coordination: Bev

Bev is in charge of signing up the teachers for classroom visits. Bev has provided the teachers with a paper signup sheet (near the teacher’s sign in book in the office) for them to specify the 2 time periods which they would like their class to visit the book fair.

2011 Post Mortem
What went well:

 1. We raised a record $12.2k of revenue during the book fair! Profit was taken in books as Scholastic Dollars ($1600 in round numbers) and cash ($2k). Only $106 was raised from the online sale (see recommendations for next year in ‘What We Can Do Better’).

 2. We managed to fill the volunteer slots (some of them only a couple of days beforehand …).

 3. We got the online book fair up and running.

 4. Jooners worked well for recording and notifying. The spreadsheet which it dumps needs to be reformatted to be human readable.

 5. Having a printout of the volunteers scheduled for the day in the library was helpful. Having their phone numbers (in case they are late or forgot at the last minute) would have been helpful too.

 6. Having volunteers pre-count pennies and get kids ready before they got to the registers really helped when the lines were long.

 7. Having the blue tape line for kids to stand behind during busy times really helped traffic control.

 8. We got the online sale mechanism up and running. Next year we hope to publicize more and get better online revenue.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space:auto; text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1"> 9. The online wish lists were pretty easy to generate. Two teachers had them online this year. We could have all the classrooms online the next time. The instructions for generating the wish lists are attached? The lists can be made as soon as the virtual fair begins. We can also make people aware of the list by adding a line about them in the ad for the virtual book fair.

What we could do better:

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space:auto; text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 1. Please, notify folks more than 2 weeks in advance of an event that there is more help needed! Many of the last minute efforts could have been avoided if we had had a full committee and leadership at least 4 weeks (and 6 would be better) in front of the onsite sale date.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 2. We need to use the online wish list process for all teachers next year, since the pilot this year was successful.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 3. The Jooners spreadsheet output needs to be reformatted to be human readable and useful for checking in volunteers. Adding phone numbers of people signing up will also help.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 4. Next year we believe that we could see more profit from the online sale if publicity were more pervasive (see below) and the online sale was announced in parallel with the onsite sale.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 5. We need to think through our strategy for publicizing the onsite and online (especially) book fairs. Knowing that the online fair will work when we start publicizing the onsite fair will help. We don’t want to be on top of PP publicity (which will always be an issue at this time of year). How can we incorporate the online fair into the posters in the classrooms and into the large onsite posters? When should the online publicity push go out to parents and through which channels (Dana primarily since this is a school driven event?)?

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space: auto;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 6. I don’t know if this is possible, but it would have been nice to have 3 cash registers for brunch and the 1:30 time slot most days.

<p style="margin-left:.75in;mso-add-space:auto; text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2"> 7. We encourage next year’s team to look into Jooners and whether or not you need to pay to use it again.

Creating teacher wish lists for the online book fair
<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">1. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Go to the Online Book Fair website: |<span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:&quot;Verdana&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">www.scholastic.com/schoolbookfairs <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black"> 

<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">2. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Find Your School: <span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">Choose your state, city and school to enter the Online Book Fair shopping site.

<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">3. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Start Your Wish List: <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">To add items to your Wish List, click the "add to wish list button" under any book listing. Books will be automatically added to your Wish List.

<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">4. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Account Registration: <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">Click on Wish List at the TOP of page, or next to the "add to wish list" under the book title. When you click on it for the first time you will be asked to create your account by clicking on the Sign Up button and complete the registration. Note: Even if you have an account with Scholastic you have to recreate one for the Book Fair. Be sure to select “YES”, that you are a teacher or school personnel. (The list will show up under your name and grade.)

<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">5. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">View Your Wish List <span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">: When you're finished adding books click "Wish List" at the top of each page, or view your Wish List underneath any book title.

<p style="margin-bottom:6.6pt;line-height:normal;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">6. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Share Your Wish List: <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">Check the “Show my Wish List to Everyone” box in the upper right hand side of the screen. This will display your wish list to shoppers in the grade level listing.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black">7. <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Email Your Wish List: <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana; color:black">Send your wish list via email by clicking on the Red ‘Send Your Wish List’ button at the bottom of your Wish List page. Enter your email addresses and click “Send Your Wish List”. You are not limited to how many emails you can send out. If you have more than five emails to send, repeat the process.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black"> <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">Note: <span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;color:black">When an item has been ordered from your wish list the quantity ordered will display in the “Ordered” column.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;color:black">

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