The IPF checking account has been very busy with blessing our school! We used funds left over from last year to make recent purchases, which include:
LOCKERS! God placed IA parent Beckie Kiker at the Raleigh Habitat for Humanity on just the right day to find that they just received a shipment of several sets of lockers that were donated by NCSU. These lockers ended up selling out at all Habitat locations in less than a day! It would have been $1600 for the 88 lockers we bought but Habitat negotiated with us and we paid only $1400 as well as saving nearly $100 because as a nonprofit we do not have to pay sales tax. Many thanks to Darrell Taylor and Travis Kiker for transporting all of these lockers from Habitat to Iron. The lockers need to be stabilized in their location in the gym and will available to use soon.
LUNCH TABLES! To protect the carpets throughout the building, our students are only allowed to eat lunch outside or in the gym. Our students prefer to eat lunch outside whenever the weather permits and there are tables and chairs to use on the outdoor patio. But in rainy or very cold weather, they would sit on the floor in the gym to eat. Many thanks to IA Parents Denise Hanna and Rebekah Anderson for leading the effort to solve the indoor cafeteria tables dilemma. We purchased 6-foot folding tables on sale from KMart and they gave us a 10% discount. We paid around $400 for 10 tables. We also bought some removable indoor/outdoor carpet for $160 from Lowe's to protect the flooring under the tables from food and drink spills. Radiant Church let us borrow their folding chairs to complete our cafeteria!
LIBRARY BOOKS AND CLASSROOM SUPPLIES! The Dollar Book Exchange is a warehouse in Raleigh open only one weekend per month and sells used books for $1 each. We have gone there a couple of times so far to purchase books for our expanding library holdings. If anyone is ever available on the first weekend of each month, please join us in searching through their thousands of books for appropriate books for our students. We have also purchased some books and art supplies for Ms. Bowen from Amazon (using our fundyourpta.org link!). We have spent about $300 on books and supplies so far.
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES! For the family picnic at Falls Lake in August, we spent $95 for the rental of the picnic shelter and $250 for hamburger meat from BJ's. We collected $80 of donations for the food as well as families bringing the rest of the food and drinks to share. For the IPF General Meeting on Sep 3, we paid $60 for snacks and drinks. For the Teacher Appreciation Day, we paid $25 for the buckets, tissue paper, and cards from the Dollar Store to use with the snacks and flowers that we each brought in.
USED CLOTHING SALE! But we have also brought in some revenue from the used clothing sale! Thank you to everyone who donated clothing for us to sell and who bought our spiritwear - we had net proceeds of $822! Going forward, we will modify how we sell the clothes with the IPF getting a commission on the sales of clothes that aren't donated but are sold through our "store." We'll finalize the new plans for how we will sell clothes before we ramp up with a big sale again next summer. Nearly everything we had was sold except for some youth medium polo shirts if anyone needs those. We'll accept donated clothes at any time if you need to weed out the clothes your son has outgrown.
IPF CHECKING ACCOUNT BALANCE: We made a recent large deposit of funds from Warrior Challenge sponsorships and as of October 5, we have a checking account balance of around $2,800. At the IPF General Meeting on Sep 3, we voted to pass a budget that blesses the school, teachers, and students by paying for about $23,000 of expenses from the funds we raise. With the Warrior Challenge and selling AutoBell car wash tickets, Christmas wreaths, and Red Rooster Coffee (more details coming soon about the coffee), we are doing a good bit of fundraising now to take advantage of Christmas shopping and to be able to have funds to use for the rest of the school year. As you can see from the purchases above, we are also trying to get good deals on whatever we buy. If we can meet our fundraising goals by December, then we won't need to actively sell anything for the rest of the school year.
Warrior Challenge update: Please click the tab at the top of the page for more information about the Warrior Challenge. The event occurs on Tuesday, October 13 from noon to 3:00. We have a goal of raising $15,000. We could use several volunteers. Please let Anne York know if you can volunteer. Our sons have already committed to their physical challenge and some examples are: 250 squats! 175 sit-ups! One mile in 6 minutes!
The link to send to your son's potential donors to give online is: http://www.ironacademy.org/2015-warrior-challenge/ and this page helps to explain what the Warrior Challenge is and directs them to the page to give. Or the web page to go directly to the online donation site is: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000FuvAiEAJ
Thank you so very much to our Warrior Challenge business sponsors!! Finicky Pig Baking and Catering (Tracy Bright), Forever Changed (sponsored by the Ferguson family), ECLS Inc (Darrell Taylor), Medalist Capital (Scott Mauzy), Graebe, Hanna, and Sullivan PLLC (Doug Hanna), Little Squirrels (Travis Kiker), National Youth Football Organization and Kids Exchange (Bob and Amy Winstead), Creative Visions (Allin Foulkrod), Olmstead Homesteads (Christian Olmstead), Red Rooster Coffee and Hope Farm Labradoodles (Steve and Debby Meredith), Neighbor to Neighbor (sponsored by the Clark and Jordan families).
Canned Food and Winter Coat Drive: Our 8th grade students are doing a service project during their Intensive Week and working with the Raleigh Dream Center. To help support the work of the Dream Center which helps to meet basic human needs in the areas of hunger, poverty, homelessness, and human trafficking, we will collect canned goods, toiletries, and winter coats during October. A flyer will be sent out soon with more details.
Retailer Fundraising Update: Please click on the tab at the top of the page for links to our retailer fundraising opportunities. From the tallies we can watch as they accumulate, we have:
- Harris Teeter: 20 linked cards and $18.12 since Aug 1 (last year we had 31 links)
- Fundyourpta.org (Amazon and Groupon) $41.26 since May 1
OCTOBER IS BOXTOPS COLLECTION MONTH! We have a deadline to send in our BoxTops to the BoxTops people by the end of October. We'll have ziploc bags pinned to the bulletin board in every classroom for your son to place his BoxTops.
We also have TWO NEW ways to raise funds at no cost to the shopper:
- SHOPAROO is an app for your Apple or Android phone that you use to take photos of your store receipts. For any receipt from a store that sells groceries, we earn points that translate to dollars that are paid out each August. For every 500 points, we get $1. The greater the dollar amount of the receipt, the more points we get. For any other receipt such as from a restaurant or clothing store, we get one entry that goes into a monthly $1000 sweepstakes and there is a $15,000 annual sweepstakes. Anne York has been playing with this app for the past month and it is super easy to use. Nearly all of the schools around us are enrolled in this. Use referral code vent4893 to enroll with Iron Academy or search for us using zip code 27604 in the app. Visit Shoparoo's website for more information: http://shoparoo.com/. We do get points just for getting more parents to sign up! The Shoparoo people claim that if 50 parents are enrolled and actively scanning receipts for a year, the school could earn around $1000. Please download this app and help us earn at least several hundred dollars!
- ZIGGEDY is an online shopping tool meant for teachers to raise money when shoppers use a Ziggedy link before visiting any of 3,500 online retailers. We have set up an account for the teacher "Mr. I. Academy." Ziggedy also has coupons and promotions that you can use through their site. You can sign up to use Ziggedy at http://www.ziggedy.com/IronIAcademy/signup and visit their website to learn more about this program at http://www.ziggedy.com/. Between Ziggedy and Fundyourpta.org, please be sure that Iron has some benefit from any online shopping that Iron supporters do.
Yearbook Special
Click the tab above for the "Yearbook" to check out a special offer of 10% off the $39.93 price if you order by October 31.
Upcoming Events in October
Iron's Events Calendar can be accessed from the tab above. Key October events are:
- Tuesday Oct 6: Iron Academy will be attending a High School Fair hosted by St. Timothy's School. Please be in prayer that we would make connections with students who would be our ideal candidates.
- Tuesday Oct 13: WARRIOR CHALLENGE! All donations need to be collected by October 23.
- Tuesday Oct 13: Restaurant Spirit Night with Kamado Grille. More details are coming.
- Wednesday Oct 14: Father's Breakfast at 7:30 am. See a Sign-Up Genius invitation that was emailed.
- Thursday Oct 15: End of the first quarter
- No classes: Oct 9, 12, 16
- Intensives Week: October 19 to 23. Intensive week classes by grade:
- 9th grade: College application planning
- 8th grade: Robotics III, M, T, W (site visit) & Service Days Th, F
- 7th grade: Art History II
- 6th grade: Orienteering and Outdoor Skills M, T, W & Robotics I (Th, F)
- Monday Oct 19 at 3:15: Meeting for students who are interested in trying out for basketball
- October 22, College Planning Night for Parents at Iron.
- Saturday Oct 24: Science Lab Day at Neuse Christian Academy - more details coming
- Middle School and JV Soccer have several games in October. Please check the calendar for game times and locations.
- Monday Oct 26 and Tuesday Oct 27: Middle school basketball tryouts after school
- Monday Oct 26: IPF Executive Officers meeting, 7:00 pm, location to be determined
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