Calculator
Classroom contribution ask calculator
Put in the classroom budget, the size of the class and how many families usually pay, and see the per family number you should publish.
Free tools
Calculators for classroom contribution drives and signups
Two working calculators for room parents, one for the dollar figure you publish and one for how many families will have answered before you start sending personal texts.
Room parents get two numbers wrong, and they are the two that decide whether a drive feels smooth or awful. The ask per family is set by dividing the budget by the class list, which quietly assumes every household pays, and then the drive comes up short. The response curve is never estimated at all, so the reminder schedule gets invented mid drive and someone who already paid gets nudged three times.
Both calculators run in your browser, ask for nothing, and use the numbers a room parent actually has: the class size, the budget the teacher approved, what participation looked like last time, and how long it takes you to write one message. Change any input and the results move. They are free to use whether or not you ever open RoomParentHub.
Calculator
Classroom signup response planner
Estimate how many families answer the first send and each of two reminders, and how many minutes of individual chasing you are left holding.
Working document
The classroom contribution drive checklist
Every step of a classroom money ask in order, from the approval email you send first to the summary you owe families in the week after it closes.
Open to any room parent, no account, no class list uploaded
Neither calculator asks for an email address. A room parent should not have to trade her contact details to find out what a fall party ask has to be once six or seven households do not pay and the payment app keeps a slice of every one that does. Both run in the browser on this page, the numbers stay on your screen, and you can close the tab with nothing kept.
They are worth having whether or not you ever open RoomParentHub. Today this arithmetic gets done in the notes app during pickup or not at all: the teacher approved budget minus whatever is left in the class fund, divided by the share of twenty eight families who actually pay rather than the whole roster, with the processing fee added back and the result rounded to a figure that reads like a request. Then the second one, which almost nobody works out, is how many families answer the first send, how many answer reminder one and reminder two, and how many are left for you to text one at a time on a Tuesday evening. Those two numbers decide whether the drive closes on the deadline or limps into the week of the party.
The figures are yours. The chasing is the rest of the job.
A published ask and a response curve are both true right up to the morning you have to send reminder one to only the households who have not answered. That filtering is the work, and it is what RoomParentHub does against the class roster instead of against a sheet you rebuild each time. Ask for a demo and bring the numbers you just worked out here.