Hi Catriona,

After chatting to many schools, those that are looking to drive a culture of giving and fundraising usually make it optional.
Optional giving enables tax deductibility which may be important for some individuals. When I looked into this subject a while ago for my own school situation most schools get around a 25-30% participation rate for optional – that may have gone down in recent times – cost of living issues being raised – squeeze of middle class etc.

As a generalisation I see many lower fee catholic schools having a compulsory fee for maintenance or a capital level. As to the fee charged I suspect there is wide variety which which is somewhat aligned to whether a school is low / med / high fee paying school and whether a building project is happening or not.

If your fees for Year 12 are circa $20K+ I see voluntary requests on each termly invoice of circa $200-$300 regardless of works happening. MOst ask for the fee each time they send an invoice vs annual. However, there is a lot of variation, I just saw a reasonably high fee catholic school ($25K Year 12) request $950 per term tax deductible!! Yes per term! The school has been doing major works which might account for such a high number.

I guarantee if you don’t have a compulsory fee and apply one you will get complaints! So you need to mitigate with a comms plan alongside the implementation of this! I would suggest you do some desktop research of what is the state of play locally in the schools around you which will help you and the team make an informed decision. Some enrolling families will factor the compulsory cost into their decision making around schools. Hope this helps – all the best with your plans.

Happy to have a chat – email merryn@toucantech.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/merrynparks/