Those end-of-year events are sneaking up on schools with AP exams, proms, and graduation right around the corner. And what’s next?...summer programs! It can be a challenge to promote your summer programs when spring events and exams become a focus.

Many families start making summer plans early in the year to accommodate work schedules, vacation time, and other obligations. This means that creating a clear communication plan early on is the key to successfully promoting summer programs before school lets out for the summer.

Here are 5 tools to help get the word out and increase participation in summer programs at your district:

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Bringing your school fundraiser online makes your cause convenient to donate to and easy to manage. But even with all the benefits of online fundraisers, there are still things you and your team can do to truly amplify the success of your event.

From all of us at Heartland School Solutions, we'd like to wish you a happy and safe holiday season!

Take a look at how our office stopped and celebrated this year with
our very own #MannequinChallenge:

With the new school year just around the corner, now is the perfect time to make sure parents know about all that MySchoolBucks has to offer.  Order free materials today!

As food costs continue to climb and many families struggle to make ends meet, school districts across the country continue to see a rise in unpaid meal charges.  In SNA's State of School Nutrition 2014 survey, nearly 71% of schools reported that their meal program had unpaid student meal debt at the end of the 2012-13 school year.

Managing school funds from various entry points within a school district can be time consuming, redundant, and labor intensive. So much so, that the thought of changing the way you handle the exchange of funds is overwhelming and exhausting, making it easier to continue business as usual.

If you add up all the time that you spend entering fees, exporting reports, depositing checks in different accounts, and fixing errors, it is almost a full time job just managing funds. If you find yourself spending the vast majority of your time focusing on funds management, it might be time to consider a single solution to help simplify this process.

Look for a solution that has features that will allow you to be flexible in the way you manage funds, save time, reduce errors, make payments easy for parents, and, ultimately, go cashless on campus.

MySchoolBucks has been recognized by District Administration magazine as a 2015 Readers' Choice Top Product. Superintendents, senior school leaders, and their colleagues selected these best-in-class products based on the innovation they provide throughout the K-12 industry.

From all of us at Heartland School Solutions, we'd like to wish you a happy and safe holiday season!

And with 2016 right around the corner, let's take a look at the most popular Connections blogs posts from this year:

Convenience, simplicity, and security are just a few of the benefits of accepting online donations for your school fundraising efforts. But how else does collecting school donations online benefit you, your volunteers, and your donors?

Here are the top 6 benefits of collecting school donations online:

Need some school fundraising inspiration?  You've come to the right place!  Whether your volunteers are feeling artistically inclined, ready to get active, or just want to keep things simple, we’ve got you covered.

Here's 20 school fundraising ideas that your district should try:

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