School Merch Kit: PTA-Priced, Fundraiser-Ready, Reorder-Friendly
The annual spirit wear drop and the club-advisor merch bundle in one pre-sized program. Hoodies, tees, coordinated staff shirts, mixed-grade sizing, and a fundraiser math sheet included so the PTA hits the dollar goal on the first pass.
Short version, straight from the floor.
The School Merch Kit is a fifty to two hundred unit bundle sized around how school orders actually happen: one PTA officer or one club advisor collects an order form from parents, tallies the sizes on a Sunday night, and orders the exact quantity in one shot. The kit ships as school-color tees plus an optional hoodie tier plus a coordinated staff or advisor shirt, all sized across youth XS through adult 3XL because a school parent list is never one demographic. A fundraiser pricing sheet ships with the order so the PTA treasurer can price hoodies at $25 to net $10 to $12 per unit toward the program's dollar goal.
The default garment is a value garment. Gildan 5000 and Gildan 18500 are cost-effective workhorses. They are not Comfort Colors and they are not Bella. If your PTA is a private-school PTA where parents will pay $45 for a hoodie, upgrade the tier and expect to net less per unit but sell more units at higher retail.
Same-day only within our production window. Same-day means order-by-noon-ships-same-day. If your PTA order form closes Friday at 5pm and the fundraiser is Saturday at 10am, you are compressed. Order the first three days of the week for the safest turn.
One design per garment. The kit is sized around one spirit wear design (front print, optional back print) run across the whole order. If you want six different club designs on the same order, that is a gang sheet across multiple SKUs, which we can do but price differently.
We do not run the sale for you. The PTA collects order forms, tallies sizes, and submits the order. We do not run the parent-facing storefront or the payment collection. We can point you to a template Google Form, but the collection is on your side of the fence.
The PTA fundraiser and the club-advisor drop, pre-configured.
The School Merch Kit is a fifty to two hundred unit bundle sized around how school orders actually happen: one PTA officer or one club advisor collects an order form from parents, tallies the sizes on a Sunday night, and orders the exact quantity in one shot. The kit ships as school-color tees plus an optional hoodie tier plus a coordinated staff or advisor shirt, all sized across youth XS through adult 3XL because a school parent list is never one demographic. A fundraiser pricing sheet ships with the order so the PTA treasurer can price hoodies at $25 to net $10 to $12 per unit toward the program's dollar goal.
The default garment is Gildan 5000 for tees and Gildan 18500 for hoodies. Neither is the softest garment on the shelf. Both hit the price point where the fundraiser math actually works: parents pay $15 for a tee or $25 for a hoodie, the program nets meaningful margin, and the volume covers the uniform account, the equipment fund, or the trip that motivated the order. Decoration is DTF because a multi-color school logo hits without a per-color setup fee, and because the second round (parents who missed the first order form, always twenty percent) reorders at the same per-unit price with no re-setup.
Sizing distribution is where school orders go wrong. K-8 skews youth-heavy. High school skews adult-heavy with a youth run for younger siblings. Private schools with a K-12 population need both. The kit lets you specify size distribution up front instead of guessing, and the sizing template we ship with every order matches what PTAs actually collect on the pre-order form.
If the fundraiser is on your calendar, this is your kit.
PTA and PTO presidents / treasurers
Running the annual fall or spring spirit wear drop with a specific dollar goal for the program budget.
Athletic booster clubs
Booster shirts and hoodies sold in the concession stand at home games. Volume-first, margin-second.
Club advisors
Debate, robotics, drama, chess, orchestra. Fifteen to sixty units for a specific club with a small custom design.
Homeroom teachers and grade-level coordinators
Class-of shirts, field day shirts, end-of-year shirts sized around one grade level.
Small private schools
Whole-school uniform-adjacent spirit wear where the order is once-per-year across the entire student body.
The school calendar drives every deadline.
August (back-to-school drop)
Peak PTA order window. Order the first week of August, in parents' hands the first week of school, second-round reorder the third week of school captures the twenty percent who missed the first form.
January (spring semester restart)
Second-largest window. New students, new families, new fundraising cycle. Order first week back from break so the shirts are in hands before parent-teacher conferences.
April (spring sports and field day)
Field day tees, spring sports spirit wear, teacher appreciation week gear. Order by the second week of April to hit the third-week events.
Two weeks before the big event
Homecoming, pep rally, graduation. Same-day production means an order confirmed Monday ships Tuesday and gets to your school by Thursday for a Friday event.
Second-round reorder (two to three weeks after first drop)
Twenty percent of parents miss the first form. Plan for it. Reorders come with no setup fee because your art is on file.
What this kit is not.
The School Merch Kit optimizes for fundraiser dollars raised, not for boutique quality. If your PTA wants a premium retail feel, you are in a different program.
The default garment is a value garment.
Gildan 5000 and Gildan 18500 are cost-effective workhorses. They are not Comfort Colors and they are not Bella. If your PTA is a private-school PTA where parents will pay $45 for a hoodie, upgrade the tier and expect to net less per unit but sell more units at higher retail.
Same-day only within our production window.
Same-day means order-by-noon-ships-same-day. If your PTA order form closes Friday at 5pm and the fundraiser is Saturday at 10am, you are compressed. Order the first three days of the week for the safest turn.
One design per garment.
The kit is sized around one spirit wear design (front print, optional back print) run across the whole order. If you want six different club designs on the same order, that is a gang sheet across multiple SKUs, which we can do but price differently.
We do not run the sale for you.
The PTA collects order forms, tallies sizes, and submits the order. We do not run the parent-facing storefront or the payment collection. We can point you to a template Google Form, but the collection is on your side of the fence.
The units that repeat in school kits.
These are the exact SKUs and quantities that anchor most PTA and booster orders, ranked by attach rate and year-over-year reorder frequency.
Gildan 18500 Heavyweight Hoodie
The fundraiser workhorse. $12 to $14 cost, $25 retail, $10 to $12 net per unit. Available in every school color.
Gildan 5000 Tee
The tee equivalent. $4 cost, $12 to $15 retail, $6 to $9 net per unit. High volume, low complaint rate.
Bella+Canvas 3001 Softer Tee
Upgrade option for private schools and PTAs where parents pay $18 to $22 per tee. Same net margin, higher perceived quality.
Independent Trading SS4500 Midweight Hoodie
Premium hoodie tier for schools that want the softer hand. Retail at $38 to $45, net $14 to $18 per unit.
Custom DTF Transfers by Size
Multi-color school logos, mascots, and wordmarks without per-color setup fees. Reorders cost the same per-unit as the first run.
DTF Gang Sheet
Multiple club designs, mascot variants, or grade-level variants packed on one sheet. Same tier ladder for pricing.
First-time PTA officer, no design agency, tight fundraiser deadline.
Order one hundred Gildan 18500 hoodies plus one hundred Gildan 5000 tees plus a coordinated staff shirt tier.
For a first-time PTA officer running the fall drop, the safest configuration is one hundred Gildan 18500 hoodies (adult and youth blend, roughly 60/40 adult), one hundred Gildan 5000 tees (same size blend), a small coordinated Bella 3001 staff shirt run for teachers and administrators, and one DTF gang sheet for the school logo and mascot variants. Priced at $25 for hoodies and $15 for tees, this configuration nets a PTA around $2,000 to $2,600 on the first round and captures the second-round reorder revenue at the same per-unit cost. Turnaround is same-day production, three to five day ship, so a Monday order hits before the Friday assembly.
Order the Beginner School KitWhere to go if this is not the right kit.
Team Merch Kit
Better fit if you are one athletic team inside the school, not the whole PTA. Rostered jerseys, sponsor placements, coach polo.
CompareNon-Profit Fundraiser Kit
Better fit if the school is running a 5K or a memorial fundraiser as a 501(c)(3), not a spirit wear drop. Different pricing sheet, different math.
CompareApparel Brand Founder Kit
Better fit if the school store is trying to become an actual brand (alumni merch, boutique quality). Premium blanks, launch photography, brand-quality tagging.
Compare
Read these before you order.
Fundraiser Math for School Spirit Wear
Per-unit COGS, target retail, net margin, volume-to-goal math for PTAs and booster clubs.
Gildan 18500 Buyer's Guide
Why the 18500 is the default fundraiser hoodie. Colors, size chart, shrinkage math, wash durability.
DTF vs Screen Printing for Schools
The break-even per unit count for school runs. Where each method wins and where the other costs you margin.
PTA Order Form Template
The Google Form template PTAs actually use to collect sizes, hoodie versus tee choice, and payment before the order ships.
Add-ons and adjacent SKUs schools actually buy.
Youth Gildan 5000B Tee
Youth cut for K-8. Same fabric as the 5000, sized down. Order alongside the adult run for mixed grades.
Gildan 18000 Crewneck Sweatshirt
Crewneck alternative to the 18500 hoodie for schools with pullover-only dress codes.
Champion Reverse Weave Hoodie
Premium alumni merch tier. Higher retail, higher margin, feels like real brand-quality hoodie.
Port Authority Staff Polo
Staff and administrator differentiator with the school logo embroidered on the left chest. Different color from the student body spirit wear.
Yupoong Flexfit School Cap
Embroidered spirit hat. Attach rate spikes for booster clubs and athletic programs.
DTF Gang Sheet for Mascot Variants
Mascot art, wordmark, back print, sleeve hits packed on one gang sheet. One sheet decorates hundreds of shirts.
Adjacent hubs with the same operational reality.
What PTA officers ask before they order.
- How do I collect sizes from parents?
- Use the PTA order form template on our /learn/pta-order-form-template page. It is a Google Form pre-configured with size dropdowns, hoodie versus tee choice, and Stripe payment. Parents fill it in, you export the results, we parse the CSV into your order.
- Do you print in school colors?
- Yes. Gildan 5000 and 18500 come in every standard school color (navy, royal, red, forest, purple, kelly, athletic gold, and so on). Send your school color name or a Pantone reference and we match to the closest Gildan stock color.
- What is the smallest order the kit supports?
- Fifty units total, mixed across tees and hoodies. Below fifty, we still print for you but the per-unit price no longer hits the fundraiser math the kit is optimized for. Club advisors ordering fifteen to forty units for one club use the same kit priced as a small run.
- Can I run a discount for teachers or staff?
- Yes. The pricing sheet lets you set a staff price and a parent price separately. Staff at cost, parents at retail, PTA nets the difference.
- How fast is the second-round reorder?
- Same-day production, same per-unit price as the first round, no setup fee. If you close the reorder window on Sunday, we produce Monday and ship Monday night for Wednesday delivery.
- Do you offer 501(c)(3) tax-exempt pricing?
- Yes for verified 501(c)(3) organizations with a valid tax exemption certificate on file. Upload the certificate to your account and we drop sales tax from your future orders.
Order this kit.
Configure the size distribution, upload your school logo, drop in the mascot art, and pay one line item for the whole drop. Same-day production. Second-round reorders come at the same per-unit price with no setup fee.