Frequently Asked Questions
We can process donations via Zelle, credit card and check. If your employer participates, you can use the donation receipt we provide to ask them to match your donation.
Some employers also have their own giving websites you can use to donate (see below for more details). Important: If you give or match through your employer’s giving site, please still fill out the donation form on this website to be counted toward our schoolwide progress and Classroom Competition!
Please contribute what is comfortable for your family. WVPTO fully funds staff salaries for Art, Recess 101, and C-Lab, plus partial salaries for Library and Tier 2 Intervention. Our suggested donation amount is $750 per student. Every dollar counts and will make a difference in our community goal. We are striving for 100% participation!
WVPTO may publish a thank-you list with donor names (but never amounts given). If you don’t want to be listed, you can tick the “anonymous” box, and we won’t put your name on anything public. Your name will still be in our records for tax purposes. Alternatively, you can choose a different display name for these acknowledgements.
Yes! Please submit the donation form with your intended gift amount, choosing “I’m donating through a Donor Advised Fund” for your donation method. Include your confirmation number in the grant’s note or purpose field if there is one, and recommend a grant to:
West Valley Parent Teacher Organization
EIN / Tax ID: 46-5663137
P.O. Box 2032, Sunnyvale, CA 94087-2032
When you give via DAF, please note:
- Your tax receipt comes from your fund’s financial institution, not from WVPTO.
- These gifts may not be eligible for employer matching. Check your employer’s policy.
When you give, you have the option to select a different display name for your donations (e.g. “Jane & John Doe” or “The Smith Family” or whatever style of credit you prefer). If you change your mind, you can register a WVPTO portal account and go to My Account > Donor Profile to update the name we should use to credit you.
When you donate, you can enter your children and their classrooms in the donation form. If you made a mistake, you can log in and correct it by going to My Account > Donor Profile.
Email us at directdonation@wvpto.org if you have any questions.
After donating through your employer’s giving site, you need to also submit the donation form on this website to be included in our schoolwide progress and Classroom Competition!
Many employers offer a giving program where employees can donate to a qualifying nonprofit through a company-specific website. Often the companies match the gift, so it’s a convenient way to give! If you do this, your donation will be processed by your employer’s donation service (a common one is Benevity) and pooled together with other gifts before we get it after a month or two. Your donation receipt will come from your employer/service.
If you give on donate.wvpto.org directly, we will process your donation and issue your donation receipt from WVPTO by email.
Important: If you give through your employer’s giving site, make sure you also submit the donation form on this website to be counted toward our schoolwide progress and Classroom Competition!
To donate to the PTO, please select “West Valley Parent Teacher Organization” and not “West Valley Elementary”. Our finances and fundraising goals are separate.
“West Valley Elementary” goes to our school district. For example, if you donated $175 via ParentSquare at the beginning of the school year, it went to the school/district for field trips and other needs. You can reach out to the principal to learn more about how those funds are used.
For your donation to reach us, you must select “West Valley Parent Teacher Organization”, tax ID 46-5663137. Our budget mostly goes toward school Specials staff (Art, Recess 101, C-Lab, Library) and Instructional Aides, as well as community events and general school/classroom funding support.
Yes, your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. The West Valley Parent Teacher Organization (WVPTO) is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our Tax ID is 46-5663137.
Yes, if you donate directly to the WVPTO, we send receipts to your email address. Please make sure to keep a copy for tax purposes. Note that if you donate through your employer or a donor-advised fund, your receipt will come through those institutions.
Our Classroom Competition this year ends on October 20th at 11:59pm, but if this time frame doesn’t work for your family, we gratefully accept donations year-round.
In some schools, the PTO only handles community extras and events. We do those too, but WVPTO also covers salaries for several support staff at West Valley:
- 100% of our Art program
- 100% of Recess 101 (P.E. and leadership)
- 100% of C-Lab (STEAM/maker class)
- An additional +50% Librarian hours
- 2 additional Instructional Aides for math/reading intervention (increasing our program from 1 to 3 IAs)
These staff costs are not covered by CUSD; and given the Bay Area’s cost of living, salaries make up the large majority of our budget.
On top of this, the district only provides ~$77 per student to the school’s general fund for supplies and service costs for the year. This amount has not kept up with inflation or cost increases. WVPTO provides an additional ~$16,000 in general funds for classrooms and the school ($500 per classroom and $5000 for the school).
West Valley is fortunate to have a dedicated art teacher in award-winning artist Ms. Sanchez. Students experience art projects using a variety of techniques and materials – including ceramics – culminating in a spring Art Show to celebrate their growth over the year. Art at West Valley is 100% parent-funded.
California requires elementary students to receive 200 minutes of physical education every 10 school days (that’s 20 minutes a day on average). But this isn’t funded or staffed by the district until 4th grade.
Recess 101 is 100% parent-funded and well-loved by the students at West Valley! With the program, we get a dedicated staff member, Coach V, who runs a number of activities each day:
- Older students can join the Recess Leader Program and take on leadership roles. They learn to manage equipment, lead games, organize tournaments and clubs, and help resolve peer conflicts.
- At recess, Coach V leads a diverse range of games and sports-based activities designed to build skills, boost confidence, and encourage active participation.
- Once a week, students go to a Recess 101 physical activity class and practice and learn the rules of various games.
- Over the year, we have games and sports tournaments with the primary goal of encouraging participation, fostering teamwork, and nurturing a spirit of healthy competition.
West Valley’s creative/design program is parent-funded. C-Lab includes a dedicated maker space on campus and biweekly sessions with Mrs. Chew, who received a Superintendent’s Award last year for her excellent work! Students explore hands-on activities that bring their main curriculum to life in a new way. C-Lab projects are designed to help kids practice “The C’s of Creative Lab”:
- Collaboration – working together with others to create something amazing
- Communication – sharing and exchanging ideas clearly
- Creativity – using your imagination and original ideas to make something new
- Critical Thinking – solving problems and making decisions by observing, experimenting, reasoning, and reflecting.
With our librarian, Mrs. Gudan, students learn essential library skills – how to check out and return books, use the computer catalog, find books by call number, use Dewey decimal categories, and more. Read-aloud storytimes (picture books for younger kids, excerpts from chapter books for older ones) expand kids’ worlds with books they might not otherwise encounter. Mrs. Gudan works with teachers to coordinate library books with their curriculum.
Intervention IAs serve identified students who need support in phonemic awareness, phonics, reading and math in small group settings. Historically the district has provided instructional aides to school sites based on perceived need, which means our school has only received one or zero positions. With PTO support, we can staff our Intervention program with 3 intervention IAs.
Over 75% of our budget funds staff for our school day programs: Art, Recess 101, C-Lab, Extended Library, and Instructional Aides. Personnel costs have been rising sharply, so it costs more to keep the same programs we love and expect at West Valley.
For various reasons, California school districts in general and ours in particular are underfunded. Please reach out to CUSD or your local representative to learn more about what is driving the costs.
For the time being, the programs that WVPTO funds, like Art, Recess 101, and C-Lab, are considered “extras” by the school district, so they don’t cover them. We as a parent community believe these are important parts of an enriching elementary experience; parent funding allows us to keep these valuable opportunities at our school.
Similarly, our district has historically allocated one or zero intervention Instructional Aides to our school site, but we as a parent community believe our students are served better with wider access.
Many companies match employee contributions to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. This can double your donation at no cost to you! Some companies also donate at an hourly rate for volunteer hours served.
You can ask your employer for a match any time you donate time or funds to WVPTO (e.g. Walk-a-thon, Direct Donation, classroom volunteering). Your company may have a yearly cap on how much they’ll match — ask your HR/Benefits department for your company’s guidelines.
Usually, companies have a giving website where you search for the organization you want to give to. WVPTO is already set up for most of the big providers, but if your company’s doesn’t list us yet, please ask them to add us! They will usually ask for this information:
Name: West Valley Parent Teacher Organization (WVPTO)
Address: P.O. Box 2032, Sunnyvale, CA 94087-2032
EIN / Tax ID: 46-5663137
Important: “West Valley Elementary” (the school/district) might also be on this list, but their donations are not used for WVPTO programs. For your donation and match funds to reach us, you have to select “West Valley Parent Teacher Organization” and not “West Valley Elementary”. Check the tax ID if you’re not sure, or email us at directdonation@wvpto.org.
Each company’s process may differ, but in general, the steps are:
- Check to see if your company participates.
- Many companies use a third-party provider such as Benevity, BrightFunds, EasyMatch, or YourCause. Check if you’re required to make your contribution through the designated website; if so, be sure to use your company’s unique URL to log in.
- Search for West Valley Parent Teacher Organization (WVPTO) in the organization listing. If WVPTO is not listed, you’ll have to ask them to add us (see instructions above). IMPORTANT: West Valley Elementary (the school/district) is often also on this list, but their funds are not used for WVPTO programs. For your donation and/or match funds to reach us, you have to select “West Valley Parent Teacher Organization” and not “West Valley Elementary”.
- Fill out the donation form on this website here so it can boost your kids’ classrooms in the Classroom Competition.
Check the details with your company’s HR/Benefits department.
Here are some companies that we believe offer corporate matching benefits to their employees:
- Abbott
- Abbvie
- Adobe
- Airbnb
- American Century Investments
- Apple
- Applied Materials
- Aramark
- Avago Technologies
- Boston Scientific
- Broadcom
- ByteDance
- Cadence
- Cisco
- Citrix
- Cloudera
- Dell
- Elastic Inc
- Gartner
- Genentech
- Gigamon
- Guidewire Software
- Hewlett Packard
- Illumina
- Intel
- Intuit
- JSR Micro
- Juniper
- Kaiser Permanente
- Marvell Semiconductor
- Merck
- Micron
- Microsoft
- Netflix
- Nordstrom
- Nutanix
- Nvidia
- Oath
- Oracle
- Palo Alto Networks
- PayPal
- Pure Storage
- Qualcomm
- Ring Central
- Roblox
- SA Photonics
- Salesforce
- Samsung
- SAP
- ServiceNow
- Sony Electronics
- Symantec
- Synopsys
- Thermo Fisher Scientific
- TiVo
- Verizon
- VMWare
- Walmart
- Workday
- Yahoo!
- Zoom Video Communications
If your company is not on this list, please check with your HR department — let us know if they do participate and we’ll add them.
If your company is on this list but no longer participates in corporate matching, please let us know so we can remove them from this list.