# A community fundraiser cookbook — recipes from eighty families, checked, proofread and ready for the printer Recipe No. 24, Kitchen and table. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/fundraiser-cookbook - For: a PTA volunteer compiling the school cookbook that pays for next year’s field trips - You bring: recipes arriving by web form and email from dozens of families, a printer’s deadline, and a submission form that asks each family to confirm the recipe is theirs - You get: a cookbook of about 140 recipes in seven sections, each credited to its family, with a list of questions for every contributor, a proofreading link per section and clean text for the printer - Time: an evening to set up, half an hour a week checking what your assistant filed, and two weekends of checking before the printer’s deadline - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link A fundraiser cookbook is an editing job disguised as a bake sale. Eighty families send recipes in eighty formats: "1 T", "1 tbsp" and "a spoon"; oven temperatures missing from half the casseroles; a lasagne typed into the body of an email with the pan size left out. Someone has to turn that pile into a book, usually one volunteer with a deadline. This recipe gives the volunteer a library and an assistant to do the filing. Hand the week's submissions to whichever assistant you use, Claude, ChatGPT or a local model connected to know.sh, and it files each recipe into its section as a numbered finding with the family's credit in the title, then reads each section for the inconsistencies a printer will not fix for you. You fix up the results in the editor. It lists the questions to send each family, one email per contributor rather than one per problem. When a section is clean, a read-only link goes to the contributors to proofread, and their corrections come back to you by email. The web form, the contributors' email addresses and the printer's order stay where they are now. know.sh holds the recipes, the questions and the record of every correction. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: One shelf, *Linden Park cookbook*, holding the seven section documents and a short *House style* document. - **Research document**: One document per section: Breakfast and brunch, Soups and salads, Mains, Sides, Breads, Desserts, and Kids in the kitchen. - **Finding**: One finding per recipe, titled with the dish and the family, filed as an *Observation*; a recipe waiting on an answer is filed as a *Question* until it arrives. - **Your AI assistant**: Files each week’s submissions into the right sections, flags duplicates, checks units, temperatures and allergen lines, and drafts one list of questions per family. - **The editor**: Where you settle duplicates, apply the families’ answers, fix units to the house style and mark the recipes that sold the bake sale as **Key**. - **Proposed notes**: Where your assistant is unsure about a single line, such as "1 can" with no size, it can leave a proposed note beside it, with **Accept** and **Dismiss**. - **Revisions**: Every change, yours or the assistant’s, is a revision you can point to when a family asks who changed their recipe. - **Public link**: A read-only link per section, with a password and an expiry on the proofreading deadline. ## Method ### 1. Set the ground rules on the submission form Before a single recipe arrives, add three lines to the form and to the email you send families. First: "This recipe is my own or my family's. If it is adapted from a book, a website or a package, say which." Second: "Recipes will be credited to your family name, not to children." Third: list what every recipe needs, which is a title, servings, ingredients with amounts, the oven temperature or cooking time, and the pan size. The first line matters most. A fundraiser cookbook is sold, so it cannot reprint another cook's headnote or method word for word. The note at the end of this recipe says what can be kept and what has to be rewritten. ### 2. Hand each week’s submissions to your assistant Once a week, collect that week's form responses as a spreadsheet and the emailed recipes as text, and give them to the assistant you use. First delete the columns and lines you do not want it to see: email addresses, phone numbers and children's names. The contact list belongs in the PTA's own records, not in an AI chat or the cookbook. Ask it to file each recipe as a new finding in the right section on the *Linden Park cookbook* shelf, titled `Green chile chicken enchiladas — the Delgado family`, in the family's own wording, typos and all, and to list anything it could not place. The filing becomes the assistant's job; the checking stays yours. ### 3. Fix up each batch in the editor Open each section and read what arrived. Every finding the assistant created shows in Revisions as made by an assistant, so you can see exactly what moved. Press **Edit** to fix a misfiled recipe, drag findings into the order you want, and change a recipe to a *Question* while it waits on the family. Ask your assistant to flag near-duplicates too. Three families will send Texas sheet cake. Choose one, or run them side by side as *Texas sheet cake — the Nguyen family* and *— the Brooks family*; either way, decide before the printer counts pages. ### 4. Settle the house style once Decide the style before you start correcting: "tbsp" and "tsp", °F with no °C, "9 x 13-inch pan", servings as a number. Write it as a short document called *House style*, one finding per rule, so your assistant can check every section against it. Change the units, not the voice. If Mrs Brooks writes "stir until it looks like wet sand", that stays. Record each fix in the recipe itself and, when it came from the family, select the line and leave a **Note**: "Temperature confirmed by email, 14 October." ### 5. Ask your assistant for a consistency check, section by section When a section has most of its recipes, ask your assistant to read it, by name, against *House style* for the things printers see and volunteers miss: units written three ways, missing oven temperatures, missing pan sizes, "1 can" with no size, servings left blank, and a *Contains:* line that is missing or disagrees with the ingredients. Ask for the result in a new finding at the end of the section, grouped by family, with the line each question is about. That list becomes your email: one message to the Delgados with their three questions, not three messages. Your assistant can also leave a proposed note beside a line it is unsure of; **Accept** the ones you want to keep as reminders and **Dismiss** the rest. ### 6. Send a proofreading link per section When a section is clean, press **Share**. Add a password, set the expiry to the proofreading deadline, and copy the link the moment it appears; it is shown only once. Readers see the section's overview and recipes, never your notes or highlights. If a recipe is still waiting on a family's permission, leave it out of the link from its own page. Send the link and password to that section's contributors with one instruction: reply by email with corrections. They cannot write in your library, so you make each change yourself. The Share panel's read count tells you whether anyone opened it before you chase. ### 7. Copy the final text into the printer’s template Most fundraiser printers take recipes one at a time, in fixed fields: title, contributor, ingredients, method. Read each finished section and copy the text across, or ask your assistant to read a section back as plain text in the printer's field order, without changing a word. Check the printer's proof against the library, not memory. When a late correction arrives, the revision history shows what changed since the files went. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > These are this week’s cookbook submissions. Using know.sh, file every recipe as a new finding in the right section document on my Linden Park cookbook shelf. Keep the family’s wording exactly, title each one “Dish — the ___ family”, file it as an Observation, and list at the end any recipe you could not place or that looks like a duplicate of one already filed. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the document Mains on my Linden Park cookbook shelf against the House style document on the same shelf. Find missing oven temperatures, pan sizes, can sizes and servings, units that break the style, and Contains lines that are missing or disagree with the ingredients (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, sesame). Put the questions in a new finding, grouped by family, quoting each line. Do not change the recipes. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the Desserts document on the Linden Park cookbook shelf and give me every recipe as plain text in this order: Title, Contributed by, Servings, Ingredients (one per line), Method (numbered), Contains. Do not change any wording. Skip any finding filed as a Question. ## Variations - For a congregation rather than a school, add a section of the recipes made for funerals and church suppers, and credit the cooks who have made them for years. - With Claude Code and the know.sh plugin, make a campaign from the schedule: *Submissions close*, *Sections checked*, *Proofreading*, *Files to printer*, with each step blocking the next, so the graph shows what the deadline is waiting on. - For one family rather than eighty, the [family cookbook](/cookbook/family-cookbook) keeps the stories behind each recipe as well as the recipe. ## Where it falls short - Families cannot type into the library. Everything comes to you by form or email and goes through your assistant, so the volunteer who owns the library does all the checking and all the correcting. - There is no export and no print layout. The printer’s template is filled by copying, section by section, or with your assistant reading the text back to you. - Proofreading links are one section each, so seven sections means seven links and seven passwords, or one password you reuse and change when proofreading ends. - Connecting an assistant means signing in once, following the support page. Smaller local models call know.sh’s tools less reliably than Claude or ChatGPT, so read what they file; Revisions shows every change. - Any assistant can miss an allergen hidden in a brand-name ingredient, such as a stock cube or a spice mix. The Contains lines are a check you make, not one you hand over. ## A note on contributors, allergens and what goes in print Contributors must own what they send. A list of ingredients is not protected by copyright, but the wording of a headnote or a method can be, and a cookbook that is sold is a publication. If a family's recipe comes from a book, a blog or the back of a package, rewrite the method in your own words and print "Adapted from …". Credit families by surname, and keep children's names, photos and grades off every page and every link. Print a *Contains:* line on every recipe listing the major allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Never describe a recipe as free of an allergen, and say on the first page that the recipes come from home kitchens and have not been tested by the PTA. Where meat is involved, print the safe internal temperature from the USDA: 165°F (74°C) for poultry and 160°F (71°C) for ground meat, checked with a thermometer. Families will send pickles, salsas and jams for canning. Print those only if they follow a tested recipe from the USDA or the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and name it; otherwise leave them out. Assistants make mistakes, so check every allergen line and temperature yourself. Indexed under: Fundraiser cookbooks, Contributors, House style, Proofreading, Allergens, Printer’s template, Consistency checks.