School fundraising -help

[herecomesthsun]

My child's class is due to have an end of year party. The children are being asked to help fund this - which is in itself not unreasonable.

However, my child has come home saying that she and 3 other children are being encouraged to put on a bake sale for the other littler children.

The idea is that I provide the ingredients and support the baking.

I think this is a terrible idea as in my experience bake sales run at a great loss.I contribute home made goods to bake sales because it is nice for the children and don't expect a profit to be made.

I think they are each going to have to provide about 4 dozen items each [ie the mums]

There is indeed a backstory of me being out of pocket from trying to support this school in the past and wanting to limit the amount of expense and work I get landed with here.

I would be really fine with contributing a tenner for some party food/buying that amount at the end of term,but jeez it does not not look like I am going to get away with that.

Also, I would like the fundraising efforts of the kids to be a success,so are there any better ideas out there?

Have they actually got to bake the cakes?
When I did PTA cake sales 90% of the cakes were shop bought.
We bought things like the tray of donuts from Sainsbury's that were about 2 or 3 quid for 12 and sold the donuts individually at £1 each or the platters of cupcakes that were about £4 for 12 cakes and sold each cake for £1.50.
If you could do that instead of baking the cakes - but the children could contribute by making fancy signs for the sale or making bunting or something to make it look like a "garden party" type stall.

Thanks. I think the idea is that they bake the cakes; DC is really unkeen on the idea of buying stuff in, and I'm not sure how easy it would be for me to get back the money I spent on doughnuts etc. I don't mind spending a few quid, but don't really want to buy a load of shop cakes that is then sold for 10 or 20p a bit. We are having conversations about profit margins