PTA members / school staff - what’s the hardest part of organising school events?

[LilacHedgehog123]

Hi everyone,
I’ve recently joined our school PTA and I’m amazed at how much work goes into things like summer fairs, discos, Christmas events, raffles etc.

I’m curious, for those who’ve organised school events before:
What part did you find the most stressful, time-consuming, or confusing?

Was it:

• getting volunteers?
• knowing what jobs needed doing?
• contacting businesses for donations?
• keeping track of money?
• creating posters/signs?
• managing things on the day?
• getting parents to actually engage?
• something else?

Also, what do you wish someone had given you before you started? A simple checklist? Templates? Examples? A “how to run a school fair” guide?

Interested to hear what people have struggled with!

Definitely getting volunteers. People wanted the fun but don’t want to put in any effort. Was the same small group of people each time.

Hi we have a three manned pta with a volunteer bank of people who have the skills and time. Our job as a pta is telling people what to do to get things done. Eg: need a tens license I ask the person to arrange this. Need a poster I ask another vol to own and do this. Need a drinks order for the various events. Ask a vol to work with our local wine merchant. Need rotas sharing appoint someone to share the vol sheet regularly across year groups and liaise with the the school to send out messages. This means we oversee but don’t do the tasks as we assign them. To encourage parents to step up we remind them regularly that the money c£100k raised goes directly to fund their children’s education with examples. We have project plans for the events with a check list and use this to improve processes. Good luck

In short by outsourcing tasks people can manage this and you can keep an eye on the overall picture.

Getting volunteers.
Having a decent communication method for getting parents to actually understand what a PTA does, what it's for and what any money raised goes to.

This is useful thank you, I'm curious to know how other PTAs work! Would you be willing to share your project plans or checklists or are they too specific for your school? I'm just trying to hit the ground running! Thanks!!

Like a Facebook page with posts? Or a poster that explains how much money was raised and where it was spent?

I hated getting volunteers and contacting businesses.

I created a whole bunch of instructions / checklists & timelines for organising different types of events which really helped us as a committee as the years went on.

We had one fab lady who just made a whole bunch of resuable signs some of which are still in use 15 years later.

People who want things run/planned around the individual likes/dislikes of their own little darling.

An printed poster/newsletter would have been good.
It was usually two sentences tagged on the end of regular newsletters and seemed to assume parents knew what "PTA" or "Friend of...." meant.
Many didn't.
It needed to be a proper presentation during a new starters meeting really.

If anyone has any of the checklists etc they used in the past they'd be willing to share, please do! Thank you for the replies so far, it's good to see we're not the only ones with these struggles!

I had to leave our pta as the fact it was all women gave me too much feminist rage. Curious whether this is standard for ptas or whether the men at our school are just exceptionally rubbish?

I don't have them anymore but for the fair I had a very large spreadsheet, for each stall I had lists of things to prep in advance, equipment needed on the day, any after fair events, specific risks, what type of person needed to run it (eg teacher, parent or y6), how much we were charging, how much float it needed.

So eg raffle: as well as the prizes you need raffle ticket books (multiple colours) and pens, and selotape, the draw box, and list of prizes. It needed teacher / trusted parent (large sums of money involved) it needed a float of £40 etc

Hook a duck we needed to check the pool in advance, we needed sweets as prizes, the ducks and rods. We only charged 30p it was prize every time and a sensible y6 could run it. But it had to not be left unattended due to drowning risk so emptied at end of fair.

Getting volunteers and dealing with the moaning minnies for whom nothing was ever done right, but who would never step up and help.

Only women and the headmaster come to our meetings! We do get dad volunteers though

I think a lot of people think you aren't really a member of the PTA if you don't go to meetings. Most of our meetings were females because we generally held the meetings during a school day coffee morning and the vast majority of those there were SAHMs.
But we had a lot of dads (and grandads) involved with the actual events we ran or building things like the Santa grotto.
It all sounds like terribly sexist stereotypes - but that was just how it was 😂
Being at a meeting wasn't a requirement for belonging to the PTA. It's important to make that clear I think.

Getting volunteers is hard work, our primary school of over 320 kids there’s five of us in the PTFA! How ever many times we ask for help or anything it’s radio silence. most of us want to step back as we’ve done it long enough but if we do the PTFA will cease to exist.

another problem we have but I think it might just be our area is when asking for donations for non uniform day or whatever at least half don’t pay! When we asked for chocolate donations last month instead of money for non uniform lots was out of date or one little biscuit given from a multi pack! ( it’s not the parents who can’t afford it either, there the most generous!)

IME one thing that puts people off volunteering is that there is rarely enough info on what they are volunteering for so it feels like an open-ended commitment. Rather than just asking for volunteers it can help to be really specific- "We are looking for volunteers to sell raffle tickets on the day. Each volunteer will be given a two hour slot and full instructions" will get a better response than just "we need volunteers for the summer fair".

@LilacHedgehog123 would you like me to PM you some of our posters and leaflets?

I will pm you

I had one parent kick off at our annual fireworks ranting about the impact on the environment, and how we should look at alternatives. I explained I had looked at a drone display (£115k) and was out of ideas. I asked her to do some research into other forms but she didn’t…

Yes please I would love that! Thank you!!

Yes that seems to be an ongoing theme! People are quick to complain but not so quick to offer alternative ideas or help!

I do like how the current chair handles complaints "Thank you for your feedback, feel free to bring it up at the next PTA meeting", knowing full well they won't be there 😂

I know you were likely being tongue in cheek there but saying about "bring it up at the next meeting" is what actually can put people off wanting to help.
You need to make it clear that someone can still be a functional member of the PTA even if they can't attend the meetings.
🙂

Getting and retaining the volunteers and getting them to understand that once they've committed they are actually being relied upon so if they flake because their child is mildly ill/it's raining/they got a better offer to go to something they think is more fun it's really frickin annoying and has a wider impact than they seem to realise.

We designed a poster saying something like....If everyone helped a little bit the impact would be huge. Can you spare an hour or two? We need....djs, face painters, marquee erectors, burger flippers, toy sorters, cake bakers etc etc etc and it had literally zero effect. Was still the same people turning up.

Have since moved to a school about 1/4 of the size and the pta consists of 6 people, 2 of which aren't even parents of school kids anymore. Their children are in their 20's! 😭

For the summer fair we got people to sign up to one hour slots to a specific stall.
And we were clear that if no one came to take over they could 'close' the stall and take the float to the PTA control point. That way people knew they weren't committed beyond that.

Setting up was mainly done by committee members and entourage (husbands, occasional grandparents).

These days I have noticed our primary just does a Friday after school fair, similar to the Christmas one but outside. Smaller and less effort, but raises less too.

You have to cut your cloth according to the amount of help you have. As volunteers you can't make people do anything.

One thing I noticed people have very different views on level of organisation. Some people are very much 'wing it' and others (like me) hate that and want to be organised. You need your committee to all be on vaguely the same page.