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!

Thank you for your replies. It's so interesting to see that everyone has the same issues!!

Other than trying to find volunteers and get them to commit, what other things would help a time-stretched PTA do you think?
Having guides (summer fair guide)?
Checklists?
To do lists?
Monthly fundraising ideas?

I'm hoping to spend the summer doing some planning and organising to hit the ground running in September!
Thanks!

As a pp said be very specific about what you need help with and timescales.

Easy sign up.

Knowing where to go on the actual day. Being recognized on the day and having someone point me in the right direction, giving the instructions I need.

I'd recommend limiting the amount of events. Less is more.

I'm on the scout committee and we've got a year wheel (is that what they're called in English?) which is quite clear about what needs to happen and when. Specific tasks etc.

Def getting volunteers. Always the same few who helped at events. Everyone else was quick to moan but not prepared to contribute either ideas or their time to help. We had our meetings at the pub to try & encourage parents to at least attend but those that did treated it as their personal social event & didn’t really listen or contribute. Ironically those that never attended or made any effort to contribute were always the first to mind that they didn’t know what was happening yet we sent regular newsletters which we put in bags so know they went home. This was 15-20 years ago so no WhatsApp groups etc.

Pay attention to what’s worked before.
It is great to have new ideas but you can get people driving forward their creative ideas that are too niche and then aren’t as profitable.

Every event needs a rota of parents to run stalls etc. Allocate an area per class with an hour by hour rota for that class to fill, including set up and pack up.

Be clear what each event is raising funds for. Eg sponsored race for books, sports day ice creams for new equipment etc.
Look at any ‘quick wins’ eg selling ice creams after school on a Friday. Bulk buy and sell for 20 mins. Job done. As long as school has a freezer that can be used.

Canva has loads of poster/email templates to help.

Most families work full time jobs
So when school wants or expects help how is that supposed to work?
Or we have our own commitments like other organisations and study.
Sitting in with those types of pta isnt a very appealing idea for some people too.
No way.

Yes, listen to what has worked before, but don't be afraid to try something again or something new but be willing to drive it yourself, don't just expect others to leap on your great idea and run with it.

Squeeze up ice lollies work well on Fridays as even without a school freezer they can be brought along in a cold box and if they thaw it doesn't matter.

Summer and Christmas fair were higher effort and high profit but good 'community' events.
Cake sales, discos, film nights need much less organisation / manpower and if you find a formular that works (and you write it down) they are easy to reproduce. With discos we aimed that ticket sales covered the cost of the disco, and then extras like glow sticks made the profit.

You need to work hand in hand with the school for things like discos and film nights to be clear who is responsible for the children, safeguarding at collection etc. We used to insist that parents stayed for infants and a phone number was left for juniors, and we had someone on the door to check children left with their adult. Our school always had a teacher at least on site who could be called if needed.

Uniform sales don't raise much but are helpful to the school, we ran them alongside cake sales.
We never managed 'adult only' events like quiz nights, but with a different demographic that might work quite well.

Generally the only times the PTA physically needed lots of help was twice a year. Just two times a year. That's all - the summer fair and the Christmas fair.
These usually took place on a Saturday
Of course many people work Saturday and can't get time off but it's usually more likely there will be adults available.
But with the PTA I was on wasn't always about giving time - it was about giving actual items as donations.
Books for the book sale, bottles of bubble bath/drinks for the bottle tombola, prizes for the raffle etc.
You can easily add a bottle of bubble bath and a box of chocolates on to your supermarket shop and that's two donations right there.
Easy.
No going to meetings. No giving up free time. No having to make small talk with parents you don't know.
Physical donations are often the more important bit. You could have 50 parents happy to run a tombola - but you need prizes.

Prizes for tombolas were always done by 'dress down days'.

I agree it really is only the fairs that need are large number of parents involved. Otherwise it is committee and a list of 'committed helpers' who will help but don't want to run things.

There are over 600 pupils at our school and only 7 of us on the ptfa. Its really hard to get volunteers, we only have around 20 parents on our volunteer Whatsapp group and they're a really great bunch but have restrictions on their time. As a pp said there's plenty of parents who like a good moan that the event wasn't ran to meet their personal preferences though. I agree a lot of people think that if they join or help they have to come to everything but they don't even all the committee don't do every event or planning meeting.
As for planning the event generally I think thats the easy bit, i do most of the physical buying, someone else does most of the shien buying, 1 gets raffle prizes, 1 does all the posters and one sorts the money

@TeenToTwenties did that mean money from dress down days paid for prizes?
But then presumably someone had to go and buy the prizes.
Isn't it easier to ask everyone to donate just one thing?

Just getting parents engaged. They want everything but don’t want to do anything to facilitate it. Also communication: no matter how many emails/messages/app updates/ WhatsApp we sent there would still be loads of parents saying they didn’t know what was going on.

Oh yes we've had this before when someone didn't know about a pop up shop even though there was a poster on the gate, what'sapp message, PTA newsletter, school newsletter with date in and also an email 😂

Other parents implying-or even actually saying-you’re only doing it so your child gets to be Mary in the Nativity.

It's a funny one because our current committee all have multiple children and 4 out of the 5 work full-time. Most of the volunteers (like me) either work full-time or have 2 or even 3 kids and still help when we can. I don't think (the majority of the time) it's down to which parents have the most spare time. It seems to be you're either the type to pitch in, or you're not. As the saying goes, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person!

No, I meant the purpose of dress down days was for kids to bring in a tombola prize.
So eg for a bottle tombola you would get bottles of wine, but also lemonade, so patents could choose level of spend.

Oh that makes sense.

Here’s some advice !

keep it simple. Nobody need’s elaborate events and fancy stuff. Stick to a Christmas and summer fair and repeat the format that works.

dont be too grabby. Make it a nice family day out and a bonus to raise some money

our school PTA is ask ask ask ask and pushing people to spend more, donate more, give more
time.

they have made the summer fair 5 hours long, charging for entry, asking for donations and obviously volunteers to cover well after 6pm

nobody wants to spend hours and hours at school on Saturday afternoon or evening

The hardest part for me is that everyone has an opinion on how we should do things but most of them don’t want to put the work in, they just want to direct from the sidelines.

Getting volunteers.

Generally though, they run the same events year after year so you just pick up what to do from the existing members when you join, usually they will have lists or spreadsheets. Be prepared that every time you think you've thought of a good idea for someone to say "thank you, we've tried that, it didn't work". Which will be true, not being nasty, I found myself having to say that once I'd been on the committee for a while. But once in a while you will have a breakthrough. If you have friends with DCs at other schools it is worth talking to them about what their schools do even if your friends aren't on the PTA there,

For us, it’s getting volunteers to organise the events. We generally get helpers on the day itself. I’ve got 2 years left at the primary and then it’s someone else else’s problem!

We pay a fee to a website called PTA events which will take money online for advance tickets. So disco, Elfridges, grotto. And produces spreadsheets to show who’s paid. Couldn’t do without that. Also has a volunteer sign up section so even events that don’t require tickets can request sign ups to make organisation easier.

We stick to the same events by and large. Fireworks, Elfridges, disco, Christmas and summer fair. In the past, we’ve tried others with varying degrees of success but they don’t often make much money for a lot of effort.

ChatGPT for posters.

It’s a lot tbh. And I work almost full time and have several children.

We use PTA events also & that works well. Agree re getting volunteers is definitely the hardest part.

I’m chair of ours & we have 3 definite events that we hold each year & can run well & smoothly. I give short shrift to anyone making ‘suggestions’ unless they’re actively involved & will action those suggestions (I’m all for new ideas but as I work FT & have 3 DCs, I’m not messing with tried & tested, but happy if others want to take forward new things).

I do enjoy it though (despite it being hard work) as it’s great to give back to the school & see the DCs benefit.

Good luck Op! Hope it goes well for you.

As someone who always volunteered I think that was difficult.
PTA was always asking for volunteers and having to say ‘the event will be cancelled if we don’t get volunteers to do XYZ.
Also as a PTA member organising events you have to make sure all events are fully inclusive and that there are people there trained to deal with any disabilities, you’re not allowed to say they can not attend unless the pupils parent helps.

Getting volunteers. Managing all the people who tell you how to do it better but won't volunteer.

Thank you all, sounds like we're all in the same boat. It's been great to get some ideas and useful tips on here! Thanks loads! And well done, you're all doing an amazing job for your children's school. More than most people! 👏