WIBU to cancel the school summer fete?

[Narnia72]

I'm on the PFA committee (standing down at the next AGM as I can't believe how utterly soul draining it is).

This committee have done 2 big events now (as well as numerous little events). Big summer fair last year and Christmas fair last Christmas. Both well received, lots of people came, and enthusiastic feedback. We also raised lots of money for the school. However, each time we've had to go round the playground "persuading" people to help. It's such hard work. We've always ended up with a full team though and people have said they've enjoyed being involved.

This year we haven't had time to do the playground trawl, and so used parentmail and social media, giving parents text, email and fb options to reply. We have 17 people helping...

It's not enough. We have cancelled lots of stalls, and got it down to the bare minimum. If we dragoon our OHs in and spend 12 hours there setting up, running something and doing the clear up, we might just get away with it. But I don't want to.

I feel we should take the message the parents are giving us. The Head wants us to run it. There is a sponsored event and the children are showcasing various things they've learned in school clubs. She feels they will be disappointed. The rest of the committee are undecided.

2 parents have organised parties (one a whole class!) at the time of the event. Don't know whether deliberately or stupidly (don't know either of the parents involved to talk to). A whole group of parents who have helped historically are going away for the weekend (not together - lots of different events/weddings etc)

No-one seems that interested or bothered. I feel like we're flogging a dead horse, and if we cancel it we'll find out what people's true feelings are by their reactions. I don't want to spend this whole week running around trying to sort stuff.

I don't want this to turn into a PFA bashing thread. I know there are good and bad ones. Ours is a lovely friendly committee, and we've always been welcoming (anyone who's volunteered has been snapped up, we publicise our meetings and minutes, everyone is invited). We still get accused of cliques... It's such a poisoned chalice. WSWD?

We have ours in school time starts at 2 pm and ends about 4 pm. All the staff man the stalls. Kids over Yr 3 can go about themselves and younger ones have to have parents. Someone looks after the left over kids until parents come and then the take over a stall. Several parents and retired staff come to help . We found this works better than relying on parents and we usually raise a good amount.

Our PTA used to go overboard with events and it was a triumph of quantity over quality (I'm thinking of the rather convoluted treasure hunt the day after the fete, costing £10 to enter, that only abut eight kids attended) but they've since scaled it back to Christmas and summer fetes, and a disco in February. Much more manageable. Non-uniform days are an easy earner too.

I agree with the point about accountability. I had no idea what the PTA raised in any given year or what the funds were buying. Half termly meetings were held at 5pm on Wednesdays and are not minuted, so who knows what was happening.

I stopped helping at PTA events when there was an almight row about what to spend the £3,000 that had been raised on. One suggestion was extra paper towels as a mother had worked out that children could only wash and dry their hands 1.75 times a day with the amount supplied. I got so fed up in the end I suggested we donated it to charity, can't remember what it was but there was some natural disaster somewhere that was in the news. I nearly got lynched. I think it was spent on carpet for the reception year classroom as the children made a noise with their chairs. I couldn't be bothered after that.

My own experience of PTA's is simply this: the more you do, the more you'll be expected to do. End of.

I'd be very tempted to cancel it too.

Definitely if the HT is saying that you need to do it as a minimum she needs to be out getting people to volunteer as well as sending a very PA letter to say that it's on the verge of being cancelled.

If you want some quick and easy ideas to get money in for relatively little effort, the last school that the dc were at did the following (most culled off here or google):

• Raffle only open to kids, prize of being Head Teacher for the day. Prize doesn't cost any money. Winner gets a day off most lessons, sits with the Head Teacher, gets to run an assembly, maybe watch a couple of lessons that they wouldn't normally be in (easier for an older child to watch a younger class!), ring the bells for class changes, be on playground duty, have a 'nice' drink in a mug and a biscuit at break time, hold a meeting with the school council, that sort of thing.

Photo stall - see if there's a parent who's good at photography or a local college/camera club that could provide some photo students/enthusiasts. Get a decent plain background (there's usually a curtained area or somewhere you can hang a sheet or some plain paper up), a few props (santa hats and elf ears at christmas, maybe school name and year in the summer, lots of party shops now sell props that you can use too if you have a theme you want to go with). Charge a couple of pounds to take 3-4 photos - aiming more for photo booth fun than beautiful portraits! Let parents take camera phone snaps too at the same time if they want, so long as they are quick. Maybe work on pricing so that if a group want pictures and all want it emailed to them it's a pound a person in a group and they all get the same 3 -5 photos - could work well if it's close to leaving time and groups of friends want to have memories - whatever you think will maximise your returns. Get an email address to send the photos to written out in big letters on an a4 sheet, child(ren) holds it up in first photo, which works as an extra bonus photo. After the event, somebody needs to just go through the photos and email them out to the address that has been photographed. As photos are emailed out it shouldn't cost anybody anything other than the time. (Although beware - I have seen it done where people didn't quite get that the object was to raise as much money as possible and instead used a polaroid camera to take the pic and give it there and then - forgetting that the film is really expensive, plus they bought loads so there was loads left over and whilst the stall was really popular, it was much more difficult to make decent money from it!)

• set up a hundred club, have the first drawing at the end of the event (or set for the last week of term etc) so you get the parents of the leavers tied in for a year. Another one can be set up to run alongside it the next term if there's demand. If you can get 100 people parents to pay £12, you can have a draw every month apart from August. You get £1200 in, use £50 for prizes for each of the 11 months and end up with £650 for school funds.

• set up a GoFUndMe or similar page for the school so that those that want to can donate rather than go to an event. Put things on it like 'have a drink for the school' for £3, a virtual cake if you do cake sales for £1, donate a book for £5 or donate a book and have a nice donation label put in it for the library for £10. Make sure you get a simple url for it and keep it the same then ensure that it's on all PTA things that go out with something along the lines of 'and if you can't make it to xxx event/cakesale/etc but still want to donate, remember you can do it virtually at [url]' Because as you say there are always people that would like to help but can't because they're working or away or whatever and this makes it easy to give money to the school. Just be careful with the site you choose for donations - think some of the big names like just giving take quite a big cut but there are some that take very little (there's one that BT runs that I can't remember the name of that they cover all the running costs as a charity thing and pretty much all the money goes to the charity).

17 volunteers is still quite a lot of people. Could you redraw the plan incorporating those good suggestions about Year 5 children but reducing the no.of stalls and/or dropping the most labour intensive activities. Would staff run the gate and take responsibility for cashing up do you think? Volunteer activities are always like this. The number of people who want to actually do anything is always smaller than you would like and to make people feel bad about not helping is counter productive. Just make sure there is some reward for everyone who does help. Pimms works for us. Enjoy!

Bin it. You've done enough.

Some great ideas from confuugled1

Off the back of this thread, I went into school yesterday and volunteered to help at the school fete this Saturday. Apparently I was only the second person to volunteer

The school secretary said they'd had to scale the fete right back, which is such a shame.

It's not down to a cliquey PTA either as there isn't one, the teachers organise it themselves.

Sorry not RTFT so might've been said but our pta gives each class a stall or job.
It's then up to the class rep to give out time slots or things to bring in like cupcakes etc
Works so much better than previous years where we've just had increasingly desperate emails for 'general' help.
Also swaps things around a bit - I'll always remember a group of shouty scary mums being in charge of the teddy tombola. Of course they never helped set up or tidy up & one year I was setting it up when they barged over thinking I was trying to do it little things like that really do put off ordinary helpers for life

I completely agree about getting each class to do a stall. Maybe two to run the super-busy things like cafe.

If you genuinely can't safely run the fete for lack of volunteers then of course you must cancel. Sometimes a school needs a wake up call.

On the other hand, if you and the committee can't be bothered to engage with other parents in person that may be a reason they aren't stepping up. Oh joy, they're thinking, another anonymous bossy email/Facebook etc. Whereas, actually, a nice chat with the Smiley PTA Lady might engender more positive engagement.
You do have to have a terribly thick skin and it is really hard, but it is the only way!

Well Done coffee! I hope you have a good day on Saturday.

We have the same problem with our events its always the same people that help.
I think you need to stress it will be cancelled and go with the angle of " im sure many of you have heard what your son/daughter are hoping to show at the fete etc but they will be sadly disappointed as we do not have enough helpers"
if they are planning on attending anyway why cant they go on a half hr rota for a stall?
Ask teachers to ask older children to pair up and run a stall for half an hr at a time, send consent slips home for parents to sign and acknowledge they will be there?

Seems like lots of schools (ours included) have the same sort of problems!
And there is no 'magic bullet' sadly.
Lots of good ideas on this thread though - thanks
Hang in there OP - I'd say try and go ahead in some fashion this time and then if you want to stop helping then stop.
Hope you will let us know how it goes

Wish my kids' schools would cancel the bloody things.

You send them in to donate a bag of tat. They then demand money to go to the fair and bring back a bag of someone elses unspeakable tat. There have been times when said tat gets stuck in a bag in a cupboard and donated to the next fair.

In fact I'll give you a tenner to not run the fair.

Thanks all. We met the head and have agreed to go ahead with what we've got.

Quite a few comments about mums v dads. Actually, we have quite a few dads helping. It's parents not mums. With regard to dragooning our own OH's in - normally they take responsibility for our kids. They've collectively got fed up with the pressures the PFA creates for us and would prefer we didn't do it any more because it takes up family time and we get stressed about it. We are a little committee of 5, the 17 volunteers include us 5, some teachers and a few other parents.

Some really good ideas here though, and I am going to take them to the committee for suggestions going forwards.

The fun run is sponsored, for those who asked.

Class reps are separate to the PFA and very reluctant to help in this way, having done it before and found it hard work. It's hard for the head to get parent reps anyway, and we have various vacancies.

I don't know where the lazy mum comment came from but it wasn't mine. I absolutely appreciate the workload everyone has. I also get that not everyone is interested. I just wish it wasn't such hard work to get a small team together. We have 240 children, c 150 families - if 20% of those parents gave an hour of their time twice a year - well, life would be very different.

Will let you know how it goes and what the feedback is.

And we've agreed as a committee that we're standing down next term. We have one event we're committed to and then that's it. If no-one else comes forwards the PFA will fold. If others come forward we're happy to help them at their events.

Re donating rather than doing events - we did have a questionnaire and asked if people would prefer to do this. Very mixed feedback. We offered them the opportunity to be taken off all mailing lists and event discussions and donate a suggested amount of between £20-40 per family. No-one took us up on it.

It is partly a skillset issue.

I am on our PTA. I am a background organiser kind of person. I am not good with the socialising bit, and need someone else to be the 'face' of the PTA.

So ideally on a committee you need

• a sociable face
• background organisers
• a marketing / publicity expert
• people who are happy to do smaller jobs as directed
• ideas person

If you don't have a sociable person to take on the friendly side and asking people face-to-face to volunteer, then it makes it all so much harder.

In wok you can direct someone on a team to do certain jobs, or recruit to fill a need. you can't do that nearly so much with a volunteer PTA.

t4gnut Have you given the PTA a £10 donation in lieu of fair involvement? I'm sure it would be gratefully received.

Nope because the kids keep insisting on going to the fair and bringing back everyone elses unwanted tat.....

Meant to say confuggled - thanks for those ideas. They are brilliant. I have copied and emailed round! x

School Parent Associations.

Yes, they are thankless things to get involved in but if that's why ppl do it, then you're in the wrong game frankly. There is only one goal. Support the school. This usually translates to 'Raise Funds' but can also encompass putting on enjoyable events for the school community (ie where profit is not the bottom line) to build a strong sense of 'our school'.

I was involved in DD's school's PTA for 5 years. For a number of those, I was Chair. I ignored all the 'clique' comments. We tried the non direct route for volunteers - not happening. You have to look people in the eye. We got a 'class volunteer' for each class and that parent/parents were tasked with getting volunteers from their classes. Each class had a stall. For whatever they wanted - nearly new toys/books, cakes, games - treasure hunt, guess the sweets etc.

We also invited external stall holders - £5 per stall plus a prize for the raffle. BBQ, bouncy castle. Job done.

Not sure how putting this on would take 12 hrs. we did 1.5 hr set up and clean up plus 3 hr fayre. This included various 'shows' from the children which took place throughout the 3 hours.

I think YABVU to cancel at this late stage especially. Children really look forward to this type of event. It's a good way to build school community.

I agree, it is thankless, stressful and resource heavy. Until ppl have done it, they don't realise how much time and energy it involves but we helped build an extra classroom, we refurbed our reception class, we helped purchase play equipment, we funded swimming lessons for year 5 children, we helped with days out, school plays, books and much more.

just caught up on the thread - glad to see it's going ahead.

A few ideas from our school:

• list of sponsors - we contact all local business and further afield for every big event and people like to sponsor and appear in the 'program'. We get days out, river cruises, horse riding lessons, dance lessons, vouchers, hampers, toys, books etc. We also partner with a main local business who are main sponsors - we used estate agents.

There are really easy stalls to put on which almost run themselves eg

• Silent Auction - all you need is tables/white boards to stick the Auction item sheets on and pens attached. Bidders then simply add their bid.
• Treasure hunt is the same - squares made up eg of the local area map and you put 50p in the jar and add your name - if there are concerns about the jar going awol, this can be run in conjunction with another stall as the person only needs to keep an eye on the jar.
• The photo booth is still very 'in ' now and there are always would be photographers with all the kit, including printers - just add a colourful background and dressing up stuff - hats, boas, glasses and a fan if you have it and he kids love it.
• nail bar, face painting, hair braiding, temp tattoos - all run and manned by yr 5 & 6 children.
• International Food stall - school community bring dishes (reimbursed for cost of ingredients) which are sold to either eat there or take home.
• BBQ - local butchers do great deals if you let them advertise. Bar - we get local bar to come along with a keg or two - no need for license issues as they sort it out.
• Crisps 'n' Pimms tent - each pack of crisps is accompanied by a glass of Pimms for a donation of £1.50 (you're not selling alcohol per se - you're asking for donations for crisps and you get a free Pimms with it).
• Local ice cream van - he can stay all day and we get 15% of takings (one hot summer, that was over £50 for a school with only 142 kids in total).
• on entry, we had envelopes for £1. £1 goes in to the envelope with name and number. at the end of the event, an envelope is picked out and they get half the envelopes - I won £100 one year!

We also had a bottle stall - each child could bring a full unopened bottle on a specific day (usually week before event) and in return, they get to have 'none uniform day'. ppl bring perfume, wine, champagne, soft drinks, shampoo - anything as long as it is full and unopened. These are then numbered with raffle tickets so anything with a 5 or 0 at end corresponds to a bottle and they win that prize - players pick a ticket out of a bucket. Takes a lot of organising but no cost apart from raffle tickets and you'd be surprised what ppl bring - really nice wine champagne, spirits etc.

In the same way, we did sweets for the kids - each child brings sweets for none uniform day. these are then run as the bottle stall. Difference here is that tickets are only 20p and every ticket wins a prize (the kids don't know this though).

Human Fruit Machine - great game and the adults love being the fruit'. three adults sit with a box in front of them. the box has a hole in the back so the adult can get their hand in. there are 4 different pieces of fruit and various prizes for certain combos. the player pays 50p or 3 for £1 and then get their 'spins'. We used 'frustration' popper which the player pops and when the dice comes up, each adult randomly chooses a fruit and holds it in the front 'window' of the box. very popular.

and the most popular game - teachers and parents in the stocks with wet sponges. 50p per sponge of £2 for 5. huge money maker for free.

good luck - it will be a lovely day. regardless of the stress and everything that goes wrong on the day, feedback is always positive.

Just thought of another free money maker. We have a 'children's only school silent auction' which is made up of lots of things like:

Being head for the day
Ringing the school lunchtime bell for a week
Taking the register in class' x' - for each class, for 'x' day
Class fun day - cinema day usually accompanied by popcorn and a drink - there are loads of films that are allowed to be shown in schools and popcorn is cheap and easy.
Teacher's Assistant for the day
Class none uniform for the day

Glad you can still go ahead. Some great tips in the thread for both parents who want to help their school and PTAS!

My DS isn't at school age yet but as a SAHM I'd be willing to help out with stuff but the major hurdles to that sort of thing are

• being scared! Not being funny but for shy types like me the idea of volunteering generally to help out a a big event without knowing what doing and who with would be terrifying. I'd rather make my excuses.

However if you were to ask for groups of two or three parents to a specific range of tasks that would be less daunting. E.g. getting together with a couple of friends to run the cake stall or something.

• weekends are precious. Asking for a whole day a couple of weeks advance just isn't going work for me. Particuarly during the summer when we go camping and away for weekends. We tend to have our weekends booked up a month or two in advance. We never just end up with a 'free' Saturday with nothing else to do. You'd need to be asking me about 3 - 4 months in advance to set the day aside for helping out or even just attending.

• Asking for a couple of hours help is a big difference to a whole day. If you were to have a rota of some sort with time slots for each activity that needed people to volunteer for that would be much more manageable. Spending the whole day doing one thing might also be too much. I might also want to spend some time appreciating this event I'm working so hard at too. E.g. volunteering for the 9-10am slot setting up tables and 2-4 slot on the tombola would be fine. Just sticking my name down for 'helping' all day not knowing what I'd be doing and when is very unattractive idea.

Send the rota round with what slots need filling a few weeks in advance. Then again at a cut off point with a warning that these slots need to be filled or cancelled.

Have fun and good luck with your day! X

Also just to re-iterate diverting a bit of money to support your volunteers. Keep a bit in reserve each time you raise any. get your committee to agree it in writing then if parents complain you can invite them to a PTA meeting to explain their alternative plan for keeping hold of volunteers...

Then tap into your local volunteer bureau for advice. Some parents might appreciate being treasurer if the PTA paid for them to go on a bookkeeping course (eg someone who might want skills to go back to work); someone else might want to be a sponsorship organiser or event planner if you can get them a little accreditation or training.

And use some of that reserved money to provide perks development! It can be entirely related to the development of your activity: go to someone else's charity event to fact find once a year; pay for lunch/dinner/drinks while you're having your meeting. use this to draw up 'contracts' with new volunteers: we'll buy your dinner in x lovely place; in return you commit to attending 6 meetings and taking on organising roles (specify them) at x events. Make it clear to moaners that this is about sustainability.

And use some of that reserved money to provide perks development! [...] Make it clear to moaners that this is about sustainability.

This works up to a point. But when I took over as treasurer I was startled to realise that we were routinely ordering £50-worth of wine and nibbles for meetings - so an event raising £200 would have had at least two £50 meetings ... We have cups of tea and home-made cake now.