Summer fair tombola

[Emptychairdoasolo]

I’m a nanny so this wasn’t even my money but I’ve just taken my nanny kids to their school fair after pick up. It was 99% tombolas. £15 spent and all they won was a bottle of alcohol they can’t even drink.

Ive told them that’s just how it is because they’re relatively upset. But we thought there would be games etc to play but honestly almost every table except face painting was a tombola. I don’t begrudge the school trying to raise money, but AIBU to think they can at least put some games there instead of endless tombolas?
At least then it’s fair if they don’t win but watching kids desperately throw pound coins at the people to try and win something and getting no enjoyment out of it at all just seems lazy and a bit inappropriate to get as much money out of kids in a quick time.

I agree. Our school fairs always had a second hand toy stall and several games where you were guaranteed to win a small prize. Although the aim is clearly to raise funds, it really needs to be enjoyable.

Agreed, ours has loads of activities, crafty things, bouncy castle etc.

I agree with you. It’s meant to be fun for the kids and a fundraiser. We always do simple games where everybody wins a sweet just for taking part. No big prizes. The fun is in having a go at knocking over the coconuts or whatever.

Yeah, but fun stuff takes preparation, manning, organising, probably a budget. PTAs struggle to get a handful of parents on board. Maybe they're doing the best they can with the resources/people power they have?

So many easy games to do! That involve less prep than folding tickets too.

Usually the person planning gets an idea of stalls so there is variety.

The Tombola makes more money than every other stall, don't ask me why but it's a thing. Folk love them. Second place, bouncy castle.

Yeah, it's not a great effort. But these things entirely depend on the numbers of parents who can volunteer for the stalls, and prep them.

A school near me has specific stalls, lots of variety, and a class is allocated each stall. It's up to the parents in the class to prep and staff each stall for the fete. But that's a fairly large school in a well off area where there is the capacity amongst the parents to organise that.

It's probably due to lack of volunteers tbh

Offer to man a super stall next event?

That doesn’t sound great but people love a tombola. We have 4 different tombolas and all are a prize every time. But it’s very reliant on parent contributions. We also have traditional games, splat the rat, lucky dip, penalty shoot out, teacher’s stocks where they get wet sponges thrown at them. And we have an excellent parent committee who put a lot of time in to make it a good event. I imagine not every school does unfortunately, due to parents working hours, funds etc

Struggling to understand how you have more than maybe two tombolas in a fair? We have one traditional tombola with variety of prizes and one for kids with just teddies. What were all these tombolas?!

Also, in most fairs I've been to if a kid wins alcohol on the tombola the people running it will swap that for a toy or chocolate or whatever- crazy to just give the kids the bottle.

I love the kids to bits, but at the end of the day it’s my job and far from my responsibilities to get invested in their school fundraisers for children that aren’t even mine.

Struggling to understand how you have more than maybe two tombolas in a fair? We have one traditional tombola with variety of prizes and one for kids with just teddies. What were all these tombolas?!

Teddy one, toys one, a separate plastic tat one, books, drinks, household ones were the ones we went to before I had had enough 😂

PTA veteran here

That sounds a rubbish experience.
However A Tombola is pretty much the maximum return for minimum effort fair stalls there is.

I always made sure we had a variety of things, including prize every time games.
Then ideally some entertainment for parents to watch so they then got hungry enough for another cake and 'just one more go' on the tombola.

We always had 2 Tombolas, a bottle one aimed at adults and a more child oriented one. We also never handed alcohol direct to a child. It always had to go to an adult, strict rule.

YANBU! I'm a teacher and out school fayres have the usual tombolas, auctions and raffles but the Y5/Y6 are also asked to participate and come up with their own games/stalls. It does require effort/organisation on the parents' behalf because they need to provide the equipment and prizes (usually a sweet from a £1 multipack) but the kids love to do it and lots volunteer so there's always plenty of game stalls. Did they have any of the usual cake stalls so at least they got a treat?

It probably wouldn’t be appropriate for a nanny who is there to work (look after the children) to offer to man a stall. She is supposed to be working