PTA fundraising in non-wealthy area

[pollygon]

Has anyone got experience of running/being on a PTA at a school where most parents are really struggling financially? We've just started a PTA at my DD's inner London primary, which is lovely but really showing the consequences of years of underfunding, with a tired Victorian building and an empty expanse of tarmac as a playground. Fundraising could really help, but I'm keen to have some ideas that don't rely on parents putting their hands into their severely overstretched pockets (eek imagery gone awry). Would love to hear people's experiences/thoughts.

Clothes bank?

The schemes where you get money if they shop online via your link could still help. Also make be local businesses will sponsor? You can get a pretty good return for displaying "For Sale" type signs for school events.

From my experience selling second hand uniform is always a winner. Send an email asking for uniform that's children have grown out of and any lost property not claimed by the end of each term sold at a table in the playground (although should really be taken home and washed by someone first)
Also fairy cake Friday (parents donate cakes they've made and they are sold in the playground) once a month.

All of the above. Plus Christmas fayre, summer fete etc.
I notice you said your in London, could you look at developers, they have to give money to local causes when building.
Off top of my head in Yorkshire this has help provide 4 primary schools with playground equipment.
2 secondary schools gain all weather sports faliculties.
Plus local sports clubs extra equipment.
Also business will often give away free volunteer hours to help build and refresh local schools etc
Sometimes even give older equipment too.

Thanks all, this is great! Definitely going to investigate the developer idea, in particular, 2BoysandaCairn.

Easy fundraising is one of the websites that gives charities a proportion of spend.

Parent kind the umbrella organisation for P.tA is free to join & has lots of ideas.

School discos can be low cost at ticket level, but then you can make additional funds by selling food & drink to those that can afford it.

Our best income often comes from bar takings at the summer Fayre and at family events like bingo. It’s possible for families to come a long and spend relatively little, but some will spend more. We typically sell £5 bottles of prosecco for £12 and canned beer for £2.50-£3.50.

Clothes collections can work - we have dragonbags in Wales, a big cardboard box that you fill up, they collect and you get £s per kilo. With only 25 children in our school it's the best thing our pta can do!

Nb are Parentkind free? We have to pay £60/yr in subs and we are on the lowest rate.

My bad !

Looks like parent kind aren't free. I think I might have been thinking of the free access to PTA events (online part) that comes with it.

Tbh for insurance it's not too expensive.

I was secretary for a London primary in a poor area for years. We did OK, not bad considering. Like others said, summer and winter fetes (more profit if straight after school and pester power) keep it simple and low priced with plenty of fun, cheap things to do - the big draw/raffle with a good company sponsored prize costs little and raises a good amount. School disco, cake sales, non uniform day.
There are definitely grants around for outside areas, we’ve had a couple so make sure you look in to that.

I have been a Governor of a school in a deprived area and we would never have had the cheek to ask for £12 for a £5 bottle of Prosecco when we knew parents were struggling financially. That’s daylight robbery!

The PTA was very traditional in its fund raising efforts but could have looked at sponsorship of school equipment, grants from Charities, selling drinks (non slcoholic and reasonably priced) at events where parents attend such as parents evenings, subject evenings and sports day etc, selling logo book bags, pencil cases, water bottles and anything useful, (take care not to over order) buy a book initiatives or similar. We as Governors lobbied very hard for a new playground surface and markings from the LA’s capital expenditure budget and we were successful. This was partly making good after building work.

I have helped at many school fairs and fetes. The problem where parents have low incomes is that they will spend little, for obvious reasons. When helping on the second hand toy stall, you can ask for 10p and a parent will offer 5p! It’s quite a lot of work for a small return. Also many families don’t have uniform that’s saleable! It’s in poor condition when it’s given to you so what you can actually sell is minimal!

To make any real money you have to get firms or charities with more money to look upon you favourably.

Most of these ideas are terrible. Just £12 for a bottle of wine 😂. Can you get your local supermarket to donate their plastic bag sales money to the school? Any playground equipment companies to donate in exchange for promotion and instagram likes? Any famous former pupils who might want to donate? Go fund me campaign? The house builders have to help the local community so I would put a LOT of pressure on them.

Please please please avoid anything that needs 'pester power'. Pester power is highly annoying if you have money and unimaginably stressful if you don't.

Can you try local businesses to donate prizes? You could have a family bingo night and sell some drinks and tickets on the door, or if the prizes are more impressive, have a raffle and sell tickets £1 a go. People are more willing to throw a bit of spare change if they think they might win something.

I was on pta years ago and it was a hard slog. We were always conscious of putting pressure on parents tight budgets. We did discos (now is a good time of year but short notice for valentines) and the kids loved it and we could keep costs down, roped a parent who djs in to help.

Summer fete another good one as if there's enough notice given and if it can entertain the DC for a few hours then people will gladly spend a fiver. Open it up to the community and fiber per family can bring in a stack of cash in.

Bag packing was always a great one but can't do that anymore!

If you're new your first point is to drum up support asking for people to offer their skills and time to your efforts. Without these things there's no way to raise money. If you have a project in mind ie new playground equipment, then you will have a better chance of recruiting people as they will want their children to benefit it too.

Local business sponsorship is the way to go, we have had everything from firms of carers wanting to display a recruitment banner, local greengrocers supplying veg for soup we made for one event, to raffle prizes, cheaper bread from a bakery to make burgers with cheaper burgers from a butchers in return for displaying leaflets, to firms sponsoring a part of an outdoor climbing frame, to buying a brick in a building project- everything has a price!

Agree with things like 2nd hand uniform sales.

'Bags for schools' (where the companies buy bags of clothes - and material, so curtains etc) by the weight. Get your local Church congregations to donate stuff as well, when you do this, or ask parents (or staff?) to ask their friends, neighbours, colleagues, etc to donate stuff as well. It can add up for not too much work as long as you can store it somewhere for a week or so as the donations come in.
The 'Easyfundraising' and Easysearch' are free money too - again, getting staff and also family members involved. It isn't just what people traditionally think of as "shopping" on-line, but is also things like holidays and call your insurances - think how much a small % of everyone's car insurance would add up to. You also get small amounts for just searching for companies and clicking through to those sites.

A good one I heard of last Summer (and I know it was a particularly hot Summer). The school stored a freezer for the PTA in the school's kitchen (I believe someone had donated the freezer in their case - you never know your luck, or you could ask on Freecycle or a local selling site or potentially get a local company to donate one??). Every Friday, at the end of school the PTA sold ice lollies or ice cream in the playground after school. They were undercutting local ice cream vans and shops, so the parents didn't mind buying them then, but it still worked out to be quite a decent profit every week for not a lot of time to do.

Try the local supermarkets for summer fayre prizes etc. Tesco, who have a fund for local charity stuff, donated a big TV which we used as the main raffle prize (they were queuing round the playground to buy a ticket for £1 for that!) and we also managed to get ingredients for things like the BBQ as well.

Biggest money makers were definitely the BBQ and the bar from memory - oh and the water into wine stall.... collect loads of empty screw top wine bottles, fill them with water, ask for donations on a non uniform day of actual wine and wrap them all in newspaper and put them out on a table. £1 a ticket, pick a bottle - the parents loved it!

To brighten up the play ground
Google b&q in the community they will donate paint etc.
Get in touch with local scout groups - older children or army cadet groups - are troop have teamed up with the local cadets to give the playground a makeover - both are using it as per of their community achievements. They are painting and planting the stuff b&q donated. They are working with a local knit and natter group to learn to knit to yarn bomb it as wel. As planters made out of tyres etc.

In an area of little spare cash the best thing to ask for is people’s time and skills.

As mentioned up thread contact Tesco and Asda they both have community schemes .

Google grants for schemes - there are lots.

Check out lottery funding for playground equipment

Every time the school books a trip that incurs costs eg if there’s a trip to the zoo - ask for a family pass for a ballot prize

My point about selling wine for £12 a bottle is that no one is forced to buy it and so there is no pressure on the family budget. It’s also pretty much exempt from pester power. On the other hand a few parents will buy it, and it’s an easy profit.

A Second hand costume sale on the run up to World book day could be worth a go.

Sorry for laughing at your wine idea alice. I can see your point now xx

Op, could you try and interest a journalist? An article in the daily mail might shame the lea/academy trust into doing something? X

Contact your local councillor. They usually get something called a locality budget. They are allowed to spend it on local community projects so may be able to make a contribution to something for the playground.

I think you can generally only apply once in every financial year but potentially that could mean a small payment now (if most of their budget has already been spent) and then being able to apply for something else in April when the new financial year starts.

Not sure if this is a good idea but when my son was in primary school, pta gave each child a tube of smarties - think they were bought wholesale so a lot cheaper. The children filled them with 20p's and returned them to school.

Maybe 20p's is a bit much but 2p's? Not sure how many you could get in a tube but if there are 600 + children ....?

5ps fit, and are potentially small enough change not to be missed too much by families, but, in a full tube, would start adding up......

Check out grant schemes. Tesco do one for local charities, the kind where people vote by putting tokens in after their shop. Waitrose also do one, our school have done both even though we aren't that near a local Waitrose.

The co-op also do one where members can nominate a local cause every couple of months and a percentage of the money spent goes to that charity. The good thing about that one is it doesn't matter whether the cause is local to you, so you can get far flung family signed up.

There's also the Aviva Community Fund, they are quite good for smaller amounts. Harder if you want lots I think as they give out less of those and you need lots of online votes.

See if your local Co-op will let you be one of it's charities. You get 1% of all the money spent there by anyone who signs up to your charity(choice of three but needy kids is a heartstrings winner) Our primary recently got £8k.

Thank you so much for all these suggestions (and sorry for slowness - had a login problem!). We had a meeting last night and are stealing loads of them.

Our local estate agent teams up with the local school for their summer fair. The estate agent makes ‘for sale’ boards with the summer fair poster done professionally where the ‘for sale/sold’ text would be and gives the school £10 for every house that will have one up for 2 weeks.

Even a handful of parents is a decent sum and more non-parents go to the fair too!