PTA Stuff 09...

[Ingles2]

Don't know if anyone is interested but thought I'd start a PTA thread.
I'm now so ostracised in the playground I thought I'd see if I could manage it here too.
Seriously though, I'm hoping someone can recommend a calendar company from the many millions that offer fund raising ones?
Anyone had a good experience?
In return I can tell you that Northbrookfundraising / wrapping paper was great at Xmas. Cheap, really good quality, really good service, will definitely be doing it again.
Fingers crossed someone will talk to me....
signed... a very lonely chair

I have just pinched some great ideas from this thread - Thanks

Our school calender was entirely produced by the pupils & the only cost to the school was the colour printing.

The yr 4 lass collated photos from throughout the school making sure each class was included, they ahd made sure they ahd taken some photos at each school event during the yr, including school trips, school play etc.
They then pasted them on to a page abopve the calender for each month (12 pages/12 photos).

It was great for the kids to do, they even ahd their own stall at the xmas fete. They printed a batch of 20 at first & then just re printed when needed. Great profit margin with little overheads & the kids did all the work.

yr 4 class not lass

We do Christmas cups (the heads idea) - but would work as Easter cups.

Each child takes home a plastic cup that they decorate and stuff with sweets and little gifts, then return to school. Each cup is then numbered and numbers put in tombola and tickets sold for £1 each. The kids seam to love it.

How does the cafe work and when do you run it?

• one of the parents (not involved in any other PTA things, just does this). She has a number of mums who will supply cakes, buys juice and coffee/tea and set up in the school hall. Starts at 2.30pm (school finishes at 3pm) and parents can go for a drink/cake before or after school (after with kids). School council children (2 from each yr1-6) wait on the tables, take the money etc. 3/4 parents help aswell.

Gift Aid - what is it?

• Gift Aid is tax relief. You can claim it back on any donations (not payments for goods/services) from tax payers if they agree. We did a gift-aid non-uniform day last year, printed up envelopes with the declaration on and sent them home in the bookbag, got £1 donation plus the gift-aid info for all future donations.

Village envelope door drop?? Tell me more.

• it was specific to the pool fundraising, we did envelopes (similar to those described above) and a flyer. The village mag distributed them with the mag and we did

I like the sound of the Spuds and Puds evening - tell me more! Is it held at the school or at someone's house? Do you have any kind of entertainment or just people eating and chatting?

• held in the village hall. A number of people cook the spuds, do fillings (cheese, chilli, etc) and lots of people donate different puds. Can't remember the charge, £5 maybe.

Easter Egg bingo.

• Ask for egg donations, get lots, hold it in the school hall early evening. Egg for a line. 4 corners, full house. Basket of mini eggs and if a double is called (eg 66) everyone shouts "Chocolate something" (too loud to tell!) then if you have that number you get a mini egg.

It is MANIC but the kids love it. I wouldn't do with a big school, it would be too overpowering.

Village envelope door drop?? Tell me more.

• it was specific to the pool fundraising, we did envelopes (similar to those described above) and a flyer. The village mag distributed them with the mag and we did door knocking to collect over a few weekends.

The way I try to get more parents involved is through the PTA.

I suggested that for our next event - Quiz Night, for example, that each of us goes and personally invites someone to attend with you. So if you have a parent friend who is not on the PTA but you have made 'friends' with, in the playground, you could say something like, 'Do you fancy coming to the Quiz with me on Friday night? I am trying to get a team together,' then there is more likelihood of them turning up.

For some unknown reason, people do not readily acknowledge or even read the letters which is frustrating.

My PTA thought it was a good idea and we are going to all try it out.

24 ish on our committee.

Ingles2 - what was the treasure hunt where you have to fit things in a matchbox? What kind of things did they have to find?

Our school Parents Association has started having evenings/mornings with speakers on childhood and upbringing issues - there have been five this year, and one of them was so successful that the same speaker is coming back for a second lecture in the same term.

Christmas cards were a nightmare for us and calendars were hard to sell. Really successful evening was a bingo night, kids loved it and we sold out.Summer fayre and Auction of promises are our most succesful events but they require an enormous effort. Not a lot of money raised with Valentines disco but very easy to organise.Also easy was a £2 per book donation from a company called love2read, click here www.love2read.co.uk, I think they also got some sort of discount?

Hi all, we are planning to do some sort of event to raise money for books this year, we were thinking of a sponsered event where the pta will match the money raised in each class up to £50. Does anyone know of a good book company we could use, looking for reasonably priced books and with any luck some sort of commission structure so we might get a few free books after placing a large order? TIA

bump!

ah hello GM
so how are things going in your PTA this year?
Mine's a struggle tbh... I really haven't got time atm. We've got a fun day coming up in July which is thankfully being overseen by the PTA from the adjoining infant school. If I can just get some volunteers it could be great! We're having an It's a knockout competition, loads of sports themed stuff and the Head has agreed to getting wet in a water fight... the kids will love that
We've had a film night which was successful and wasn't much effort... the bags2schools was good but it's still thank god for the discos.

We tried Abel & Cole without much success.

Am not surprised Soupy! It seems really expensive, but maybe that's just me. We are in rural farmland surrounded by cheap fruit

We're in middle class suburbia

It was good from the POV that there was no risk/outlay on our part though.

Hi Ingles

We have had a fab year so far and we do finally have lots of PTA support. There is still an us and them situation which annoys me but so far we have done

3 Film Nights
Bags to School
Kids on the Catwalk
Pamper Night (raised £800 for this and it was brilliant)
2 Discos
3 Cake Sales
School Fete is next week
Got another film night in July

Want to think of new things for September.

Hi, thought i'd join in this thread.

I've only been on the school PTA since Christmas but am really enjoying it. This year (since Jan) we've had 2 discos and done 2 bags to schools. We a disco & bags to school each term.

On Friday after school we have our Summer Fayre so its all hands to the pump at the moment organising that.

We had a cake sale outside our local garden centre on Sunday which raised £100. We also sold £60 of raffle tickets there for the summer fayre.

Ours is quite a small school and we struggle (like many schools I guess) to get parents to volunteer for events.