Any other preschool/playgroup chairpeople/committee members?

[habbibu]

Just taken over as chair of our local playgroup, which is great, but struggling for numbers and hence money this year. Anyone fancy a chat/support thread to share ideas?

Bump

Another bump. I can't be the only one?

Ooh - hadn't thought about the papers. Thanks for that. We're working on the rest; wish I knew how many children of the right age there are!

Oh, you are on fire - had not thought of the sports centre. Playgroup down a bit of a side road - wonder if we could have a banner on the fence at the main road. Guess it's something we could ask the council.

You're a star, thanks.

Ooh - what does that mean, Lunatic? We're in Scotland, so I wonder if rules are different.

I'm the chair of a preschool committee. Luckily we have the opposite problem - we are oversubscribed. We get all upset when we have to tell people they don't have a place but then people keep dropping out at the last minute so in the end it usually works out ok.

But we do need to get people to register earlier, so we do pieces for the local community newsletter. We poster everywhere we can think of e.g. library, shops, fences. We also take flyers to other baby groups and get the childrens' centre to leave out our flyers. Primary schools are also a good place to leave flyers. A banner is defnitely a good idea, but check you are allowed. We are allowed to put posters on fences but not railings round here.

You may be able to find out how many children there are by asking your local childrens' centre or education authority. They shoudl have that type of data somewhere. Then you'll be able to see if the problem is not enough children in the area or just that you aren't known.

Good luck. I've found it very interesting, hard work, rewarding and frustrating but a generally positive experience.

The chair of my dd's old playgroup wrote to as many banks and organisations who gave out community grants. She boosted the bank balance very nicely. Look for fairs where you can do stalls and something simple like a welly boot throw or kids planting seeds and selling as seedlings. Lucky dips can be good if you buy from baker Ross or crafty crocodiles.

Oh, this is all great, thank you. It's such a lovely group, and I feel very responsible for it right now...

Bumping this - hoping to create a support thread eventually!

Well, I'm kind of involved with both - chair of the formal daily playgroup, but close links with the informal toddler group which sounds a lot like yours. I've not heard of services like that - we are linked with SPPA (Scottish pre-school play association) so I wonder if that's the equivalent.

First meeting last night. Lovely committee and staff - had to reign in enthusiastic chat with some firm chairing as we'd still be at it, but it was positive, and everyone seems keen to act, so that's good. Finances a bit eek, though.

Hi there, I'm just about to step down from our preschool and toddlers committees so will add whatever I can.

Second everything about posters everywhere, local papers etc to increase numbers..

As for fundraising (not sure if you asked about this but thought I'd share!), everything we do depends on the parents of our kids (as opposed to grants etc) but we do the following;

Easyfundraising.com - parents go through a website to online stores and you get a percentage of the sale.
Yellow Moon - crafts catalogue - we distribute them to parents, collect orders and get a 20% commission on sales.
Same for Suttons Seeds fundraising catalogue
Scholastic Book Clubs give you a percentage of sales in free books
Sell chutney at the local primary school Christmas Fair
Get tea towels/canvas bags with the children's handprints and sell to parents
Cake sales and raffle at village May Day celebration
Curry & Quiz Night - local chap makes the curry for £4 per head. We sell tickets for £9 and do a quiz
Local pub quiz - you take questions and raffle prizes and the landlord lets us keep the £1 per head entry fees and any raffle money

That's about it - let me know if you want any more info about any of those...

That's brilliant - many thanks. Seeds is a really good idea - big gardening area here.

Suttons also do a seed box (it's not very well advertised though) where you pay something like £36 for a box with 150 packs of seeds which are still in date but end of line type ones. You can then sell them for whatever you like (we did 60p a pack I think and made a decent profit even though I had to chuck half of them when mice in my garage ate them!) They're good as you can sell them anywhere - get people to take the box to the office, or we took it to the pub one night and sold £14 worth. Think they do a bigger one with 250 packets in as well...

Ask your local health visitor to tell the Mums, expecially the new Mums who really need the info. Do the same at the dr's or at least put a poster up or leave a pile of wee business cards.

Good ideas, both - thanks so much.

I was on the committee of our local preschool/toddler groups/baby group last year. We are in Scotland too and also registered with SPPA. Do you get Council funding for preschool places? For other fundraising ideas, there are some great ones already listed here that we also did ie easyfundraising.com, yellow moon. We also registered with NameItLabels (a company that does name labels etc online - they give commission to registered playgroups/schools etc). Also lots of home shopping companies will do parties for you where they will donate the commission to your playgroup (i.e. Jamie Oliver etc), though you may have to be a registered charity for that to work.

We hold open days/evenings at the start of each session that we advertise in the local press. Are there any free local papers where you are? We have a great free weekly paper here that is distributed to all local households and we advertise there but we also got them to do an article on us for nothing which was great free advertising - you may find a local paper is delighted to do a wee article on you to fill a few column inches, especially if you have an event coming up that you could advertise and also especially if you have a photo of a few cute smiling kiddies to put alongside the article!! Call the local papers whenever you have anything going on that might be a photo opportunity and ask if they'd like to come down and take a photo for the paper - any time they do, it is free press for you.

We hold our own Christmas and Easter Fairs in the local church hall and they are the big money spinners for us, especially the Christmas Fair. Do you have any regular events like that?

You could also register with RagABag or Bags2School - both are companies that collect bags of old clothes/linen etc that the parents donate and they pay you based on the weight of the donations. We raise a few hundred pounds from this twice a year.

The suggestion of the local community grants is a great one - we have got a few in the last few years that have helped us loads including 1000 pounds from a local windfarm grant this year. Sometimes you have to apply for the funding for a specific purpose i.e. to buy a specific piece of equipment etc. There is a grant available at the moment related to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow that we have applied for that is partly specifically aimed at getting under 5s to be more physically active, so you could apply for it to buy sports equipment for your preschool for example - this link will give you more info:

www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/prog_2014_communities

If you google "community fundraising grants" or similar you'll probably find some more opportunities too.

Hope some of this helps!

That's really helpful, thank you so much. The Commonwealth games grant is a great idea - I didn't know about that.