Anybody else chair of a Pre School Committee?

[handlemecarefully]

Want to start a support group for letting of steam and general moaning??

..and sharing advice?

HMC-in our village there was a charity which used to give to people under 25 and we would apply to them every year for funding, also, get your plight in the local papers for more publicity and possibly the offer of some funding.
hold car boots, indulgence eves, find out if the localprimary school are having a christmas fair and ask to have a stall there, guess the name of the snowman and sweetie jars, ours used to bring in over a hundred pounds.
sponsered tubfill, send every child home with a camera film tub and they get sponsers to fill it with as many items as poss, 115 was our record number of items!
yellow moon are a christmas gift catalougue who donate a percentage to the pre0p=school that give out the books depending on how many orders you get, you could try them
family disco.
if i think of anything else ill post it.

Ooh, I'll join you.

I'm co chair with a friend, but her baby is due in jan so will step down then. Hmmm, pregnnacy really does seem to be the way to get out!

Awards for all is a good one, we received some from them last year.

Don't you find that there is always something that needs to be done? Wea re lucky that we have a decent committee this year, but there's still so much.

Thanks Corpsebride for the 'awards for all suggestion'

Cor Blimey O'reilly LizP - you raised £10,000 from a single ball????? Flippin 'eck. When you have time, could you fill me in on how you made that amount of money - not just the ticket sales I take it... Did you incorporate a silent auction / auction of promises etc?

Thanks for the tips spacecadet - will muscle in on the primary school's Christmas fair...and car boot sales are a good idea since they don't take a lot of organisation and are good for a couple of hundred quid..

We've got a Pampered Chef evening on Monday - have sold about 40 tickets and are having a Ready Steady Cook style competition. Hoping we will make a few squid.

See loads of stuff here on fundraising which is an area i'm delegating.
Can I ask some of you folks about your admissions procedures? What age do kids start, how many sessions do they get, do you accept kids for less than the sessions you offer (e.g we offer leavers 4 sessions but some do less as parents work). We are having major hassle at the moment because we are in the fortunate position of being over subscibed, have no room to expand and from what I can see are a lot more flexible than the local competition.

The ball is really hard work - but makes loads of money - and most of the work is concentrated in the last two weeks really.

We aim to sell 300 tickets at £60 each - but these really only cover the cost of the function - if we can sell more then the cost per head of things like loos and band go down so we might make money on tickets.

We have a raffle (£5 a ticket) and some sort of game (also £5) and aim to try and get £10 from everyone for the fund raising on this - obviously some give more and some don't participate at all - so say £3000.

The main fund raiser is an auction - we aim to have 5 or six really good items and a good auctioneer. Sometimes we pay cost for the items - sometimes they are donated. This usually makes £4-5000.

The rest of the money comes on wine - we reckon a £5 per bottle mark up.

Some years there are really cool bits of decoration that we sell - stuff we have made.

As you do need to raise such a lot maybe you could set up a fund raising committee separate from the main one - some people really like running events but are not interested in the organisation of a playgroup - most of our ball organisers no longer have children in playgroup for example.

As you are propsing to offer extra sessions I'm sure there is grant money available - as they are trying to get more funded places. Also if you linked in with something like breakfast club/afterschool care there is extra money again.

geogteach - our preschool offers morning sessions, 5 days a week, 9am-12pm all year at £9 for non-funded children and £1.50 for funded children. During spring & summer terms we also do 2 or 3 afternoon sessions for leavers - these are only for 2.5hrs so there is no additional fee to pay.

We take children from 2.5. Parents can choose to do up to 5 sessions a week. You can't do a morning and an afternoon on the same day.

We also offer 1 or 2 lunch clubs per week which cost £3 for 1 hour.

We can take a max of 30 children per session and at the end of last term we had 50 children registered - it's the busiest it's ever been.

We do morning session 9-12 Mon-Fri in term time. Cost is £6 per session for unfunded and no charge for funded. The youngest they start is 2 years 9 months and although in theory they can do up to five sessions in practise we only give this to children with no school nursery place or in very low numbers years. Most children do 2 or 3 sessions a week. Some only do 1 as they do afternoon nursery at school too. We can take up to 26 and currently have 45 on the roll. We have quite a strict admissions criteria - based on living in the parish or having siblings at the school as a few years ago we were very over subscribed so it was better to make it clear who we gave priority too. In low numbers years we take anyone, but generally we are over subscribed because we are one of the few round us in a purpose built building and one of the cheapest.

Our playgroup only runs 5 sessions a week - 2 on Mon and Fri and one on Wed morning.

We charge £6.50 a session for non-funded children, nothing for those who are funded. Sessions are 2 1/2 hours each, and we also offer a lunchtime session of 45 minutes for which we charge an extra £2. This bridges the gap between morning and afternoon sessions, so parents could have 9-3 on Mon and Fri.

It's strictly first come first served here, no other admissions policy. And I do let people 'reserve' spaces so that for example their child can start off with a couple of sessions, then book extra sessions for later on.

Schools round here only have one intake, so what we find is we're always full in the summer term, then all the 4 year olds leave for school so we have a quieter term or so until it picks up again.

We normally take children from the start of the term in which they're 3, but on an individual basis (and especially if we're short on children!) we will take them from 2 1/2.

We let parents have as few or as many sessions as they want - some do all 5, others only do 1 and some do a couple with us and one or more sessions elsewhere.

As for fundraising, we don't actually do much. We're a bit different because we're a church-run group and heavily subsidised by the church (we only have to make donations for use of hall etc, rather than pay proper rent).

This also means our committee is a bit different - our constitution says the chair and treasurer and secretary must be members of our church, so it's not as parent-led as other committees, although we do make sure we have parents on board.

It's a lot different to the committee I used to be on!

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Me to. As of Wednesday night - though I have ben on the comitee alrwady for a year.

we ae currently in a portcabin which has come to the end of it's life. So I have max 2 years to raise £100k (already got £50k) and perusadse the school/diocese to give us the land we are on permanntly. Oh and we have just lost 3 out of 8 staff!

If any of you are in rural areas do contact your local Rural Community Council or equivalent (council can get you the number) they are brilliant at helping not for profit groups access the amazing amount of money that is actually out there.

We run 5 mornings per week 9-11:30 for pre-schoolers and 2 afternoons for pre-pre-schoolers. This will increase to 4 by the summer term. we have just had to change admissions policy though as OFSTED didn't like us taking kids under 3 without having staff trainedin irth to Three matters - so we now take children from their 3rd birthday rater than from the beginning of teh term in which they rae 3. I couldn't believe tat OFSTED were going to make us follow a completely new curriculum for the sake of a maximum of 11 weeks per child, and it was just not cost effective for us to pay for the training.

Prufrock - our land came from the school/diocese - we were given it at a peppercorn rent to build on. Think it ended up being quite hard to get them to agree to it all, but that was before my time.

Orinoco - how do you (and the other local pre school) manage on £4.5 per session - do you get grants for running costs - or are most of the children funded anyway. No way could we cover staff costs on that much.

Orinoco - even at £6.50 a session we are still about the cheapest in our town. It's always been important to us to be as affordable as possible.

However, we have come under so much pressure from all the agencies - Pre-school Alliance, Social Services etc - to increase our rates. They say it reflects badly on a group to be too far behind the 'going rate' for an area, and it can look as if you're not professional or doing the right thing in terms of staff wages, training etc.

We have resisted as much as possible, mainly because the majority of our children are funded anyway, so we're not relying on the non-funded children paying large amounts. The government funding really does keep us afloat nicely.

Odd isn't it - we try to keep our costs down to help parents, then get criticised for it!

I took this on in Sept...no choice really as usual. Are there any other more experienced to give advice? Took ages to find out about DC2 forms etc and suitability checks. Have already recruited 2 members of staff, re-written all policies and procedures, carried out a fire risk assessment, written two new contracts....always something to do! Can anyone say whether new members of staff still need medical checks?

Please make sure you have insurance to cover committee members for any financial liablity if you are a chairty. Our preschool has just escaped by the skin of its teeth, the committee members faced having to fork out up to £1000 each for redundancy payments after we ran out of cash and had to close!!
It's all ok now but it's been a salient lesson for the poor mums involved...

We are open 5 mornings a week. 2 afternoons in autumn term, 4 afternoons spring term and 5 afternoons summer term. Our current arrangement is that all in the pre school year get 4 sessions, in theory 4 mornings but to fit everyone in it is 3 mornings and one afternoon for the youngest 12. Pre pre schoolers start at the beginning of the term where their 3rd birthday falls. They start on 2 sessions rising to 3 if there is room. All under 3's must be in 2 dedicated sessions in the afternoon to get round health and safety issues for toys for under 3's.
We have just raised fees for non funded children to £8.30. This is the same as the grant and although it is a big jump it is designed to reflect the increased staff / child ratios for under 3's.
I seem to discover something new that i'm (or the comittee) are responsible for every day, at the moment I am most greatful for the fact that I have a health and safety lawyer on my committee, the new fire regs and other health and safety legislation are a total minefield.
Our premises are the basment of a redundant school used as the parish hall but as of this week there is planning permission for a new parish centre with a dedicated space for us which is dead exciting but is going to be hell in the buikding stages.

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Can I join in - also a Treasurer rather than Chair. Fullmoonfiend, so glad to hear you survived, was on your thread last week.

orinoco, the preschool learning allaiance have details of suitable insurance I believe - I don't have details as I am no longer on the committee, merely a staff member now (and delighted to be so )

glassofslime - think treasurers have a blooming hard job, well done you for volunteering

I am chair, just currently running a PR campaign to raise our profile and our numbers (as I'm sure many of you are at the moment).

Anyone who wants to share ideas??

NB we had an open session this week, had about 15 parents visit and about 5 put their names down, so we are safe til after Christmas.

I'm a chair too
feeling a bit put on atm actually....seem to be doing all roles atm. They are all so good at coming up with ideas...and then 'we' seems to morph to 'you'

Anyway...
We have about 90 children on role
mixed groups
2 1/2 hour sessions
2 year olds pay 5 quid...soon to be rising to 6.50 3 years are funded or have to pay same as 2 year olds if they are using funding elsewhere.
We apply for grants (community funds) from companies, and also raise money from Xmas do, Easter fair, sportathon etc.
Very much interested in some of the other ideas mentioned here!

the best thing we've done to raise numbers is to run a parent-toddler group one afternoon a week. Staff take it in turns to do a session, and basically all the playgroup activities are left out at the end of the morning, for the mums and tots...so they get to see what playgroup get up to (and pay for the privilege) and the kids know the staff before they start. Since it started, we have had a long waiting list for playgroup sessions

I was Treasurer but have just managed to pass it on! We have insurance through the PLA too. We charge £8 a session plus £2.50 for the lunch period on the 2 days we are open pm too. Prices are generally high here though, and we have a reasonably good reputation. Our main fundraising event is our Summer Fayre, we raise about £1300 - £1500.

Spoke too soon about passing it on...the woman who said she would be Chair has changed her mind so I have said I'll do it (2 people have stepped forward then stepped back again in the last 2 months!). Ho hum. Plus, we are due for an Ofsted. Anyone know what the Chair's responsibilities for that are?