What's been your PA's most and least successful fundraising events?

[alittleteapot]

Wondering if we can create a kind of fantasy PA thread cf fantasy football! What are the best elements at creating a buzzing and financially useful events calendar for the school year.

To kick off, tea towels, xmas cards and calendars.

Xmas Fair and Summer Fair - but what stalls work best? Are bouncy castles worth hiring?

Various cake sales.

Evening events - quiz night etc?

Involving local businesses - what's the best way of doing this?

Be lovely to hear your thoughts!

bumping for the after school crowd!

Our school had a quiz night and it was a success. Teams of 4, you could either enter a team or spare people were made into teams on the night. You brought your own booze I was wasted , there was a raffle as well at half time.

Thanks Viva. How much was it to enter? Was it a big uptake?

Annual Christmas Ball with auction of promises, is by far the biggest fundraiser ticlets are pricey and the auction (items including 'a day watching motocross' or whatever) attracts healthy bids. The organising must be quite a headache though.

I think it was £3 a head, maybe £4. Places were limited due to hall capacity and it sold out. But there must have been about 70-80 people there.

Village fund-raiser rather than school Bouncy castle experiences on two different years...

Dry hire Castle 50 quid or so, have to have an adult monitoring it and doing crowd control, 50p for X minutes bouncing ,made not much more than 50 quid, was a lot of work.

Bouncy Castle with staff . We provide space and power, they provide castle and staff, sell wristbands at 2 quid to bounce all afternoon, staff manage queue and kids on/ off. Kids can rejoin Q as soon as they are off thanks to wristband. They give us a Cut of the take , 25 p/c IIRC. We made 50 quid , was no work for us, kids loved it.

Guess which model we will repeat next year if we can.

Family Camping night if you have a reasonable sized school field (only cost was for burgers for dinner and bacon rolls for breakfast. Charge per pitch.)

Quiz night was more popular in pub than school hall (plus didn't have to provide food/drink), local pub was very happy to host free of charge as brought in lots of drink/snack sales.

Kids Fashion show was good fund raiser - lots of companies will come in and do all the hard work, you get a kick back on the sales plus tickets, plus raffle.

As pp says ball with auction can be massive fund raiser but also massive amount of organisation.

Local business sponsorship or donations for raffle are good. Ime approach local businesses in person, tell them whats in it for them (ie name printed on all marketing going to 200 parents) etc.

My advice would not do to many events, just one big and one small per term as you will get better support, make it clear what you are raising funds for and how much you want to raise, and be friendly!

thanks all, v interesting. any more?

Quiz nights are always popular here too. Also, film nights for the kids. We put a film on in the school hall and charge £1.50 which includes a drink and snack.

Fairs bring in loads of money, we usually get the fire service to come to the summer fair which doesn't generate money but does generate lots of interest and attracts lots of people to the fair itself. Food stalls and craft stalls - as in things the kids can make - seem to be the most popular.

what about jumble sales?

At DD's primary school the biggest fundraisers were always the summer and Christmas fairs. We also used to do a quiz night and sponsored walk. We had a summer ball this year but it wasn't well supported. Most of the people I talked to said that it just didn't appeal to them and some of them couldn't get babysitters.

Best event was the summer fair/bbq we were lucky with the weather and sold booze.
Our school doesn't tend to do well with evening things that don't involve children, let's face it we all have better things to do.
Bingo does well as the children can get involved.

Have PTA website with Amazon referral link & encourage all parents/friends etc to use the link. In Infants with 300 kids we make between £10 (summer) to £70 (Xmas) per month. We give the Amazon gift Certs to HT to spend on school equipment. A bit faffy to set up but minimal maintenance afterwards :)

Thank you snowballed. How do you set that up then? (off to google and search amazon but in case i don't manage it!)

Hotdog lunch once a term. Was only a small school and no hot meal so this was very popular. Offered a home made cake for pud

We do an after school event for the children once a term. We book an entertainer for an hour and give the children a drink and a biscuit. We find most children stay - it's an hour's worth of cheap childcare (£2.50) - and we always make about £100 - £150 profit.

It takes hardly any organising and the entertainers often give us a bit of discount if we let them send a leaflet home.

Our Christmas fair is a big event. We gave a variety of stalls and sell things the children have made in the Christmas craft club. That usually raises about £1400.

We have done a ball and raised £500. It was a lot of work.

I forgot to add our least successful event. We tried family bingo. We raised £20. It won't be repeated!

You just sign up for the Amazon Associates program. If PTA don't have a website, ask the school to put links on theirs

THank you!

Hello again alittleteapot - have mentioned easyfundraising on the other thread but saw this so here it is again in case anyone else is looking for ideas.

We're doing our 3rd quiz in 2 weeks- £8 but get fish supper delivered from chippy. Have had 60 - 70 odd and it makes about £250 but do it more for fun.

We've done film nights too but charge £2.50 and give fruit shoot or water, popcorn and a choc ice at the interval.

Oooh which other thread please?

It's in Prim Ed and title is Parent Council / PTA needs taking by scruff of neck or something. Can't link on phone sorry.

the most successful stall ever at a fair was collecting all the husbands'/wives' business travel freebies and repackaging them as christmas presents at a primary school fair

little boring but very successful

Most successful for min effort race night, but that was for a very specific project and we managed to get local companies and families to sponsor all the food and drink and buy horses in advance.
Normally are best are Xmas fair and May day fair. Pester-power is your friend, the children want to do their Maypole dance and see Santa. Random summer fairs get much worse attendance.

Worse tea towels, someone order far too many!

helenagrace - I especially like the childrens entertainer idea