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!

We had a pamper night, very popular in ths area. You get a bunch of therapists to offer various treatments or sample treatment (eg eyelashes) charge them a pitch fee. Bring in a bunch of stallholders selling candles, jewellery etc. Charge a door fee, have a raffle and sell cake/tea etc. Lots of work but healthy return ( made £700).

At dd's old primary school in london the jumble sale was legendary in the area - I went to it before i even had dc! When I got involved in the PTA I got to know what a fantastic fundraiser it was - always made £1000 - £1200. It was a lot of work but there were plenty of willing helpers and people came back year after year to run their favourite stall even after their children had left the school! They used to do it 2 or 3 times a year, don't know if they still do.

The biggest moneykamers we do are discos each term, xmas and summer fayres. We also did xmax tea towels one year which I liked. Bingo nights also good.

Not so successful - sales, quiz nights.

moneymakers!!!!!!

Another fan of Auction of Promises, ours used to raise £3000-£4000! You wouldn't want to do it every year, as it is a lot of work, and, if you do it right, you will be making unreasonable demands on the local community who aren't necessarily anything to do with the school. Great for someone who just wants to do one big thing.

We've just held a curry & quiz night - charged £9 per ticket and had a guy who works at a local indian cook the food. We also had a raffle which raised nearly £250 from the 80 people there because we had lovely prizes. I HATE rubbish raffle prizes spend quite a bit of time begging for nice ones (lots of entry tickets to family attractions etc,) It's amazing how generous some companies are. We made over £500 which from a preschool of 30 kids is pretty good I think.

We're thinking of doing a wine tasting night - get someone (a parent probably) who knows a bit about wine, buy in bulk (get some cheese in too), and charge people £5 each. One of the other local preschools did it and made about £250 I think.

Worst thing ever - Chocolates for Chocoholics catalogues. Sold stuff in time for Easter last year, made about £7 and they wouldn't give me enough catalogues for everyone so spent ages trying to get them back off parents to redistribute. Rubbish (nice chocs though...)

Disco (for the kids!)
photo competition (for the kids) to do a calendar that went for sale
fashion show
movie night
cheese and wine tasting
pamper night
christmas/summer fayres
quiz night with theme and fancy dress ('80s)

I don't really understand the fashion show thing - how do they work??

You get a specialist company to come in and provide the clothing, which are all over-ordered catalogue and high street names with the labels cut out, a bit like TK Maxx with no labels! Then you get a handful of volunteer parents and staff to be the models and it is very hilarious, with wine and cheese or whatever refreshments you want. Then all the clothes are on rails around the room with tickets on and you just pick what you want. Only a small selection of the outfits are modelled. I bought a couple of good things about 5 years ago. Not everyone's cup of tea but lots of fun.

We're about to do one which has cost us nothing to put on and has the potential to make us about £50 - £100 but I reckon you could make it bigger and make more.

We're holding a Family 'Find it' walk. The local pub kindly offered to sponsor an afternoon tea for us. The pub is opposite a wood. Two other PTA members and I did a walk one morning and jotted down clues as we went - things like: find a tree that looks like it has a face. What kind of tree is it? etc.

Families are going to pay £5 (but you easily charge a tenner - we've just got families with not much money to spare) - they will get a sheet of our clues, a printed map of the 2mile walk and a little bag for the kids to put things that they have to collect into (pine cone, holly etc).

Then they get back to the pub for afternoon tea. Team with most correct answers wins a token prize.

If you can't get a pub to donate the tea, you could do a winter warmer walk as well and just make up a huge thing of soup and walkers get a mug of soup and roll at the end. Fun afternoon for the family that doesn't cost them much and which makes the PTA a bit of cash

Combined talent competition final and summer fair raised a few hundred. Talent competition meant that there were plenty of parents and grandparents in the school. The summer fair neatly emptied their pockets!

Regular hot dog stall after school (last Friday of the month). Bread rolls, hot dogs, fried onions. Dont bother with vegetarian sausages as most people prefer to have the fried onions on their own if they dont want the hot dog.

Promote events clearly and in advance. Make clear when they will start/end.

Jumble sale:

If you have enough people, send fliers to all houses in the area that can be attached to bags and collected on a specified day.

Sort stuff carefully and separate items that can be Ebayed (designer clothes, certain toys, baby equipment - we made about £200 from a dozen items). At the jumble sale, have a separate "designer" rail and section for larger/better toys (you want to get a few pounds for that ELC piano, not just 50p).

About half an hour before the end sell small bin bags and allow people to fill them for £2/£3 each.

If you have a volunteer, save the best leftovers and do a car boot sale.

Recycle unsold books and textiles through a ragbag type company (they can pay up to 60p per kilo for clothes/shoes/belts and 10p per kilo for books). Our council also paid 10% of the amount recycled (i.e. £180 from recycling company = +£18 from council)

We do christmas cards with cauliflower cards here. It varies from year to year on popularity but involves not too much organising on part of pta (devolve a bit to class reps) and we love seeing the results! Children/families design their own artwork on A4 piece of paper then it gets converted into a christmas card (or notelets if you choose no message). PTA get £1 per pack and have to do central collection of artwork, money etc then distribute the cards produced.

Adopt An Animal stallsells out at our summer fete.
Ask parents and on Freecycle for good quality cuddly animals and sort them into species. Nametag them all (the fun part, thinking up names) and make little adoption certificates with the name and species. If you can be bothered roll them up into scrolls and tie/lacky band them or just fold them in 4. On the day, lay out the animals in species again, charge kids 50p to pull out an adoption certificate and help them find the matching animal.

Last Easter my DS's school did Easter Egg Bingo - kids asked to take in an Easter Egg on the day and these were the prizes so no organising trying to get prizes. I think it was something like £2 for 5 bingo cards and the kids absolutely loved it (parents enjoyed it too). There were hotdogs, drinks and sweets on sale. Proved so popular that it is back by popular demand next Easter! :)

Loving the afterschool entertainer idea, I know some kids' entertainers and it's hard to get new school business at the mo, schools are hard up and sticking to who they know. So it is definitely worth asking your most local entertainers if they would do it for a reduced fee. Could also do a show on a Saturday between New Year and festival season. Charge £5 for a 45-60min show, followed by PTA doing drinks and snacks and some show-inspired games / inspired drawing/writing. We pay £2.50 for after school film club to watch some old DVD, would def pay £5 for a good live show.

On which note, our school PTA is holding a 'creche'/activity day for their pupils one Saturday in December - you pay £X per child for Xhrs childcare basically. Will be interesting to see how that the PTA enjoy that.

re school discos; someone on our PA managed to source some glow sticks at a very reasonable price. (something like a few pence each). We then sold them at the disco for 50p each, which was a decent price for the children (at local bonfires etc they are sold for at least £1.50 if not more). Made a great profit.

Also in the run up to the school fete/fair/fayre (!) which was just before Easter, there was a non-uniform day. Instead of paying the usual donation of a £1, children were asked to bring a £1 size Easter Egg for an Easter Egg tombola. Worked really well. (you just have to find a cool place to store them)

Also selling cakes at sports' day along with a tea/coffee/squash trolley (home made or shop bought - whatever you can get hold of!). I ran to the local co-op type shop in the middle of sports' day when we were running low.

People are happy to pay say 30p for a cake, in fact it seems cheap And say 20/30p for a hot drink.But those cakes were only £1 for 6 if you manage to get Mr Kipling/mini rolls or whatever on offer.(and of course the hot drinks only cost a few pence to produce). Even more of a money spinner if you get donations. I make basic fairy cakes with pink icing and dolly mixtures on top - the infants love them.

Our summer and winter fairs are big fundraisers and our Auction of Promises raises £4000 in a night. It's VERY hard work, but great fun! Also the Promises are often quite simple things for parents to offer to each other - walk the dog, do the ironing, babysitting etc. Parents meet each other on the night and through redeeming promises.

But that's not what I came on to say. Actually, a real winner for us are the monthly cake sales. Each class has a turn, they raise £100-150 a time. Cakes are sold at 30p each or so and we find people are quite up for a bit of baking! If not, they just bring shop bought cakes in...

camping is great idea

As a local but very tiny business I am happy to support my local schools. HOWEVER I like to be supported back, so the community aspect keeps going. So charging me a pitch fee which is so high I dont make any money from working all day is a no, no. I don't do those events again. I also feel that if I support the school at PTA events it would be fair if the school would support me by at least talking to me about book fairs.

A circus provided you have a large school field with access. Was very successful.

I'm a bit at some of these. It must be roses fundraising when parents can provide prizes like motocross and have freebies to share.

We'd never see after-hours stuff. We get summer fair/christmas fair (think second hand books, kid-made Christmas cards and y6 manning the manicure stand). It's good fun, but raises a couple of hundred at most (nothing costs more than 50p for a start).

Additionally, y6 fundraiser for their end of year trip, which in past years has involved running an after-school cake shop for other kids (I.e. We're invited to send dc to school with max 50p to choose an after school bun for themselves).

How much do you charge for camping on the school field, I like the sound of that!

Hi, Our biggest money makers are the xmas fayre and summer picnic/bbq.

We also do several discos per year (halloween, xmas etc) which the children love and make between £400 - £600 per school year. We also hold competitions and have fancy dress at some of the discos eg dress up for xmas, decorate an easter egg.

We also held a car boot sale last year which was minimal effort and raised £980.

Love the sound of the family camping night.

Our biggest problem is encouraging new parents to join. We are well supported at the actual events themselves but patents seem to be reluctant to join the PTA commitee - Does anybody else have the same problem? Any ideas how to encourage more parents to join??