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!

My children's school biggest fund raiser is a trail ride weekend. A local farmer lend his land and a trail is laid. this year it was used for horse rider's one day (we served lunch in the sheep shearing shed) and for motor bikes the next day. A lot of work but makes a lot of money.

My school's PTA big annual event is a Possum Purge - everyone spends the weekend shooting them and this year we made $6000 from the fur. On the Sunday we have a mini fair with loads of prizes for everyone who took part.

Last year my eldest son's school got people with old/intersting houses and gardens to open up for the day so we could all look round.

Somehow I don't think the possum purge is going to work here!!!

The camping night is interesting - what about toilet facilities and stuff?

We're very lucky that we run a 10K race each year, that was initially established by a local committee, who then passed on the event (its organization and the money) to the school. It's a lot of work- we have a whole separate sub-committee for it) but makes about 10 thousand .

I like fundraisers where you are either bringing non parent money into the school like local businesses putting their name on event flyers or banners for £100 and paying for printing of the flyers.

Also, easy money ones where people get something they want at a good price rather than feeling obliged to support an event like discount tickets to local circuses, shows etc plus a cut for the school. We also did a raffle for take that tickets which was easy money!!

There are also some 'easy fundraising' sites you can register your school for and if parents click through from the charity site to a host of on line retailers your school gets a percentage. This includes things like 50p for on line grocery shopping from Sainsbury's so potential good source of free money but not something that even the most dedicated remember to do.

Misty -yes, that's the good thing about the 10K - it attracts runners from quite far afield (over 1000 of them), so the majority of the money is not coming from the parents.

We've tried the easyfundraising, but hardly anyone is doing it apart from me and a few other committee members. Any suggestions???

I like the look of the circus and have e-mailed them about costs but not got a reply yet - does anyone know roughly how much they charge?

I haven't done this (so no idea if it works, or how you set it up!!)

But - how about encouraging people to sell things on ebay for the school? I have seen people do this for charity. I think this could encourage quite a lot of people to dig out things and raise money?

chocolate tombola is very populare in our school. We normally have a mufti day and instead of a finnacial contribution children are asked to bring in chocloate (last year KS1 brought cakes for a cake stall and KS2 chocolate).

Very very popular as if you win it's going to be chocolate! (Not an old jar of olives!)

With school discos we now do add on's at pocket money prices like sweet stall, tattoos, food, trinkets or glow sticks...

For easy fundraising we use this www.bag2school.com/u/k/home/. You book the collection, people have a good clear out of old clothes, shoes, bags etc and the school gets paid by the weight. We normally get a couple of hundred quid per collection and do two a year.

Also a fun little fundraiser is to sell reindeer food to the kids at the Christmas performances/parties. Mix some glitter with porridge oats, put in a nice bag with a ribbon and sell for a quid each.

We also do a bingo night, quiz night and summer fair. We tried a race night but had no interest.

I am our PFA's secretary, our biggest fundraiser is the summer fair, we also do discos, quiz nights and a book quiz for the children. This is easy, you print out a couple of pages (one for KS1 one for KS2) of titles of books with missing words ie The C* in The H* , get them to complete it and sellotape a £1 coin to it as an entry fee and we pick two winners who get a book token each. Very easy and raises £300 or so.

I also run an Easter Bingo event every year which is massively popular, the kids donate eggs as prizes, we make up egg hampers, a local bingo calling grandad reads out the numbers and 1 line gets a small hamper, 2 lines medium hamper etc. This is so popular we always sell out of tickets in days. Also Christmas raffle every year, kids have a non uniform day and donate a "luxury item" - these vary from tin of beans to bottle of whisky, all welcome, we sell raffle tickets and they get drawn out at the Christmas plays.

Also ask about fund matching, sometimes parents who work for big companies can get their company to match the amount raised if the parent runs a stall at the summer fete. This is rarer but some places will do it.

Ouch. Got the reply from the circus people. £2,500 fee. I think i would be far too scared that we would make a big loss.

Our PTA did a deal with two circuses coming to nearby venues - they managed to get the circus to offer reduced tickets if bought via the PTA, and the PTA got a cut too.

Wow, internet went down for a bit and when I came back there were loads of fabulous replies. Thank you!

Our school have done the reduced price ticket thing with three separate events and no one has charged??

Our comedy night was a good fund raiser and not that much work. But it is only really a goer if you have a comedienne/comedian as a parent.

Reindeer food. £1 a bag for something that costs 10p!

fab ideas!!!!

Footprints - we're amazingly lucky with the money where we are, bit of a posh area, I'm afraid. Thanks for reminding me how lucky we are!

Our school has 120 kids. Biggest earners here are Christmas and summer fairs, quiz night (with raffle and fish n chips, bring own booze) family bingo(with chocolate raffle) and we always have a spring plants brochure where we get part of the profit for all plants sold. Also have had family discos, pamper nights (1st one good, 2nd not so good).Ongoing are 100 club, monthly end of school cake or icecream stalls (at school gate) selling cakes/teas at all parents evenings, sports days, open days etc. We also usually have a christmas fundraiser like teatowels/coasters/bags. The best one of these was last year, when a parent proffesional photographer offered his services, and took pictures of all the kids in the school for the month of their birthday, and, as we got printing done by a local firm for advertising on the front cover and also local firms "sponsered" each month for a small advert on the page, the costs were minimal. It sold well, with quite healthy profits.

Sorry about previous long post, but also forgot metal detecting days- local farmer allows metal detecting clubs (most towns have at least one) onto a field, we have a person at the entrance who charges £10 for the day (just takes 1-2 people, no costs to us) any "finds" that may be valuble hve to be split 50/50 with farmer. You can also sell refreshments if you wish. I was amazed how many metal detecting "geeks" turned up!

Final post from me Another small school nearby has bought it's own bouncy castle, and hires it out, all profits to the school after the costs for insurance. It is booked through one of the parents, and they have a group of parents who take turns to go along to set up/take down.

The best was definitely the promises auction we had a couple of years ago which raised £14,000. We produce a calendar in time for Xmas with photos of all the kids, and advertising from local businesses - we sell one for £6 or two for £10 and it raises about £1,000. We held a Xmas shopping evening in addition to the Xmas Fair last year, charging businesses to have a stall - that raised £2,000. And we've had a couple of cracking comedy nights recently.

We also take Xmas tree orders and make good money from that - parents pick up their tree from the playground on an arranged Saturday morning.

Those of you who do film nights/clubs, do you have to get special permission to show the film to a group?

At dds school they have been putting on a big annual art show for the last few years. It has had an incremental build up and is now definately part of the "social season" (nb we live in quite a wanky up market area). It is hugely successful, to the point where it raises the bulk of school funding. It is a behemoth to organise but it does mean that we do one major fund raising event a year rather than lots of small events.

Last year it raised over $30KAus (about 20K ukp) which paid for smartboards for each class.

We basically act like an art gallery, collect art from local and interstate professional artists and take 30% of sales. We sell LOADS.

Heard of a church fundraiser that could work for primary schools: Late Night Xmas Shopping Babysitting

Parents pay £5 (or so) for a few hours on a late night shopping evening close to Christmas. School hall is open with PTA volunteers. School play equipment & craft stuff out, then snack + drink provided all at a minimal cost.

Good thread.

Our PTA is very stale and focus too much on doing the same thing every year and seems to revolve around stuffing our kids with sweets and chocolate while selling complete crap. These nights where the kids are invited are painful and end up costing a fortune.

While I am food (healthy eating) and sports. What about athelete focused with photo?

Second the comment 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??

What I see is that its the same voluntees everytime and its a bit sickening that we are so busy yet some parents make no effort at all. I've been involved a couple of years and tired of it already.

The raffles are dreadful, while I feel some investment and decent prizes would attract more purchases, crappy towels, cheap chocolate is naff. I have donated a prize from the business but annoyed why I should do this every year.

Does anyone buy bottles of champagne/cava etc when reduced in supermarkets? How do you get business to donate decent gifts?