School fundraising - Wine Tasting?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

One of the suggestions that the PTA have come up with recently is a Wine Tasting Evening. Has anybody done this and found it to be successful and how did you organise it?

Was wondering too if you did it yourselves or got someone in? Was thinking of asking a local wine merchant to come in, should I ask for a percentage of his sales and charge a flat ticket price?

Let me know how yours worked out

We haven't done it ourselves, but a local school do an annual beer festival.

They raise thousands each time. Basically they get local companies to sponsor a barrel, get some tankards engraved and charge an entrance fee. men folk come from far and near, get their tankard and try all the different real ales/beers. The pta sell pie and mash or something similar to raise that little bit more.

I suppose it depends on where you are, we are rural midlands so it's beer rather than wine, but I could see a wine tasting doing well. It could still run along a similar theme, but with posher grub!

The local Wine Merchant does sell beers too, so was thinking of that. We also have 3 brillant local small breweries so that could be an idea. Do you know how many barrels they have and how much they cost?

I'll ask around for you.

The main reason we haven't tried it in the past is because we aren't on a bus route and apparently this is essential! It might be worth looking at the CAMRA website, they have local groups and can advertise your festival if that's the route you take.

Oh thank you Pantaloons .

Anyone else done the wine tasting thing?

Just bumping for the morning crowd .

Pantaloons, could we be intouch reference the Annual Beer Festival please? I am the secretary of our PTA and we are desperate to raise further funds.

Oohh sounds interesting. Bumping again to see if anyone has any more information

We have done a few wine tastings people hated the ones with a wine merchant as it was hard sell. We then did one which wait rose sponsored the wine and my DH spoke ( he has diploma in wines and spirits) people really loved it. Compared to a quiz night it was a huge amount extra work (DH and I was five hundred glasses - one for each of the six wines) and only raised a quarter of the money. So it was decided that return on investment was nit worth it.

Ok so maybe the beer festival has more to recommend it? Who has more information on this then?

This takes a lot of work. We currently have a monthly Parents Coffee morning and it has been the same people attending and we really want to encourage new parents. So in desperation the week before the coffee morning on the Friday we (PTA Chair, Secretary & Treasurer) got to school early each morning and afternoon pick up and chatted with parent, handed out small leaflets reminding parents what the role of the PTA is, and about the coffee morning. We made a promise that people would not be ropped into doing anything at the coffee morning. It worked, we had over a dozen new faces. The plan is to keep doing this until we get some new regulars. Then the hope is that the new faces will get more involved. Watch this space :-)

Our PTA did it a couple of years ago. Couple of parents who were interested/knowledgable about wine and knew a wine merchant got them to supply six different wines on a sale or return basis so PTA didn't have to stump up cash and we were able to sell them extra bottles for a certain amount of profit on the night if people particularly liked a wine - though it meant we had to apply for an off licence liquor licence for that particular night rather than the ordinary one so people were allowed to buy and take it off the premises. Merchant also loaned us the glasses. We did questions round each wine in each round but also stuck to the usual quiz night feel too but we didn't make that much in the long run - too many people felt they either didn't know enough about wine or didn't drink or one thing and another to want to come so the numbers dropped from normal and it made less than a usual quiz night so we won't do it again. It was fun though for those who were there.

Are you doing a chip and quiz? This works really well for us and makes around £1500 whereas the wine tasting made just £400.

Be careful though. Some peopl get very twitchy indeed anything revolving round alcohol on school premises. We hqve a beer tent as a very small part of our Summer Fair and we qlwqys get objections. And before you ask, no, not from the Muslim parents!

We had a Cheese tasting once- a man came from the local farm shop with the cheese and people brought their own wine. That was fun!

Right, so the wine tasting sounds like hard work and less profit than a quiz night. Ok.

Lizcat do you mean chips that you eat? Sorry if I'm sounding a bit thick, am new to all this and don't want to assume. Think that chips or pie & peas with a quiz sounds like good fun and might get more people to come.

Read on one website today about a school who loaned a karaoke copy of Mama Mia, had a bar and raised £500. That sounds like less work and more fun than the wine tasting .

Sorry seeker forgot about your cheese evening, how did that go? Did you raise much? Did you charge for tickets or how did you make the money?

Ours is a school community that is very anti alcohol & gambling, so we have problems putting on varied events that appeal to all.
The head even had a phone call once from an irate parent objecting to the fact that on the letter inviting people to our AGM we said "Join us for a glass of wine and some nibbles!"
Luckily the head just politely said "Thank-you for your feedback, you are not obliged to attend if it offends you!"
Out of interest...
How do you guys organise the beer tent?
We did this up until last year but then no one wanted to be named on the drinks licence as being responsible for any "underage drinkers, anti social behaviour etc." Do you just cross your fingers and hope for the best?

I'm afraid I couldn't get any more info about the beer festival. It was a chap at dh's work and he no longer works there. However, I have had a quick nose at the CAMRA website and think you could contact them for help if you are still thinking of it.

Fund raising wise our biggest earner was a sponsored bounce. The school is small (under 90 children) and we managed to raise just over £1000. It was actually a really easy event. We sent out sponsor forms and offered a prize for the most money raised and the most bounces. On the day the event started at 2pm, a few children went on the castle at a time for a minute, whilst the older children kept count of how many bounces they did. We invited parents along and ran a tea and cake stall. This worked well as the end of the bouncing coincided with the end of school so mums were buying drinks and cakes for their little bouncers.

Another event we are thinking of doing this year is a beetle drive with pie and pea supper. The only down side to this is drumming up support and getting people to come back out once they've gone home. We tend to find that the events which raise the most are either straight after school or during the school day. There's nothing quite like a captive audience!