PTA ideas

[candodad]

What do people think I just sent to our chair for the next pta agenda?

100 Club
Circus
Christmas trip to xxx
Jumble/Tabletop/Car boot
Casino night
Film Night - www.filmbank.co.uk

Development of newsletter -

Sale of advertisements on news letter?
Matched funding - do all parents know about it?

Cash back schemes -

Gift wrap sale
Easy2name - labels

Slush puppie
Pick n mix rather than sweet stall?
Chocolate fountain
Popcorn machine
Candy Floss machine
Baileys fountain

pop up gazebos

Special letter from Santa - different for every year group

Minutes published on web?

Look at hiring out larger room for discos to be able to accomodate more guests?

Water to wine

Sponsored fire walking - Each participant to need to produce double thier "share" of the cost

Ice Rink
Photo "booth" with dress up box
Lucky Dip
Hook a duck
Bucking bronco/reindeer

Summer fete
Police
Fire
Ambulance
Staff in stocks
Smash Crockery Stall
Zorbing

most of it looks good, I'm guessing from some of the suggestions you are in a fairly affluent area? otherwise stuff like Zorbing and an ice rink sound very expensive ideas.

I have no idea what matched funding is.

Personally I would be really pissed off if either of my kids schools started selling advertising space on the newsletters, the only advertising that should be on the newsletters is if the school has music teachers/dance teachers/sports coaches who come in, it gets in the way of actual stuff you need to read on the newsletter and not all parents have money for things so getting a load of adverts givng to your child is a pain.

Saying that DD did come home on friday with a catalogue from yellow moon which the school get some money back from when parents buy stuff from them, at least if its seperate from the newsletter I can go through the mountains of crap in her book bag and chuck the junk mail away rather than having to sift through it all when i want to check what time the school play is or whatever. (although actually yellow moon is quite good).

Hi Adikai,

Thanks for replying. I wouldn't say affluent but nor poor either. Some of the ideas are more toward social events rather than fundraising so if things like the zorbing or ice rink made a small loss it wouldn't be the end of the world.

For the newletter I was thinking more like our news on one side (we usually fill an A4 sheet, with the adverts printed on the other side. Also all adverts would be taken from the arents of the school to draw in the community element a little more.

Are you offering to organise some of these events or just making suggestions for someone else to organise. The easy bit is coming up with the ideas, but getting people to take on the responsibility for actually organising something is a completely different matter .

I've been on PTAs for years (thankfully now my DS is at secondary school & they don't have a PTA). The best help anyone could offer is to say something like 'I will organise the Jumble Sale for you' and do it.

Are you starting from scratch?

I agree with ragwort, one thing at a time, and with an established team that does it. Once events are bedded in and seen to be well received then they become easy to run year after year and you can add another thing in. Think about what you are willing to run and put that forward.

The things we or other schools locally do that aren't on there are cake sales, bags2school type schemes, school discos, pantomime trip, quiz nights. We make some money from easy2name but gave up yellow moon as it wasn't worth someone's time to put stickers on the brochures for the small amount of money we got in. We are mid range in terms of affluence too.

Good luck.

We aren't starting from scratch. #we had our best year last year and are now trying to build in that. I have just been appointed treasurer so alot of this will be with me being involved for paying the reciepts back/ banking etc.

I have no problems in doing the film club, and the 100 club and helping out at all the events. We have just overcome a very bad PTA from two years ago, it was agreed last year we would do the "staple" events last year and then look at growing the event base this year.

Is that a suggested list or what you are going to do? If latter I am very jealous you have so many helpers and people with time to do the organising.

We do some things that are purely fun and not fundraising, such as an Easter parade and a leavers disco for Y6.

We've pushed the match funding for the last year but so far nothing.

With Yellow Moon, people buying enter school name and then the school or PTA if it is a charity gets cash back.

Are you a charity? If not and you are upping your fundraising look at this as it is a legal requirement once you reach an income threshold.

I didn't see cake sales on there, are you allowed to do those? They are an excellent earner for us, plus no outlay as all donations.

NynaevesSister

Half will incorporate in to current events. There is only prob 4-5 new ideas on there.

We have a decent committee of 15 regulars plus an extra 15-20 in support roles

I'd say that you haven't read your PTA's insurance policy. Some of those events I.E the ice rink are probably not be covered by it, or may need the PTA to purchase top up or additional insurance, which may make them too expensive to run the event. I think you can forget the fire walking as well. Most PTA insurance is very restrictive and for that reason PTA's tend not to run the larger more flashy events.

Well done for having a go though.

Sunnymeg

The zorbing, ice rink and fire walking are all to be purchased staffed stands. I have already checked with PTAUK and as long as we pay the market rate then the insurance the company has covers us.

But thanks for checking that I checked

Now that is interesting. We wanted to do a mega event with lots of outsiders who we would pay to come in and run stuff for us. When I rang PTAUK they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole and told us we would have to insure the event separately, due to public liability issues. I sometimes think with them it all depends who you get on the end of the phone.

Sunnymeg

I think they may be talking a more customer focussed approach since there seems to be more and more companies going after the PTA insurance market at the moment.