School summer fair moneyspinners

[alwaysthepessimist]

Just wondering if anyone has any experience you can pass on to a new committee. We need to organise the fair for July time, we know it should have been done earlier but because of other issues this wasn't possible - how do you source people to do things like fairground rides, pony rides etc etc and does the school hire them & take 100% profit or do you agree a percentage share? Just wondering what the 'norm' is for these kinds of things

I think it might vary from place to place, size of school etc as to how it's funded. Here we hired a bouncy castle & kept all of the takings. Split into age groups for safer & give out coloured wrist bands for each age group. Hair ties will work just as well. How much your need really depends on how big your school is & I'm guessing primary?

If a small primary school... these things brought in money when I've done it

Bouncy castle - hire

Fairground grabbing machine, forget correct name, but hire & charge per go.

Coconut shy type thing. Make with tin cans etc

X Factor Competition , see if you can borrow a mic etc. Charge per entry & give certificates as prizes with small sweets type gift.

Decorating Cookies. Get parents baking plain cookies, give out a sheet with recipe. Provide bowls of decorations. Charge per go & they get one cookie to decorate.

Face painting

Glitter Art/tattoos

Brick a brac (donations)

Cafe (food & cake donation)

Raffle - donations from local community & businesses

Oh & for a summer fair we always had the "green man" with woodland fairies & pixies as an alternative to Santa Claws, same principle, they pay a small fee to go in & chat to Green Man in his woodland grotto & together get to pull something out of a lovey dip barrel

Santa Claus

oh loving that idea rockinghippy plus all your other ideas - the claw grab thing would work a treat, it is only small so we need to maximise revenue totally!

Get the children to bring in a bottle one Friday, something chocolatey a couple of weeks later and use them in tombolas. Sticking the tickets on is something a parent who wants to help, but can't do during or after school, can quite easily do at home.
We used to allocate one stall to each class, and the class rep was responsible for arranging manning it, in half hour intervals. Things like the tombolas, book stall, toy stall etc.
Relatively easy is guess the name of the soft toy, or how many jelly beans in a big glass jar.
We always had the gym club and dance club do a display. DIdn't raise any money as such, but nice for the children to do, and parents to see, and it encouraged the children to attend!
Have a raffle, and publicise it well in advance! We used to have the Headmistress going round selling tickets on the day, and she was a difficult lady to say no to!
Had an ice cream van come, think he paid a set fee and kept all his takings. You could try and get people who sell Usborne Books, Body Shop etc to do the same.
Biggest earner was always the bar (needed to get a licence), tea and coffee, and home made cakes.

When mine were at primary the Summer Fayre had:
Tombolas - 2 separate for bottles and chocolate.
Coconut shy
Face painting/tattoos
Kick a football through a target
Catch the rat (bean bag dropped down a drainpipe)
Hook a duck
Lucky dip
Cake sales/ drinks
Decorate a biscuit
Bouncy castle/ assault course
Ice cream van
Barbecue
Pay to nominate a teacher to get soaked at the end
Plant sales
Raffle
The fire brigade used to come and squirt the year sixes at the end with the hose as part if their leaving fun.

We (v small village infant school) always make most money on raffle, BBQ, face painting (as long as parents do it for free) and bottle/chocolate/soft toy tombola (get these donated during the term - bottles/chocs for mufti day donations, soft toys people always want to get rid of!)
We aim for a mix of things which will make money (the above) and those which will draw the crowds (kids games/crafts/biscuit decorating etc)

Have been involved in 7 summers worth of fairs.
I personally don't like the external fairground stuff (or other externals really) as I feel it takes money away from PTA run stalls where you get 100% of the money.
Unless you are in an affluent area, many people turn up with a fixed amount of money so you want it to all go into PTA coffers, not hands of externals.

Best money makers for us were always:
Raffle - but you are getting late for gathering prizes so would need to start ASAP
Tombolas - bottle / chocolate / (new) toys (sourced by bring an item for dress down day)
Refreshments - ask for cake donations, tea, coffee

BBQ is good if someone will organise it and you can judge how much is needed

If spare raffle prizes then a envelope opening game is good.

A prize every time game for children, e.g. picking lollipop sticks and colour determines prize

Name the teddy, treasure map squares and similar are easy to organise to pad out but don't tend to make much money. (But can be run by sensible y5/y6 children).

Bric-a-brac is good if you have somewhere to store it and someone confident to sort and price, and you know where left overs will go.

If at a weekend, getting classes/clubs to do 'displays' e.g. recorders, singing, gym is a good way to encourage people to attend and hang around.

You need a dry and wet weather plan, plus all the weather varieties in between!

Biggest money spinner at DS's primary school was always Soak The Teacher - they'd queue round the block for that one 😂

Our school
At some point has invested in a candy floss maker, it airways does really well each year!

Booze wins at ours. We have beer tent selling beer, wine and pims and a wine tomboys ( hildten donate a bottle in return for a non uniform day. Other stalls that do well are ice creams, bbq and glitter tattoos

*bouncy castle (our school bought one at one point,but sure you can hire)
*throw a wet sponge at a teacher
*hook a duck
*lucky dip (pocket money toys... a rubber, pencil, hair bobble etc.... )
*tombola
*£1 envolope stall.... prize every time.
*teddy tombola...prize everytime.
*face painting/glitter tattoos

*Hire out stalls.... local businesses/crafty parents can pay for a stall (they keep their profits but you get like £10-15 for the table/space hire)

Parents are your friends (you need volunteers...lots of them).... and ask on local fb pages for donations for stalls. Do you have any local businesses close to school who you can contact...maybe make a hamper to raffle off.

good luck x

We do a game called 366, you write all the days of the year on envelopes have a number of star prizes and others are free burger, free piece of cake etc. Charge 50p or £1.00 a ticket.
People buy their birthdays etc, we always have a few Christmas Days.
We are lucky and generally get a voucher from a few local restaurants.

Decorating biscuits is always good, your local Tesco may donate them for you.

The Bar B Q always makes the most money. You can hire one, but ask your local church, scout group if they have one.

Also pimms or beer tent. A licence is about £25.00 from your local council.

A bottle stall is good if you get kids to bring in a bottle, booze, vinegar, sauce, pop, bubble bath etc.

We also do 'jolly jars' kids bring in a jam jar filled with something and decorate it. Sweets, coloured pencils, chocolate buttons, stickers, those Cabdurys bit size things etc. We generally say bring in a Jolly Jar as payment for a dress down day.

We have also done, bush tucker trails where the kids were blindfolded and had to put their hands in buckets behind a screen to fish out ping pong balls, the buckets had custard and baked beans etc in, kids LOVED it, BUT DO THIS ONE OUTSIDE!

According to a friend on the PTA, the bar and barbecue make the most money. Don’t know if that’s just our school!

The ‘penny games’ etc are just there for the kids. They don’t raise the cash.

And there is always a bottle tombola for adults (doesn’t have to be alcohol) and chocolate tombola for kids. Donations on Fridays beforehand in exchange for wearing ‘odd shoes’ or ‘crazy hair’.

For a charity even at school Dd & her friends did a version of soak the teacher without actually getting the teacher wet!
You need a few super soakers & laminated pictures of the teachers .
This stall raised 4 times as much as any of the others and costs pence to set up (obviously you need to borrow the water guns)

The biggest fund raiser at dds school was the raffle - the pta used to actually buy a couple of top prizes - one year they raffles an iPad mini ( when it first came out) that raffled raised over £3k profit

Beat the Goalie is popular at our school summer fair, especially if you have a local football club who can lend you a decent goalie.

£1 for 5 kicks. Prize if you get them all past, sweet for each one otherwise.

DD's school has a Pimms tent. It always does a roaring trade!

If you can invite a local dance school to perform then it brings not only the dancers but all of their parents too and hopefully they will all spend money with you!

We have a mix of external stalls (no idea if they pay a fixed stall price or percentage of income in the day) and the class stalls.

The latter ones are good fun but only make money when they do not cost at all. For example the crockery smash is easy done, cake stall, toy raffle. If they do prices it is usually sweets.

The main money winners are BBQ and Bar. We also had an ice cream stand, bought tons of Magnum etc in huge quantities and sold them for £1. They do it during Summer term each Friday anyway, we have a huge freezer chest in the school, so no problems with keeping them and no money goes to an external ice cream van. Same with candy floss and popcorn. If you have the storage capacity it is great also for movie nights and discos.

We do one day where own clothes equals something for the general raffle. Each class gets something allocated but if you have a matching item for another year it doesn’t matter. We had toys, chocolates and alcohol so far.

A decent stall is a children book stall. Only take donations and the unsold ones normally end up in the school library.

Photo booth also v popular at ours.

Our nursery does a stall every year which is called something like water into wine - loads of bottles wrapped up and only a few have wine, the rest are water - makes a load of money lol

Also school asks kids for old teddy bears they wish to donate and gives each one a name and label with said name on it, a copy of all names goes into a box, 50p to pick a name and you get that bear!

Don't forget the Pimms or prosecco stand of course