Any PTA people out there? Need some advice please.

[MorocconOil]

I was just curious to know what you do to thank staff for taking part after an event.

We held our first ever PTA event at the week-end and about 80% of the staff turned up to help.(which was fantastic) I gave the care taker a tin of biscuits to say thanks for letting us use the building for the event and the staff who were around seemed a bit put out. We were just going to send a handwritten letter to the teaching staff to say thank-you, but now I am wondering whether we should give them something too. There are two sites though and it will eat into our limited funds.

What do you do, if anything?

a PTA implies that it is a parent-teacher associasion, so not sure why they would have been put out? Nice to do for caretaker, but any funds raised are for the children and thus leaving the school's budget for other things
I don't think I"d say anything, not much to gain really
A handwritten note would be a nice gesture

I would send the letter and leave it at that. But I am a deep-pocketed Yorkshire lass.

Seems to me, that if they care about their school, they will want the school to reap the rewards of their/your hard work.

Presume the care-taker did some work for the event? (Opening/closing, cleaning?) It's not really their building to let, is it?

Letter will be fine. We would not give flowers or chocs to people just because they helped unless an individual person had done something way over and above the norm. For instance we gave flowers to the teachers (and parents) who modelled at our PTA fashion show because it was fantastically brave of them to agree to put themselves on show, but not to the people who helped out behind the scenes.
Ignore the looks. Our caretaker is great as well as he works unpaid overtime to help out at events. We have never given him a gift but we probably should...

I think a thank you letter would be fine - nice gesture and free

PTAs are charities and as such, we don't thank or expect thanks, we just all muck in and do our bit.

Thanks all for those reassuring comments. Will stick to the letter for the teaching staff. The caretaker wasn't there at all, but she gets paid no overtime for anything. She also has to deal with a lot of evening break-ins, drug dealing etc on her own, which must be terrifying. We felt it was important to get her on side and feel supported by the PTA for any future events.

Hopefully the teachers will appreciate that, then. Maybe next time, give them on the QT?