what do you all think - are our school calendars too expensive?

[Clary]

We have done a school calendar this year (infant school) where we took photos of all the children grouped into birth months with appropriate props (eg buckets and spades in July etc) - blimey what a job that was!
The resulting fab pix are in a calendar, rather nice. We pay more than £6 I think per calendar unless we order loads which we haven't dared to do.
So we are selling them for £7.50, which I actually think is too little (I wanted £10 but was voted down).

Was shocked at chatting to mums from junior school to hear that they hasd bad experience with similar project and they thought we should be selling them at £5. Eeek! We have ordered 100 (fairly modest) in fear that 200 tho much cheaper per unit would end up expensive if they didn't sell. There are about 180 pupils in the school.
Will no-one buy them then? Would you buy one at that price?

(we have ordered 3 btw)

I would ! (But then I'm on my similar sized school committee and appreciate the effort thats gone into it)
Fab idea by the way .. will watch and see how many you sell

(steals idea and runs!)

tbh even being skint I probably would purchase one just for the effort gone into it and ds would love to see his face in a pic..lol

I think at £7.50 I would purchase more than one (maybe 3 - one for us and then for each set of grandparents as Christmas presents) whereas at £10 I might have only purchased one for us. I am the sort of parent you want, obviously.

Good luck with selling them.

We are doing ours for £4.50! It is a slightly larger school (210) and it's being done by a parent who is a photographer so she's doing us a favour.

I find the problem this time of year is all the extras, so far we have had School Christma cards, tea towel, shoe boxes (£2 in each) School photographs, two school trips and there is still the Christmas fair to go multiply that by number of children you have (3 at school in my case)

My ds1's school have made one this year. They are being sold at £6.50 each - I've ordered 3 as ds1 wants to give one to each of his Grannies for Christmas.

I'd buy 2 if they were £10 each - one for me and one for my mum. I know quite a few parents who, even though they could afford it, would refuse to pay that price. Pricing is sooo difficult.
Good Luck!

Mind you I've ended up with 6 calendars this year as ds2's school are doing one too - that's cheaper as it doesn't have photos.

Sorry - you're selling at £7.50 - I'd have bought 3 at that price.

oh yes yadda please feel free to steal, we stole it from someone else

bozza tyou are so the sort of parent we want lol. Megalegs I hear you, there are a lot of demands on money at this time of year. TBH I?m not wanting people to buy it because they want to help the PTA as much as because it?s something they really want.
It?s a fairly well-off area but of course even then everybody is tight for cash at Christmas.

Thanks for responses all, that?s helpful and hopeful too.

School fund raising especially at this time of year is very difficult. At DDs first school we were asked to contribute to a lot of things but I liked that it was always made very clear what each activity was raising funds for eg. repairs to adventure playground, computer equipment etc.
When buying items like this I think parents like to know how much of the purchase price is going to school funds and what exactly it will be used for. That makes it easier for parents who can't afford everything to opt in and out of which things they prefer to support.

£7.50 is cheap imo.

I think it is too expensive. Dd's school did something similar last year except it was pictures drawn by the children and I didn't buy one. I also haven't bought the Xmas cards £6.50 per pack x 2 children) this year.

I think £7.50 is a reasonable price, but will people really want to buy a calendar full of pics of strange children? I can't say it would appeal to me.

Our school did tableclothes last year which were rather nice. All of the kids in the year drew a pic of themselves and they were all printed on to a tea towel. And at least doing it by year the parents will know more of the children.

Hi

Our school PTA is doing one as well, we only have 80 pupils and are selling ours for £5.00 per calendar. We also have a christmas CD which we are selling for £3.50.

£7.50 is a good price i think

We have ordered 150 calenders to sell.

Good luck with the sale of yours

sarah

What a fab idea-would love to do this for our PTA. Which company are you using to print the calendars Clary and how long did it take to organise the whole photoshoot?
Do you need to ask the parents permission before you took the photos? Would love to do it this year, but think it would be too late now.

Message withdrawn

Doodledootoo, YOU might pay £10 for a calender. I pay £3.99 for one that has spaces for all members of the family. I would never dream of paying more than £5 for a calender.

in answer to your q - yes I would buy one - in fact would probably buy them for GP's too.

we did calendars last year - but self portraits - line drawings one class per month. we had them printed at the local university printers - cost us about £2 each and sold for around £3.50 iirc.

this year is the school centenary so we are going all guns blazing to raise money to support the centenary celebrations and learning - lots of external speakers, dance demonstrators, each class has a decade from the last century and will have a demonstrator of some description in, plus raising funds to redo school wildlife garden as a lasting memento.

we are doing self portrait tea - towels - selling for £3, making around 75 per towel I think, aprons as above - cost £5 ish, selling for £6.50, mugs with school logo, £4.50 each, cost £3.50 ish, and Christmas puddings personalised for the school - cost £3 ish, selling for £5. we have a school of 300 atm (60 more start in January) and a Preschool of 80 who are included on the tea-towel. I am running round like a headless chicken organising school ceilidh - tonight, and CHristmas Fair - couple of weeks time!

PandaG, I would buy the stuff your school is planning on doing, very reasonable priced.

Thanks for more replies all.

Chopster - I hear you, but in fact it's not loads of strange children is it? It's all DD's and DS2's school friends. After 3 years hanging about at the school gate I know pretty much everyone in DD's year of 60 kids.

we do teatowels too btw at excessive PTA effort!

Vinegar not sure about what firm did the printing (I didn't do that) but as to the photoshoot - we got the kids to bring in the appropriate item on a specific day, Friday afternoon in fact.

We had at least 10 people helping. One teacher is a keen snapper and took pix, I also took in my camera in case of disaster. HT rounded up children from a list and others organised them (so at any one time the next group was waiting). We did it between 1.30 and 3.15, tho I was worried when the first one took about 25 mins - but it was the biggest (april with about 25 kids). Ones with 8 yr 2s were a lot easier.

Hilariously (or maybe not) we had to shoot August again when s/one realised one lad was in it twice and we had therefore missed out s/one else.....
Re permission, parents sign a slip at the start of term so anyone who didn't was not included.

PandaG your stuff sounds fab! good luck with all the work (our Chr fair this sat....)

cat64 that's what I'm worried about with numbers of families, but in fact it's an infant school so only 3 years, so the most anyone has is 2 children there and of course lots of people only have 1, so I'm hoping more like 120+ families.....

We did one last year. Each class took a diff month and the teachers had a couple of months to themselves. It was a LOT of effort. Our school has 276 pupils.
We ordered 500. Sold for £5 each. We would have made a big profit if we had said 1 for £5, 2 for £8.50 or whatever. We got local companies to sponsor a month for £25 and had 2 sponsors on each page(busines card sized)
We got the printer to include school hols and special occasions in school. Also, the date and time of each PTA meeting.We only sold 300 and had to burn the remainder as we couldn't then sell for cheaper in January as we would have had a mass of angry parents.
Not done it this year!!

small update - we have had orders for more than 100 so that's good news.

Took more orders at Christmas fair this week so we may even reach 150 or so. That's a bit less than one per pupil so worth bearing in mind for future years I think.

Those figures sort of fit in with you cautionary tale as well lily.