PTA fund-raising - what do you do at your school?

[Pheebe]

We're looking for inspiration! At the moment we seem to do the same old same old:

Bingo
Quiz nights
Summer/Christmas fetes
Prize draw
200 club
Discos (money made selling refreshments)
Bags of clothes
Yellow moon
Beetle drive

Anyone with any original fun ideas? Especially those that involve the kids too?

ta

we hire a local cinema (jointly with another school as we are so small) and show a film on a weekday, school holiday morning. it raised tonnes of money and so little effort it is ridiculous!)

Do the parents stay?

Have you got any parents who works for Barclays? They do a scheme where they double your takings for an event.A good one for us has been either a 'race night' or a quiz night' with a bar and something like posh cheese & biscuit platters.
be careful with the clothes bags because there is a big difference between the per kilo rates from company to company.We are with someone who gives us 65p previously we only got 35p.

yes the parents stay at the cinema event. you pay eg 4.50 per ticket.

Twinklytoes or else who organises a fireworks event can you tell me what kind of profit you make and do you get a company to do the display or do you let them off yourselves?

We do regular film nights for children.

Straight after school

Film and popcorn and drink

£2.50 per child

Free entry if your Mum is helping

We use the interactive whiteboards to show the films and make £250 per film!

The children love it.

We also do camping nights on the school field. £10 per tent. Pay extra for the bbq and then bacon sandwiches and coffee in the mornings. We made over £900 at the last event.

Pamper Night in May
Spring Disco
Quiz Night

I am a threadkiller....................

I love the camping idea!

I hav a friend in a different schook and the PTA has hired a circus for a day (3 presentations) apparently they have made a lot of money but do not know exactly how much. I was in the public for one of the shows and it was a lot of fun.

Collision, the cinema nights, do you do them with very recent movie/cartoon or anything you think will get them interested?

Collision, another question about the film nights - do you use hired dvds or ones owned by parents? Aren't there laws about showing the film for profit/reward? How did you get around that?

We shared the film license with the after school club so it didnt cost much.

Speak to the Bursar at school as they will know what to do.

We have shown Alvin and the Chipmunks, Ratatouille, Monsters v Aliens etc If we were to do one now it would likely be Planet 51 or the Guinea Pig One. It tends to be recent ones that have just been released.

It is easier to do it if you have the license but I know that some schools do it by only 'charging' for popcorn.

It really is easy money.

Camping is brilliant too and I wish I had had a camera for when the HT tried to get her double mattress into a 2man tent!!!!

Thanks Collision, it does sound a brilliant idea. Dd's school has a massive playing field, so the camping might be worth a go as well.

Film night is brilliant idea, thankyou

Hello!

We are thinking of holding a family camping night at the school this summer and are looking for any tips, advice and ideas from anyone who has done this before.

Thanks!

bump for tomorrow

Hi CM!

We made £900 from our camping night!

£10 per tent

No personal bbqs

We had a fire and song sheets and sang round the camp fire.

We also did food which really bumps up the money. We did a bbq and had lots of salad and rolls and charged £3 per meal which had to be pre-ordered. Burger, sausage or chicken with roll and salad.

We served hot choc and biscuits at 9pm.

We sent out letters to the neighbours to say what we were doing and that lights would be out by 10pm

We had great weather but I didnt sleep all night!

I got up at 5am to get breakfast ready and we did bacon butties and coffee and cereal bars for the kids.

HTH

Cinema event gets my vote too, we used filmbank.co.uk to get the license, it costs around £95 and we charged for entry, with a carton of drink and popcorn thrown in. Depending on ages, you'll need parents to stay so do a coffee shop with tea, coffees and donated cakes to sell.

Sponsered Readathon ( younger children by page older children by book)
Themed Karaoke competition parents and DC and teachers
School Umbrellas/caps/waterbottles/mugs
Yearbook
Teachers V parents Trivial pursuit
Christmas cards designed by children
blank greetings cards designed by children
raffle
relay swimathon
parents talks on child or education issues
2nd hand bookshop running through the year
art auction of childrens artwork

Skimmed this but we do:

Fireworks night
Summer Fete
Ball (every 2 yrs)
Discos
Book sales & Christmas cards sale - outside co's who give % back to the school for library books etc.
Second had uniform 'shop'
Cake sales
Mufti days
Quiz & curry night

Other social events are organised by class reps normally and not to raise money - wine tasting /theatre etc.

Cinema & Camping sound great - may suggest to our PTA!!

thehouseofmirth sorry never came back - friend does fireworks every year and makes over £5k in profit. they do have a major firework distributer in the village though so get the display relativley cheap. they charge to get in and then have hot food and fairground rides to make additional money. Tehy also have the backing of the village and have managed to ensure they are the only display in village.