PTFA fundraising, any ideas?

At our school this year we are potting cutting for sale in the spring at the school spring fayre and are starting off tomato plant's etc,it will not bring in alot but will encourage little one's to care for plant's.One of the mum's is a Yoga teacher and she is donating 4 hrs a month and the fee's are to go into the pot aswel,can't think of anything else glass that has not been done before.Bet you will get some fab idea's coming through though.

Thanks glamma I think everyone is getting a bored with the same old ones over and over

Have you done an auction? This often raises quite a lot of money. You can usually get local businesses to supply a free something – meal for two at a restaurant, cinema and local theatre tickets, tool hire for a weekend, a haircut and so on. Parents (and businesses) can also donate objects but try to encourage better quality than jumble sales. More importantly, parents can offer services. These can include all kinds of things, depending on people's skills: so many nights babysitting, cooking for a dinner party, aromatherapy massage (you can specify women only), photographic or painted portraits of the family, lawn mowing, weeding – basically, any skills that anyone is prepared to offer. It takes a fair amount of organising and you need a good auctioneer who can jolly the crowd along and encourage bidding, but it can be worth a lot more than a cake sale.

absent do you have any time take over the job as Chair of our PTA you would be fab at it.

Popular here is the car-boot or table-top sale. Going rate is £10 for a car pitch in the playground or £12 for table indoors. Host organisation does teas,coffees, juice + biscuits or baking for a £1 and perhaps a raffle. 20 sellers = £200 + say £150 for catering/raffle = £350. 40 sellers + therefore more teas = £600. Good one for schools as they have free use of playground/school premises. Sellers can be parents getting rid of household goods, toys, books, etc. or people selling plants, crafts, baking, jam. I expect to make a profit of £50/60, after paying for stall, from jam/chutney per sale for my other charity.

This idea is beginning to become TOO popular (ie overused) locally, as did the prize bingos which preceded it. There has been a move towards 'Yummy Mummy' nights with some games, quizes, a raffle, Body shop/fake tattoo/nail bar/jewellery and card sellers, etc. who pay a percentage of their 'take' into funds but mums are becoming wary as, once the wine starts to flow, they end up spending far more than they intended. I shall follow the thread with interest as what may seem old hat in one area may be a new idea in another.

I could find the time, but am not a parent there or even in the right place. It is hard work and you have to be a bit brash with local companies, but, trust me, it pays off. I'd come an do auctioneer for you, though, if you like.

Thanks absent & Granny23* some good ides there, we have briefly discussed Auction but its still on the board table, and we have a large playground so a table top/car boot could be quite profitable.

Thanks for the info absent I'm going to put my business head on for our PTA and after Christmas get thing's in motion for our fund raising,fabulous costings from you Granny23 thanks for that aswel.well glass it looks like you started something here sweety,and all these idea's have really got the old grey matter at work.

You could always copy 'Calendar Girls' and do an in unusual calendar. Of course, you don't always have to get your kit off to be different - although it WOULD be a great fundraiser!

Our U3A group is doing an 'Alternative History' calendar, where each month an event in history is shown to go wrong. eg July has the Moon Landing resulting in a miss. December has a crib scene, with Mary saying 'It's a Girl'. For January we have the First Fleet reaching Botany Bay, with Aborigines on shore saying ‘Terra Nulius my foot! Go away and don’t come back till you’ve all done our U3A course on bushcraft and boomerang throwing – then we might let you assimilate with us.(First Fleet arrived 18 January 1788.) November we have U3A members walking through the Texas Book repositary, and distracting Lee Harvey Oswald the way to their history class, causing him to miss. (Nov 22 1963)

and so on....

Also, our firemen do a great calendar that all the girls buy. Good looking Firemen stripped to the waist, in their firemen's trousers, and in various rather suggestive firefighting poses.

How about an accessories sale. Most women have bags, shoes, scarves that they dont wear that they could donate. You could make sure it was really nicely displayed have a small accessory fashion show and auction the goods for added fun. Good luck with it.

All the idea's here are so good,the PTA at my DGCs school has asked for new member's but sadly only the faithful few responded,so sad really as the one's that do the moaning about the lack of certain facilitie's are the one's that refuse to help out with the PTA.

glamma we had our first meeting of the year and you could not get in the door for new members, hope they return for the next meeting but from experience it is the old hands that turn up to do the graft.

susie love that idea!

You are so lucky to have new member's,I understand how hard it is for parent's to find the time for extra fund raising but even an hour every now and then would be good,these parent's are the first who moan when we write and ask for cake making or donation's for prize's etc,we even had a poor response for the shoe box appeal that we send to Romania,but I think we will approach local companie's and ask for donation's when that time come's around again.I must stop moaning and put on my happy head,this is not doing my grey hair's any good,will need another bottle of 103 soon.

glamma I was ashamed by the response to last years shoe box appeal, when the boxes came in the numbers were very low, but then I got to thinking there are lots of familes with 3 and more children, then I was ashamed by my own response! In this economic climate how can they afford to put a box together for each child maybe it should be a family box our school is in an old mining village and there are some very well off familys but on the other hand we have a lot of familes who are stuggling to make ends meet!

We decided to-day after Sunday school that this year we are going to ask familie's to just donate what they can and not fill a shoe box as in previous years,we will then share everything out into the box's and that way people will not be left to feel that they are not contributing and can just pop in what they can or can't manage.To-day we decorated 47 box's so we are well on the way.

glamma that is a really great idea, why have we not thought of this earlier.

We had all had some some of the Priest's wine when we came up with the idea,so call it Holy Intervention.

glamma

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This is the age old problem with Parent Teacher's Associations and other similar volunteer groups, it's always the same people doing the work. Of course many parents work full time or often have a home life too chaotic to help. Many just can't be bothered and why do they need to if other people are doing it. I did more than my fair share over the years. When my eldest started 6th Form parent's had to make a payment every term towards extras. It was so much easier and fairer. I was quids in both money and time saved. No Christmas Fairs, Cake Sales etc.

We recently visited DS2 and family in California. While we were there they had 2 school fundraisers. One was an arrangement with a local restaurant, we had a takeaway meal from the restaurant and a percentage of the proceeds went to the school.
The other was a day out for 'moms'. They spent the day hiking in a mountain nearby and had food etc. I don't know what they paid but our DDIL enjoyed it.

I expect most of the children who might benefit from glassortwo's efforts have left school now.

This thread is eleven years old!

Zombie thread. Look at the date. Sep 2011.