Fund Raising is Essential

[kieron.sumner]

As an ex Chairman of my kids PTA and a Parent Governor, I know how difficult, time/energy consuming, but essential fund raising is as an activity, especially to Primary schools.

What I found frustrating was coming up with novel ways to generate money from outside of the parents, but we managed each year to raise healthy funds for essential hardware/services for our school.

I am convinced that many PTA's have tried and trusted novel schemes and thought it might be a good to gather these ideas and share them with any member schools/PTA's who like me would like to have their budgets go a little further and it might be particularly useful to new PTA members.

Maybe it's match-funding, local sponsorship, race nights, talent shows; the list is potentially endless and of course it's about keeping these ideas fresh and exciting which makes fund-raising fun and successful.

Please help me by posting your ideas, the more novel and wackier the better........so long as they work????

[LisaD]

How about this!!! (This is not a joke!)

Teachers Brave Icy River to get Activboards for their Classrooms

http://www.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3234

Lisa

[htemske]

That is so clever - I like their Promethean Polar Bear Club T shirts. Too bad I'm in Georgia - just too warm.

[LisaD]

The Chattahoochee would be cold in January...but alas no ice!

Lisa

[davidlloyd]

When I was teaching I organised a parents' evening where families could enter teams of up to six people for a design and technology project and paid a fee to enter.
Meanwhile every class that term was collecting newspapers as if they were going out of fashion although the reason for the collection wasn't revealed.
On the night the teams discovered they had to build a bridge that would hold a kilogram using old newspapers. Everyone had a great time with lots of laughs.

[kieron.sumner]

David - sounds great. Perhaps a bit too technical for me, but a lot of fun as you say. I hope they recycled the paper afterwards? Maybe another school could you aluminium cans to construct their bridge and recycle them as well - killing two birds with one stone

Kieron

[andy dark]

Kieron,
At my old Primary School in Wednesbury recently they held a 'Pub Quiz' with a difference - they used 'Expression' to collate all the answers table by table, and used the power of the feedback charts and export to Excel facility to give immediate feedback to the contestants. This was great, because all the money raised at the event {£350} has gone into the 'pot' to fund the purchase an Expression kit. All the parents and governors who were present saw immediately how 'Expression' would involve all their own children much more in the classroom, and was 'voted' an immediate success :)

If anyone out there is not aware of what a 'pub quiz' is ... I'd be more than happy to arrange an educational experience ;)

Andy

Promethean Education Market Development

[LisaD]

In the US, some restaurants and bars have Trivia Night. Perhaps this is similar?

Lisa

[andy dark]

Absolutely Lisa!
Primary schools over hear quite often have very active PTA's {Parent Teacher Associations} whose task it is to raise money for 'extra's .... some lucky schools have parents with both a social conscience and some spare funds which allows their children to benefit from some 'prestigious' extras! Isn't it a shame such lengths have to be gone to for the children to get their hands on a set of 'Expression'?

[davidlloyd]

Perhaps we should include a pub quiz in our Product Training Courses:D:D There are lots of nice pubs in Lancashire.

[Charlotte]

Our PTFA group are so successful at fundraising during the year that they have now set up a fund which departments can bid for. We recently placed a bid for £500 to buy multimedia and other resources which we could loan to students outside of class lessons to enrich their learning DVDs, CDs, novels etc.
Last academic year I wanted to purchase a set of Expression - once I had prepared a short demo to explain what they were I got the cash straight away. {}
Perhaps other schools could ask their PTFA groups to consider a similar fund? +wave+