Supporting your school
I reckon about half of our events are for fundraising , but the other half are just for the fun of it . After Covid , we decided to concentrate more on giving the children great experiences . Last year our big event was paying for a circus to come to the school . It was brilliant . I know a lot of PTAs use the circus to raise funds , but we didn ' t want to do that – we just wanted all the children to have a good time . The circus came for four days , and it was so sweet seeing the kids come to school one morning to find a bigtop in their school field . It blew their minds !
There are over 600 students , and all of them got a circus workshop . On the Friday all the classes got to go and sit in the bigtop and watch a performance . They had to nominate one of their teachers to go to the front , which they loved . The teachers looked quite petrified as they were having knives thrown around them and all sorts ! We also had an adult event while the bigtop was in the field with live music and a pizza oven . That was so rewarding .
“ After Covid , we decided to concentrate more on giving the children great experiences ”
We decided this year we weren ' t going to do a Christmas fair , but we still wanted to do a large event towards Christmas for the school community . We thought about fireworks , but we decided against it because of our location . We ' re in the middle of a residential estate so we didn ’ t want to frighten all the animals and some children don ' t like the bangs , and of course health and safety is a complete nightmare . So we ended up on a laser show .
We were a bit hesitant not doing the Christmas Fair as it ’ s our largest fundraiser – we got £ 9,000 last year – so it was a massive gamble , but I think it paid off .
“ We were a bit hesitant not doing the Christmas Fair as it ’ s our largest fundraiser ”
We knew going into it that a laser show was quite a unique event . We decided to try and see if anyone would like to sponsor it . Over the summer we wrote to different businesses in our town , just explaining what we were doing , and we set up different sponsorship packages . We ' ve never tried sponsorship packages as a PTA before , so we were going into the unknown .
The response was incredible . We raised £ 2,350 in sponsorship and then our local estate agents gave £ 300 for board advertising .
That more than covered our costs , including the laser show company , St . John ' s Ambulance and marketing costs .
All in all we raised £ 6,000 from the laser show . We still would have made a profit without the sponsorship , but it made a big difference .
“ We ' ve never tried sponsorship packages as a PTA before , so we were going into the unknown ”
PARENTKIND . ORG SUMMER 2024 23