RACE NIGHTS A beginner’s guide to…
Looking for an entertaining event to gee up your parents? Look no further!
R
ace nights are an entertaining way to get people together, promising a lively night of shouting as participants cheer
There are two main ways of running
this event; either by paying a specialist to deliver the entertainment for you, or by purchasing a DIY race-night pack online. Funds are raised by charging an admission fee, offering a hot meal, running a bar, seeking sponsors, selling jockey slots and from bets in the tote.
Heather Human, committee member, The Hall School Association, ‘Our “pizza and ponies” family night ran from 6-8pm. It required quite as we used tokens (sold at the beginning of the night – eight tokens for £4), it was much easier than handling cash. A local pizza company provided
three large pizzas for £10. We had four races before the food was delivered, My advice for other PTAs is to have
lots of change for paying out – don’t rely on the money that people bring as that will all be in notes. Write down the name/number of the winner of each race – someone will come to the payout desk with a “winning” ticket from three Keep pizza choices to a minimum and
have people’s orders written on their tickets for when they queue up. I would also advise playing the DVD through beforehand and checking that the winning horses are evenly spread out (we discovered that horse two wins any longer races. It was a very noisy event, but made a great family night out for everyone from children to grandparents, and we raised over £650.’
34 AUTUMN 2017
pta.co.uk
Hannah Mayhew, Secretary, Hoxne ‘Our PTA decided to try a new event – an evening of horse racing. I researched the possibility of getting a company to run it for us, but they would have we decided to purchase a DIY kit from Amazon for £17.99. The pack included the DVD and betting tickets, as well as a duel forecast sheet to enable us to raise even more on the night. I wrote to local businesses to ask
them to sponsor a race at a cost of £25 – in return they were promoted by the compere on the night and also featured in the programme. We then sold off horses at a cost of
£5 per horse. We live in a small rural community where the school is the hub of the village, so people were happy to participate, with the chance of winning a bottle of wine. This meant people could support the school even if they couldn’t attend on the night. We also sold the jockeys at a cost of
£3 per rider. We sent a letter out to all the parents and children asking them won a tub of sweets. We sold 50 tickets at a cost of £7.50
per ticket, which included a hot meal of lasagne and salad followed by sticky toffee pudding. To keep things simple, we asked people to bring their own drinks. The minimum bet was set at £1. On the night, we had four volunteers – a compere, two people on the tote and our “tech man”, who played and stopped
with all prizes donated by parents. We held four races, then had a break for on to race eight. We had a fabulous night and raised a total of £1,264.50.’
Step-by-step
Two months before: Choose a date and time for your event, book your school
hall and send out a ‘save the date’ notification to parents. Recruit volunteers – as you will require a compere on the night, plus people to run the tote, serve food and drinks and sell raffle tickets. Approach local businesses about sponsoring each round and ask whether they can also donate prizes for the winners – explain exactly what coverage they will get in return (i.e. announcements by compere, details on race cards, coverage in letters home to parents, etc). If running a raffle or auction, seek prizes for these too. Decide whether
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