FUNDRAISING – Tried and tested
Silver coin trail ’80s night
‘Our PTA decided to organise a parents-only fundraising evening and agreed on an ’80s quiz and disco. One of our committee members knows a quiz night organiser who was happy to host the event for us free-of-charge.
ParentMail, followed by a “tickets on sale” announcement two months before the evening. We also used our Facebook page and the school noticeboard to promote the event. We sold 60 tickets priced at £10 each.
at 11:30pm. We put up decorations to add to the atmosphere and served up ’80s nibbles with everything from pineapple on sticks to retro sweets. Most people joined in with the theme Mercury made an appearance! We applied for a TEN so we could run a bar.
A local wine shop supplied alcohol on a sale or return basis, plus free wine-glass hire, and we bought plastic glasses for beer.
wine each for the winning quiz team and booby prizes of retro sweets and fun-size Rubik’s Cubes for the losing team. Afterwards, everyone let their hair down with a disco. It was a fun evening full of dancing and great Oops Upside Your Head!
with prizes donated by parents and several local businesses. We raised a total of £902.89, which boosted our fundraising towards an outside studio for the school.’ Racheal Woodhall, FOSS Chair, Spaldwick Community Primary School, Spaldwick, Huntingdon (160 pupils)
‘We’ve been holding our annual coin trail for the past three years. Children come into school with silver coins, then line them up in the playground. We used to make one long line with coins from the whole school, but changed this to a line per class. We give prizes for the longest lines in KS1 and KS2 – a little inter-class rivalry really increases the fun – and the funds! Each class pool their coins so everyone has a chance to place them, with older children helping the youngest. Once all the coins are put down, we measure the lines.
We’ve made this easier by using metre rulers to mark each metre with chalk before the coins are laid down. Once this is complete, we collect the coins. Picking thousands of coins up from tarmac is hard on the fi ngers and back, so we lay the coins out on wallpaper lining paper so we can scoop them up easily. It works well, but the paper does need to be weighted on a breezy day. We announced the event through newsletters and via social media and reminded parents to send in coins in the weeks leading up to the event. Our only outgoings were the lining paper and ice lollies for the winning lines. You do need a few volunteers on the day and someone patient to count the coins – we collected 8,250 fi ve pence pieces! The lines at our last trail added up to a total length of 102.25m, which raised £423. We can’t wait for the next one!’ Donna McParland, PTA Communications Offi cer, Cuddington Primary School, Northwich, Cheshire (228 pupils)
Textile recycling
‘We’ve used Rags 2 Riches 4 Schools (rags2riches4schools.
co.uk) for around ten years now and hold four collections a year. The key to success is promoting the collections, which we do by staggering
messages using various channels. We have a section on the scheme in every newsletter, which includes the date of the next collection and a list of the accepted items. Bags go out to parents two to three weeks before the collection date, and Rags2Riches a week before. I also send a text to parents a few days in advance, and on the day before the collection we give all the children stickers to wear home as a reminder. This keeps it in works really well. We even have
people coming in asking for extra bags all year round in preparation, so we make sure we have a stash of spares. We give parents the option to bring bags in either on the day or a few days beforehand, as we like to make it as easy as possible for them to donate. This isn’t too problematic with storage do this than turn anyone away. On the day of the collection we
know what time the driver will arrive and he loads up the van and weighs the rags there and then, so we know exactly how much we’re going to earn. We receive the money within one to two weeks and raise around £100 each time. It’s an easy way to raise funds.’
Samuel White’s Infant School, Hanham, Bristol (270 pupils)
pta.co.uk SPRING 2018 35
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