COVER FEATURE – Cost of living
PTA TOP TIPS
PTA chair Becky Sutton shares her fundraising advice for the coming year
Be clever with events: Last year, our two biggest fundraisers were Fireworks Night and the 2022 Challenge. For Fireworks Night, we sold 1,500 tickets, which is the most we’ve ever sold. We went out to the community and advertised in lots of community groups on Facebook. We deliberately kept the ticket prices reasonable. The local fireworks display is free and starts at 7:30pm, which is too late for many primary school children. We held ours on a different day and began at 5:30pm so younger children could get home to bed. A local estate agent sponsored the event and we used their boards to advertise it.
Share your goals: We borrowed the 2022 challenge from a school we met through the PTA Ideas and Advice Network (
facebook.com/ groups/PTAnetwork). The idea was to encourage every child to raise £20.22. We did lots of promotion and social media and asked the teachers to talk about it in class. Although it was a lot of work setting everything up, it didn’t actually require much volunteer time. It helped that people knew that we were trying to raise money for outdoor classrooms. There’s definitely been more buy-in from our supporters because people know where the money’s going rather than it disappearing into an invisible pot.
Be considerate: With Christmas looming, the autumn term can be costly. Our PTA always runs a disco and a Christmas card fundraiser. These things add up and that’s
going to be hard for families who haven’t got much spare cash. We’ve got plenty of second-hand uniform available and are negotiating with the head for a shop. We still need good quality donations, but if the cost of living increases as forecasted, we may need to consider offering alternative options for struggling families such as swapping an outgrown uniform for a bigger size or an honesty box.
Compare prices: When I went to buy stock for a disco last year, I followed the invoice from the previous event. But when I looked at the prices, I found they had doubled in just a short time. This year, we’ll get organised by shopping around and making sure we’re getting the best value for money on the things we buy.
Keep asking: One thing I keep trying to push is match funding. People are often reluctant to ask their employers, but we’ve got quite a few parents who work at companies that are well-known for matching funds. You just need to ask – one parent raised over £2,000 last year. So it’s important to identify those parents and encourage them to tap into the money.
Don’t do everything yourself: Encourage an inclusive environment where people can give as much or as little time as they want. We’ve just set up something we call PTA Lite, which is a WhatsApp group. When we need help with something small such as folding raffle tickets, we ask on the group. It works because people don’t feel they have to say yes every time.
Spread the cost: We’re excited to have Happy’s Circus coming in April next year. Before we broke up in July, we released the tickets to give families time to purchase them as and when they can afford to. In September, we hope to confirm the whole calendar of events for the academic year to enable families to plan ahead. The school community will get priority on tickets, but if we don’t sell them, we will advertise in the local community too because our purpose is to cover our costs and raise enough for the school.
Publicise the PTA: When my children first started school, I didn’t really know where the PTA money went. But since our PTA got Canva for free [see p7], I’ve been creating lots of newsletters and graphics and our communications are getting better. We still have to work hard to get the word out about what we do. Whenever I get the opportunity I will go to meetings and tell people what we’ve been doing. It’s important that new families understand what we do too. We recently went to the new starters parents’ evening to talk about what we’ve raised this year and showed them pictures of the outdoor classrooms we’ve ordered.
We need to be smarter about self-promotion when we pay for things to make sure that parents know their money is being put to good use
Identify PTA purchases: Once the outdoor classrooms are built, I’m going to get some plaques installed so that every time someone walks by, they realise that the money came from the PTA. We need to be smarter about self-promotion when we pay for things to make sure that parents know their money’s being put to good use. Without this kind of signposting, it can be hard for parents to differentiate between what the school buys and what the PTA funds. Seeing what we’ve achieved will encourage people to continue to support us.
20 AUTUMN 2022
pta.co.uk
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