FUNDRAISING – Christmas quick wins
❅Festive family bake-off
Ask families to don their oven mitts for a bit of competitive baking to get them into the Christmas spirit. Anything sweet and vaguely festive is permitted, from traditional Christmas cakes, yule logs, stollen and panettone, to gingerbread snowmen, Christmas tree cupcakes and reindeer brownies. Display them all in the school hall, on a big table festooned with decorations, and ask a friendly local celeb (or, failing that, the school cook) to pick the star bakers. Then sell off everything at pick-up time with one almighty Christmas bake sale.
❄Festive photo booth
The selfi e generation loves nothing more than striking a pose, so indulge them this Christmas with their own festive photobooth. No need to hire the real thing – just put up a suitable backdrop, provide lots of fun festive props and accessories, and get volunteers to hold up a homemade frame (or, to save on arm ache, ask a handy parent to knock together a frame on a stand). Get a volunteer to take the snaps using a school iPad, or ask participants to do it themselves using a selfi e stick. Charge a small fee for participation or sell prints you’ve made on a colour inkjet printer.
❅ Festive furoshiki If you’re wilting at the
thought of holding yet another wreath-making workshop, consider offering something a little different this
year: a furoshiki fundraiser. The
traditional Japanese cloths are a beautiful, environmentally
friendly alternative to single-use wrapping paper. While they are hand-printing and learning to fold their very own gift-wrapping cloths, attendees can enjoy either a glass of sake or a festive tipple of their choice. (The parent who can still say ‘festive furoshiki’ by the end of the night is the winner.)
❄Hot-toddy
hometimes
Help weary parents make it to the end of term with a pick-me-up on a Friday afternoon. With a temporary event notice (TEN) licence, obtained from your local
authority for £21, you can sell alcoholic
beverages such as hot toddies, mulled wine, eggnog, festive rum punch or Baileys hot chocolate to the grown- ups, while the young ones enjoy hot chocolate, mince pies and Christmas-themed biscuits. Without a licence, you can still offer non-alcoholic mulled wine, punch or hot chocolate with a twist – such as salted caramel, midnight mint, hazelnut cream or even chilli-spiked options.
❅Christmas keepsakes
Instead of the usual personalised cards and mugs, go for something a little more creative and make Christmas baubles featuring the children’s smiling faces. Take a Santa hat or other piece of festive paraphernalia into school and snap a photo of each child wearing it. Print the pictures and hang them inside a clear plastic bauble, add some fake snow and tie a sparkly ribbon to the top. Take orders for the keepsakes on an app such as Classlist so that you can get parental permissions for the photos at the same time. Charge around £3 a pop, and you’ll soon be making both money and memories.
28 AUTUMN 2025 School Fundraising
IMAGES: ANTONIO DIAZ; HELENAAK; MORROWLIGHT; STUART ROBINSON/
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
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