RUN A PTA – Data
Having clear and accessible records reduces the amount of guesswork in event planning and bolsters our confidence
spending volunteer time in this way, we price it at £10 an hour.’ An easy win is to calculate the
‘In the past, PTAs were based on
unpaid and unrecognised labour, mostly that of women. But we need to move forward to a position in which this labour is valued and appreciated. We are in the 21st century, and the idea that our labour has no economic value is old fashioned,’ she adds. In PTA life, nothing happens if
people don’t give their time. ‘Once you have volunteers, you have to treat their time as extremely valuable,’ says Elizabeth, who explains that her own experiences made her look at the metrics. ‘To save money, I went to a shop that was further away, but it took me half an hour to get there and half an hour to get back plus the shopping time. In the end I saved £7, but that’s ridiculous. I could have gone to work and earned more than that and donated it to the PTA. When
ratio of volunteer time to profit on the stalls at your fairs. If someone works for three hours and raises £10, ask yourself: is it a good use of their time? Elizabeth notes: ‘My personal metric here is that we should be making at least five pounds per hour of volunteer time. This tracks for big events, such as fireworks night, but also for smaller events. Anything that makes more is a star event.’ ‘Our best investment has been a
wooden pillory for soak the teacher,’ she continues. ‘It’s an activity that can be easily broken down: how much did the pillory cost? How much does it cost to throw a sponge? How many pupils can take a turn in a two-hour event? I tell people my greatest success was hitting the headteacher in the face with a wet sponge.’
A uniform policy The Friends of St Gregory’s
Catholic Primary School in Chorley (218 pupils) have run a pre-loved uniform shop for the past five years and began collecting data two years ago. Kate Witkiss, chair of the Friends says: ‘We use PTA Events (
pta-events.co.uk) to sell most of our uniform, which enables us to track how much of each item we sell.’ This information helps the Friends set prices and understand which items are popular, and it’s rewarding for them to watch the sales increase year on year. They also share the metrics in a visual form, by creating an infographic that shows supporters
46 SPRING 2025 School Fundraising
how buying pre-loved uniform saves them money as well as reducing landfill.
Make a resolution Start keeping records of your stock,
purchases, costs, profits and volunteer time. ‘The data from our 2023 fair has definitely guided our purchasing decisions for 2024 and made planning considerably easier,’ says Megan Wybrew. ‘Having clear and accessible records reduces the amount of guesswork in event planning and bolsters our confidence. We now have a template in the form of a collaborative spreadsheet stored on Google Drive, meaning we no longer have to trawl through our email archive or rely on hazy recollections. More importantly, it has empowered a new, much larger team of volunteers.’
READ more about infographics at
pta.co.uk/running- a-pta/community- engagement/make- an-impact-with- infographics
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