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8 Easy PTA Fundraising Ideas

8 easy PTA fundraising ideas

Coming up with PTA fundraising ideas for your school is a key activity for all PTA groups. Big events such as School fetes and School Disco’s are fun ways to raise cash but they require a lot of planning and rely on having lots of volunteers to help out.

Here at mySchoolApp we have been looking into some alternative and possibly less onerous ways of raising much needed funds for your school. We have come up with eight easy ways to help put a few quid in the PTA coffers without too much effort.

“Since we’ve had the app we’ve made more money than ever. This is because we are able to communicate our key dates and fundraisers early and then post prompts and reminders regularly. We made around 10K last year prior to that they’d only ever made about 4K! Having an app makes a massive difference to school fundraising.”

Our PTA fundraising ideas

1) Christmas/Easter quiz: Put together a quiz – either rope in the skills of a pub quiz fan, or use one of the online free quiz creators. Charge £1 or £2 to enter. This is always a good one to do before the Christmas or Summer holidays, as people will have time to spend working out the answers.

2) Fund-matching: Many corporate companies, such as banks, will fund match for an event for which the employee volunteers. Others have schemes that offer volunteers’ time. It is always worth asking your parents whether their employer offers a fund matching scheme and if so, how your PTA fundraising efforts can benefit.

3) Online shopping portals: There are several sites, such as easyfundraising.org.uk, that allow schools and charities to collect donations when your Parents and Carers shop online. Encourage as many as possible to register and simply do their usual online shopping through the site. Each purchase generates a small donation. Why not run a competition at Christmas for the person who raises the most cash from their Christmas shopping?

4) Organise a foreign coin collection: There is always a little spare change lying around in people’s homes. Odd coins and notes from countries visited on holiday, or from that last city break abroad. Get the children to bring it into school and have a big jar in a central place to make it easy. There are companies that will exchange the foreign currency for English cash!

5) Tea towels/Christmas cards: Take a look at many of the online companies that will turn children’s artwork into gifts. These are great to sell to parents or other family members for a profit.

6) Recycled clothes: This can take a bit of organising but not lots of volunteers. Companies that recycle clothes will help you organise collections at school. Collection bags can be sent home with the children and then parents are asked to drop off their bags, full of good-quality unwanted clothing, at school on a certain date. A good one for just before half term or Easter when people might be having a clear out.

7) Art exhibition: We have come across a couple of companies that organise art exhibitions using the children’s artwork. They do all the hard work, frame the artwork, bring the display boards, etc. You simply invite the parents and they buy the pictures. Of course a cut goes to the school PTA fundraising effort. Exciting for the children to see their art on display in a proper exhibition!

8) 5p Friday: Ask families to fill a Smarties tube (or plastic bottle) with small change  and return by a certain date. You might just be amazed at the return.

The important bit…

Whichever PTA fundraising ideas you decide to take, make sure you advertise and communicate well with your parents and carers to get as many to take part as possible.

Be sure to keep parents up to date with targets and details so they can feel involved. Working towards a specific target – such as new computers/library books or play equipment – encourages more involvement than just raising ‘funds’.

mySchoolApp offers a simple communication enabling your PTA to publish your upcoming events directly to Parents and Carers smartphones. The events can then be saved directly to their personal phone calendars. You can even send everyone FREE reminder messages the day before the event politely reminding them to attend.

We hope that you found our PTA fundraising ideas useful. If you want to take a no obligaton look at mySchoolApp for yourself…

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