Charity fundraising help please - x posted

Mrs Jess is the woman to seek out about this, I think. I've seen her about, maybe put a shout out for her?

Whereabouts are you?

Thanks Marmalade Atkins I will

we're in a tiny village on the Beds/ Herts border

I used to be the treasurer for our PTA, the easiest low cost fund raiser is cake sales. We also ran sponsor events such as welly walks. At Christmas time we did a grotto which was very sucessful but you need a little bit of cash in advance for presents, decs etc. School calendars go down well at Christmas time as people buy them as gifts for grandparents.

Do you have book fairs? It's not money making as such but we used to earn commission to spend on books. This is the company we used https://bookfairs.scholastic.co.uk/travelling-books they provide everything.

Thanks sleepy. We do a cake sale at the end of each term along with a raffle. Sponsored things don't tend to do that well, come Sept we'll only have 20 children and it seems to be the same (few) parents that put their hands in their pockets (last summer we did a treasure hunt, it only raised £65 and £30 of that was from me)

Am liking the calendars and grotto (the only down side I can see with that is we don't have our own premises and pay weekly rent for the village hall and the hire fee on Saturday is huge.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I just fear that many of the parents we have see preschool as somewhere they drop their children off for a few hours and aren't really that interested in helping it as such

Even with just 20 sets of parents I'd have thought somebody would be 'bright' at something.

Trying to find out if i know anyone round your way who'd be willing to a do a bit of pro bono.....

Nick

I was thinking about an auction or similar. Ideally I'd love a couple of big attractions that could bag some big money. (I emailed Saracens in the hope that I used to work for Henkel one of their sponsors, and Arsenal in the hope being born in 1971 and almost named Charlotte Georgina might persuade them to send me something but I've not had a reply)

Maybe I'd do better to write.

There's hardly any business here (a pub, a bakers & a village shop) and they seemed to get tabbed by school. I could head out further a field to Hitchin/Bedford businesses but am guessing they will prefer to donate to more local casues

I might have a suggestion. I'll PM you now

You anywhere near Twinwood?

Well after googling we're about 40 mins away/16 miles

Would the school let you set up a stall at their summer fair? Perhaps you could do a face painting stall (always a huge money maker) or a tattoo stall (again v popular).

Have you looked into applying for lottery mmoney? Maybe Awards for All?

Lottery funding is a good idea actually

See if you can find someone who has made a successful bid in the past and get advice off them as the things you can get cash for and the things you can't are odd to say the least.

Sleepy, I said the same at the commitee last night. The chairman of the PTA is also a preschool mum so we're hoping to appeal to her better nature.

We did facepainting at our stall with the WI and you're right it was a big success. Trouble was the head of fundraising asked her friend to do it (as we all said we couldn't although several were willing to try) and asked her to donate what she thought (she does face painting parties)

I was livid, she took £23 (only charges £2 full face, £1 on the cheek) and gave us £3. I'd paid £5 for my 3 girls

Lottery funding sounds good. I'll have to look into it. I have some stuff about a sustainability grant but I think we'd have to make job cuts before we got that.

Thanks again everyone (I'm very fond of the preschool, I have 1 daughter leaving it in July,1 been there since the start of the year and 1 who will go next year so its the least I can do in return)

I'm in herts and have found pamper parties etc have worked exceptionally well for my charity. We had volunteers that offered various skills -massage, gel nails, facials etc and everyone paid a contribtuion for them to have a sample. I think we had 10min facials for £5/7 it was chaotic-but worth it! Shout if you want any help. I think you would be surprised that many people do genuinely want to help!

What about a slave auction? Where people offer their services for things like babysitting, gardening, housework etc and others bid to win them. We did one and raised loads. If you didn't want to do it on an evening, you could have a list of the slaves and people make sealed bids into a box, you then have a cut off date and the highest bidder wins. You could even set a minimum price for each service dependent on what it would cost in the local area.