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Pre-school fundraising

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:02 pm
by cj
I am a new committee member of our younger daughter's pre-school and want to get some new fundraising activities off the ground. Does anyone have any ideas of unusual/different things we could do that are good money earners? We suffer from having a lot of very disinterested parents and could do with getting them involved and a bit more excited. All (sensible) suggestions gratefully received!

Re: Pre-school fundraising

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:20 pm
by icomefromalanddownunder
cj wrote:I am a new committee member of our younger daughter's pre-school and want to get some new fundraising activities off the ground. Does anyone have any ideas of unusual/different things we could do that are good money earners? We suffer from having a lot of very disinterested parents and could do with getting them involved and a bit more excited. All (sensible) suggestions gratefully received!

Oh, good luck! Thankfully, my days of school and scouting committees are over :)

In the past I have been involved, with varying degress of success in:

buying up bottles of cleanskin wines and getting the kids to design a label for onsale

sausage sizzles (bbq): very popular in Australia

selling overpriced chocolates, cakes, books, spring bulbs. I was always very grateful that I worked with a bunch of dedicated chocoholics who willingly bought as much chocolate as I could supply.

quiz nights

raffles

walkathons/bikeathons around the school/kindy grounds

cake stalls (the one which sticks in my memory was held to raise funds for The Riding For The Disabled group that I instructed at. No parents made cakes - it was all down to the instructors and other volunteers :( )

Um, that's about it really. Nothing remotely original, I'm afraid.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:34 pm
by Mrs C.
What about calenders? - each child draw a "picture" of themself (or anything, for that matter, hand or footprint even!), name can be printed underneath , and the pic goes into the month of the child`s birthday if there are lots of children - if not, could just do one or 2 per page.
If you have access to a printer and binder this can be done quite cheaply and sold in time for Christmas, either by buying those little calender tag things, or by printing the months off. We did these at younger daughter`s playgroup - great success!!
Granny`s sure to keep it!!

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:37 pm
by Katharine
It depends very much on your area and facilities.

We have access to Portmeirion and have run Fashion Shows there with Edinburgh Woollen Mill, models from the real world! Tickets come with a 20% discount for the following week. You can do two or three of these before your target groups get bored.

We have bingo in town every Friday night, at the venue there is another smaller room which we sometimes hire for a coffee evening/tombola night. Again you can do it for a while before it gets stale.

How many people have you got in your fundraising committee - what are their skills? Any possibility of an Auction of Promises? A wine and cheese evening at the opening of an Art Exhibition of local artist/local amateur artists? (if not wine and cheese can go for pudding and coffee as a change)

If you look at http://www.steamyladies.co.uk you will see the very succesful calendar prepared by several friends of mine, it has raised more than £9000 for Macmillan nurses.

Good Luck, remember to be succesful you need to put the FUN into FUNdraising so your volunteers will want to do it again.

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:40 pm
by Mrs C.
Also, get the other parents involved by asking them what the money could be used for - and aim each fundraising activity towards a specific thing.

We also did a lottery type thing - get , say a minimum of 50 people to buy a £1 ticket once a month and have a draw during a playgroup session - one of the children to draw the winning ticket - winner gets £25 - £25 profit every month ! (although I`m not sure about the legality of that nowadays!!)

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:42 pm
by Mrs C.
Katharine wrote:It depends very much on your area and facilities.

We have access to Portmeirion and have run Fashion Shows there with Edinburgh Woollen Mill, models from the real world! Tickets come with a 20% discount for the following week. You can do two or three of these before your target groups get bored.

We have bingo in town every Friday night, at the venue there is another smaller room which we sometimes hire for a coffee evening/tombola night. Again you can do it for a while before it gets stale.

How many people have you got in your fundraising committee - what are their skills? Any possibility of an Auction of Promises? A wine and cheese evening at the opening of an Art Exhibition of local artist/local amateur artists? (if not wine and cheese can go for pudding and coffee as a change)

If you look at http://www.steamyladies.co.uk you will see the very succesful calendar prepared by several friends of mine, it has raised more than £9000 for Macmillan nurses.

Good Luck, remember to be succesful you need to put the FUN into FUNdraising so your volunteers will want to do it again.

Very true! Thats why BBQs , bouncy castles and fancy dress competitions etc always seem to do quite well!!

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:01 pm
by englishangel
Some of the things suggested here are great for older children but not so good for the pre-school brigade.

The ones I have found work best are the calendar one and a similar thing printing tea-towels, where the children draw a picture of themselves which is then printed on a tea-towel. These always go down well as presents for grannies, aunties etc as well as Mums and Dads.