Coffee Evening Fundraiser

[Guest terrydoo73]

Under a bit of pressure from parents about fundraising (see other post). A couple of parents have dug their heels in over a planned fundraiser while another couple have been pushing for it to happen. Needless to say I am in the middle as usual! Here is the plan ...

 

We are planning to print a Recipe Booklet made up of traybakes, breads etc contributions from the parents and friends - no problem with this. We will sell them at £3 each and give each of our 12 parents 5 to sell making £180 with probably about £100 profit (hopefully!). Our objectional parents agreed to this OK.

 

The second phase was to have a launch night or coffee evening with admission fee of £2. Our local supermarket will hopefully supply mincepies so a bit of homemade shortbread will also be on offer. Originally we talked about a Saturday morning but the parents who objected wanted us (ie staff of the playgroup!) to entertain the children at the same time or else have it on the same day as normal playgroup hours - which I objected to on the grounds that we cannot have the children in the adjacent hall due to registration rules but having it outside of Playgroup hours means we as staff are not responsible for the children. These particular parents wanted us to have some sort of magician but as others pointed out this would decrease our profit as we would have to pay for the entertainer. Having it on an evening might hopefully reduce the number of children attending and also if as we plan have a few tables with say craft suppliers selling their wares there would not be room for them to run mad around the large hall. So we have been offered a lady who will demonstrate cake decorating - appropriate for Christmas we thought! I am also looking to bring in someone who might sell jewellery, books, general wooden craft items and cosmetics. These people will not be charged for the tables but asked to supply a item for raffle prizes. If we sell 1000 tickets in the raffle and all the items are donated we should make another £100.

 

These are the proposals which we are going to put forward to all the parents this week at an evening meeting. However I am waiting for objections to be put up - the main one being who will staff the coffee/tea and mince pies and also take monies for admission and raffle tickets. We are planning to open from 7 to 9 pm and I sort of thought if the parents could get behind us and give of their time say 10/15 minutes over the 2 hour period surely this would not be too much to ask. At the last meeting one parent said they would not be able to because they had 5 kids to look after and another said she had 3 and whilst she hoped her mum would come with her she couldn't offload her kids on her mother for any length of time. Some of the other parents have come up with the idea that if we sell the tickets before hand and do personalised invitations then there will not be much need for collection at the door but this leaves the onus on parents once more to sell and I can see objections once more to this!! When you add it up we are asking the parents to sell 5 tickets at £2 each, 5 recipe booklets at £3 each and then say 50 tickets at £5 which adds up to £30 per parent - a lot to ask surely!! Then you weigh it up on the other side and you realise that the booklets could be Christmas presents, they could win a superb prize in the raffle as well as benefitting their own local Playgroup! The problem is selling it to each parent and when they have objected already am I leaving myself open for criticism and alienation from the local community by getting backs up??

 

What else could we do to ensure little children who may attend with their parents are catered for? I was thinking of say a table with craft items on it and wouldn't mind if this was something I took on board myself - say producing something specific with them that they can take home as a keepsake from the event?

[AnonyMouse_6721]

Hi

 

It sounds like you have put in lots of hard work already. We did an evening event for a couple of years running at playgroup with stalls, mulled wine / mince pies etc. It was a really good social event but I dont think it made that much money. It is always the raffle that makes the money. The cookbook sounds good.

 

At the end of the day you will always get some objections, you can't please everyone. You will be surprised at how few turn up. I have been fundraising for my kids school since they were in reception, they are now in High school and it's still the same parents that always turn up.

 

 

Good luck.

[AnonyMouse_3735]

as said you will never please all the people...

 

when we did similar we offered the staff as the tea and coffee makers and the parents had to do the rest.. this meant we were away and in the kitchen so could not be called on to to the 'child policing' and parents took turns to sell tickets on the door, and raffle tickets were 'touted' by many parents around the room...

 

not sure of the rules in Ireland but to sell raffle tickets in advance here we need a licence, which may affect the decision to do this or not..

 

I do wonder how many you are hoping will attend to sell 1000 raffle tickets... we never sold more than £50.00 worth internally and we were quite a big setting...I am assuming you are expecting the local community top come as well which may include older children if a weekend or evening. we always found evening things turn out dropped dramatically, particularly this time of year, it gets cold and dark and the thought of going back out for this needed a really big incentive... then came the cost of babysitters for parents, even with families where one could attend it seldom worked well.. our best attended were always during session, we had one room and parents and other children were in another - never was an issue with registration they were not in our care and in a different room... but again may be different for you. It did mean that the parents had to do everything though as we were busy!

 

if parents and friends give recipes which will go into print make sure they are not from cookbooks of others ... you don't want a Jamie Oliver recipe popping up in it or anyone else's come to that... they will obviously not be tested by someone at this late date so you will need to hope they all work too.

 

Personally , I would now stand back say you have helped as much as you can and decisions need to be made by the parents as to how they will work it... perhaps offer to do the job you feel will be the most useful, or the one you want to do and then say rest is up to them.. it is fundraising and not part of your remit ... you have enough to concern yourself about with issues in the setting and with ths children without this adding to it..