[Guest_Cathode_*]

Hey all.
I am going to be organising a school fete and we will be having our first meeting about it next month. The fete itself is a long while off, but I like to be organised and prepared.

Who here has organised/been on committee to run a successful fete?
What are some of the pitfalls and advice that you could share?
What do you pay for and what don't you pay for? ie do you pay for all the entertainment and kiddy stuff? or do you let them charge and they pay a fee to you for attending? or do you subsidise any activities?

I have some ideas for entertainment and kids activities. I would like to pack the quad and undercover areas with stalls, leaving the oval and grassed areas for kids entertainment and such.
Was thinking of either doing an opt out system for parental volunteers to man and supervise (but fear some may just not show up and leave us in the lurch). Was also thinking of (instead) roping in the year 6s and 7s to help man stalls (with one parent supervisor at all times throughout day).
The usual household donation stalls - cake, plant, books, bric and brac. I have a list of contacts to get in a variety of other stalls (who will pay for the space).
Am also going to steal the tip from another thread of having donation tins near the tills - so hopefully we can get peoples spare change.

I really want this to be a successful event. All tips, tricks, advice appreciated


Also, what day is better - A Saturday? or a Sunday?

This post has been edited by Cathode: 06/04/2012, 11:04 AM

[countrymel]

My nephew's school fair had good wine and beers for sale plus gourmet BBQ offerings!

People stayed around MUCH longer than in previous years!

[barrington]

DS and DD1 are at different schools.

For both their school fetes, stalls are organised and run by each year level. So the parent reps for each class get together and work out/are given a stall to run and then they are responsible for organising the volunteers for the stalls.

DD1's school, in particular, is a very organised and well run fete. They start organising it over a year in advance (its held every two years).

I was told that at the last school fete at DS's school, the stall that raised the most money was the pre-loved toys stall.

[Canberra chick]

I think Saturday is best - 11-3 usually means you avoid the issue of it clashing with kids sports.

Start getting prizes and sponsorship asap and keep hassling from now until Spring. Find someone who likes asking shop owners for donations. Also, aim high; ask local NRL/AFL/S15 teams. We got some good prizes from them.

At DS's school we did hands - print out a hand and put it on a paddle pop stick, thread some string through. Each finger had something printed on it; a sausage, a ride, a go at the lucky dip etc. We sold lots of them before the day and parents liked it - they could buy a $10 hand (or two) and let their kids go off on their own and not get pestered for change constantly. And we had advance sales.

Our 2 biggest money makers were:
white elephant stall
raffle
They took around $2000 each.

Something that also worked for us was having a colour theme for the cake stall - we had pink and white and it looked awesome. You could sell bags with 4 squares of white choc cherry fudge for $5 just because it was pink and white and tied up with a pink curled ribbon...
Any cakes that didn't fit the theme were sold through the canteen-run cafe as individual pieces.

[Jenflea]

I went to one last year which had a noodle bar type set up. you could watch them cooking the noodles on the hot plate and buy noodles and spring rolls etc.

My mum used to run school fetes when I was a kid and they were great! We had poster drawing competitions, dress up competitions, themes... way better than the half a*sed ones they seem to have these days.
I took my 1yr old to a few local ones last year and there weren't even toffees in the lolly stalls!

[Jenflea]

OMG Poet, can I go to the next one? that sounds fun.

[barrington]

Another money raiser for DS's school was badge making. The children all mocked up their badges in school time, so there was plenty of pressure by the children to actually make their badge on the day.

[soontobegran]

Hi and yes but it was a long time ago now.
Planning started a good 8 months ahead of time so that we could book the special events we wanted for the day.

We had our quad completely taken over by stalls around it's perimeter. We put it out to the school community very early that stalls would be available for anyone who wished to sell .We also put an advertisment in the local paper inviting the community to set up stalls too. We got very many interesting enquiries....some we had to say no to but we had some amazing responses and lots of variety.
Pre loved toys and books are always a hit. If you are having wine to sell you must apply for a special licence for the day.
We supplied the trestle tables and the gazebo shelters and they did the rest. They made 20% of sales, the rest went to the school to offset the cost of hiring/electricity etc.

We also sent a letter from our planning committee to all the local businesses to ask for donations and as as a result of these donations we were able to run a raffle on the day which actually bought in a couple of thousand dollars. We had children walking around during the day with raffle tickets.

It is important to provide a separate picnic areas which has good shelter. We cordoned off a large grassy area near the playgrounds and aside from the trees we also had gazebo type sunshades which we borrowed from the school community (another letter home).
This is where we had the bulk of the food stalls, so that the kids could go and buy whilst mum and dad watched from the picnic blanket. The SRC ran a sausage sizzle which was incredibly popular, they organised the lot getting donations from the local butchers and bakery, they organised a roster and one teacher was supervising on an hourly basis.
We had people who specialise in food for Fetes that have hot popcorn, chips, hot dogs, fairy floss etc.
Of course parents were able to bring their own picnic food
It was in this area we had a petting zoo, pony rides, face painting, balloon making and a jumping castle, clown heads,
The SES , the Firebrigade and the local St Johns Ambulance set up a truck and gave the kids tours and information and the St John's Ambulance were also there is a First Aid Capacity which I think was a pre requisite when having pony rides etc. We had Harley rides which, whilst were expensive brought in a heap of money. Those guys were amazing and stayed all day, I think we ran a 50/50 profit share.
We wrote to all the AFL clubs and had some responses in terms of donations of gear for the raffle but Melbourne Footy Club sent Gary Lyons out and he ran a clinic on the oval which was very popular too.

My advice is to book early and prepare the school community early. Prepare to advertise in your local papers and ask for a local printing business to organise some flyers that can be dropped off by the school kids. Put flyers up in the local shop windows and if there is a pre school or CCC close to the school they can become a good source of advertising too.

Each class was responsible for organising it's roster of parent help on the day but the planning committee was a sub group of School Council.
We made enquiries about insurance in the possibility of us being rained out (pluvius I think it is called) but it was incredibly expensive so took a chance and it was fine.
A good idea to look at the bureau of Meteorology's history of rainfall in your area and choose a time when there is less likely to be an issue.

We had a school community of 320 and made $8k but this was 10ish years ago :-)

If there is anything else you can think of feel free to pop me a PM.

[Ianthe]

At DS's school we did hands - print out a hand and put it on a paddle pop stick, thread some string through. Each finger had something printed on it; a sausage, a ride, a go at the lucky dip etc. We sold lots of them before the day and parents liked it - they could buy a $10 hand (or two) and let their kids go off on their own and not get pestered for change constantly. And we had advance sales.


Something that also worked for us was having a colour theme for the cake stall - we had pink and white and it looked awesome. You could sell bags with 4 squares of white choc cherry fudge for $5 just because it was pink and white and tied up with a pink curled ribbon...
Any cakes that didn't fit the theme were sold through the canteen-run cafe as individual pieces.

Those are both brilliant ideas.

DD's school just had their fete. Children paid $10 for a wristband and all rides and entertainments were included.

We paid $25 for the rides part of our last fete

What has worked well for ours is the chocolate wheel-sometimes local Rotary clubs or Scouts will have one they will lend. And kids made things in class and then they priced them for the parents to buy-how do you say no when your child proudly shows you what they made?

Oh and usually each class was responsible for their own stall. That worked well.

[JRA]

DH is an organiser of our fair, it is as much a friend raiser as a fund raiser.

It has about 6,000 people each year attend.

We outsource the coffee making, so they make and we get $X per coffee that they make.

We have a person in charge of food stalls, another for rides, another for non-food. We also have continual performance of kids doing music/acting etc. As well as a huge display of art.

We sell wrist bands for the rides, and try and sell as many up front as possible

The big money earner this year was the silent auction.

Face painting and hair colouring are always popular.

Snow cones are great earner as well. And great on a hot day.

We have a policy children can only man the stall if an adult is present given they are handling money and it leaves less open to questions.

The rules and licences required for food handling and alcohol also need to be very carefully managed.