I'd like to share how our carnival is run. We use an outside company (whose name I can't recall, but they're out of Connecticut). The company provides all games, free of charge, and we pay per prize given out. They tell us approximately how many volunteers are needed, and come that afternoon and help us set up. They stay the entire time, and prizes are tightly inventoried, then we pay what we owe them and keep the rest as profits. They bring about 15 games, plus spin art and sand art. We coordinate food (pizza and slush) and a few crafts (face paint, beads, etc).
This works really well for us. We probably could get prizes for less on our own, but we would have to come up with and build games, not to mention store them. Our final numbers aren't in yet (our carnival was last week) but we usually make about $3000. For us, this is more of a social event than a fundraiser.
We have an inside carnival, and a huge number of students (2500 in two schools). Since fire codes limit the number of people we can have, we've always had a problem because we couldn't let everyone who wanted to attend. Also usually have a problem getting enough volunteers (need at least 150) because people are attending with their kids. This year we took volunteer reservations first, saying that if you volunteered your family was definitely allowed a reservation. Non volunteer reservations were picked by a lottery system a week later. This worked fabulously! We had over 250 volunteers, and those who didn't volunteer were given a fair shot at getting in.
Our school is planning an end of year Carnival this year - it's a new event, and I'm the chairperson. I've never chaired anything before, but the fact that this is a new event actually comforts me - no one really knows what to expect, so I feel like there is room to make mistakes.
But I would like to make as few mistakes as possible. I prepared an outline that was presented at the meeting where the PTO voted to approve the carnival. I divided the carnival into subgroups: Tickets/Sales, Games/Activities, Concessions, Decoration and Clean-Up.
Games/Activities is the strongest subgroup thus far - I put together a huge list of potential games and activities - one parent has already donated a putting green, and I asked the Room Parents for each classroom to help recruit volunteers to man the tables.
I'm at a loss as to how to proceed from here. I have a very small list of parents who expressed a willingness to volunteer - all of them with the caveat that they were NOT willing to chair one of the subgroups. I may just eliminate the term chair and assign a "go-to" person for each subgroup.
My thought was to plan a meeting (or possibly 2 separate ones so my small group of volunteers will have an option of which to attend) to discuss next steps, but I need to create an agenda so we don't just spin our wheels - any suggestions would be most appreciated!
