I was so pleased to see such great responses to my e-mail on "what everyone has planned for family fun nights!

Our family fun nights are ALSO little or "NO" cost to families -- see list below. It is our way of saying thanks to all the parents for the fundraising that's done all year long.

In the past we encountered a lot of problems finding volunteers for our family fun nights -- until this year. We decided to try something different -- and it WORKED! We sent home a volunteer sign-up sheet the first week of school listing all the family fun events. Much to our surprise we received 125 responses. We were thrilled -- no more begging for volunters. We ended up taking the responses and photocopying each one into a separate folder for each event. We passed the folder onto the person in charge of running the event and needless to say we had about 15-20 volunteers for each event. Many parents including Dads and Grandparents signed up for more than one event. I highly recommend sending out some type of sign-up sheet as soon as school begins. We received so much positive feedback that we plan to do this every year.

We started our letter off as follows:

FAMILY FUN AND PTO SPECIAL EVENTS
VOLUNTEER SIGN-UP SHEET

One way to stay connected to your child is by participating in his/her school activities! All we need is your time! You’re invited to help make the Family Fun and PTO Special events successful! We are asking for each parent to volunteer to help out at ONE (or more if you desire) event listed below. Please fill out the following information and check the event that you would like to support!


Please PRINT:
Name:_____________________________
Home #:______________________
Work #:__________________________
E-Mail________________________

How would you like to be contacted?:
Home Phone, Work Phone, E-mail or Cell Phone

Check the event that you are interested in:
(NOTE: THESE EVENTS ARE NOT IN DATE ORDER BECAUSE I HAD TO COPY AND PASTE THEM FROM POWER POINT)


______Reading Under the Stars
Friday, October 8, 2004 from 6:30 - 8:30 P.M.(grades 3 through 6 only)

______Break Week 2/21 - 2/25:
Family Movie Night
Date & Time to be determined

______Radio Disney Halloween Fun Night
Friday, October 29, 2004 from 6:30 - 8:30 P.M.

______A Night of Treasures
Friday, March 11, 2005 from 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

______Election Day Bake Sale
Tuesday, November 2, 2004 from
9:00 A.M. - 9:00 P.M

______Willow Field “Spring” Craft Show
Tentative Date: Saturday, April 9, 2005 from 10:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M.

______Willow Field “Fall” Craft Show
Saturday, November 20, 2004 from 10:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M.

_______Muffins with Mom (Mother’s Day)
Friday, May 6, 2005 from 8:00 - 9:00 A.M.

______Holiday Shoppe: Friday, December 3, 2004 from 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

_______Fun & “Games” Fair
June 3, 2005

_______New Years Eve Dance
Tentative Date: Friday, January 7, 2005 from 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.

_______Donuts with Dad (Father’s Day)
Friday, June 17, 2005 from 8:00 - 9:00 A.M.

If you have any questions or if you have powerpoint and want a copy of our sign-up sheet. Please e-mail me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. MJ

Hi Pals,

We work on a budget of about $16,000 or so. Our cookie dough fund raiser which we kick off the first week of school is our main fundraiser for the year. We will sell popcorn & drinks at events that aren't sponsored by us like the talent show, etc.

We didn't charge for the 1st bag of popcorn at our 1st movie night last Jan. and only charged .25 for any bags after that.

We usually (I've been told) only make $1000 on the spring carnival. It wasn't a fund raiser. Well, I suggested that we do a silent auction and raffle this year (last April). Well, it was wonderful...even if I say so myself! We ended up making $5000 on the carnival and auction and the parents really liked it!

We did really well staying under our budget this year and with how well we did with the carnival/auction, we were able to gift to our school $8000 for instructional materials and still keep $3800 to roll into next year.

I was also told at the beginning of this past school year that our parents and community can't handle a big spring fundraiser so they don't do one. Our school population is very diverse economically. We have about 40% of the kids on free/reduced lunch and it should be around 50%. Anyway, our principal needed more funds for items (before we gifted any money) so he decided to do the cookie dough fund raiser (a new company we were planning on using this fall) and the school made approx. $11,000! I was so shocked! I thought, why haven't we been doing this in the spring as well? This was about 3-4 weeks prior to school getting out. The PTA typically does $14,000ish (our profit). So, for the school to do this well when "others told me that a big spring fund raiser can't be supported by the parents...." is wonderful. We might do the spring one this next year so it's not so much work for the office. It'll just mean more money we can gift to the school or more expenses we can pick up.

Anyway, I know there a lot of things I want to add to our agenda, but I believe we can get a lot donated and keep the costs as minimal as possible. For instance, for the reading night which won't be held until end of Feb. beginning of March... Joann's has these cute foam bookmark kits right now as part of their kids' summer camp supplies. They're 50% off which makes the bookmarks around .10 each per child. I thought that was a great price. So, I've already purchased them for our reading night. I try to get activities approved far enough ahead of time so that we can watch for good deals and have plenty of time to solicit donations.

I hope this helps some! If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Holly
McCaw PTA president
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Kathy,
We charge as little as possible for our family nights... these are not meant to be fundraisers , they exsist to bring our school community together . Last year, we charged $1 a plate for the dinner and the other activities were free... this allows us to come close to breaking even, which is good enough for us!
Kelley
Madison PTO
Mount Vernon, WA

Hi Guys -

Especially new folks, did you know that we offer free how-to and toolkits for helping you put on a variety of School Family Nights?

One of the Nights, for example is Family Reading Night (sponsored by Target) and includes great info on things like guest readers and/or the pajame themes.

Full info here: www.schoolfamilynights.com

I'm a huge fan of family events as the first tool in building involvement. And I'm a huge fan of using your funds raised to make these kinds of events as cheap/free/fun as possible.

Tim

Holly...may I ask how you cover all the costs associated with your fun nights? I notice that you only do two fundraisers and are planning on adding three night at fast food places...does that give you enough to cover the costs? We have this "strict" thing that we will not charge for anything we do and that takes our budget. Besides our fun nights we do alot of day stuff like a Positive Behavior School store that takes $3500.00 of our budget, the kids earn coupons and that is the "cash" we take. We also do a Grandparent Luncheon that attracts almost 450 adults, that is a huge cost! Just wondering on funding...thanks for sharing.

Kelley,
Thank you for the PJ Reading Night idea. Just a couple of questions. I was wondering...
Did you charge? If not, what was the cost of the evening? About how many people attended.
I love the photo back drop idea! Very Cute!
Thanks,
Kathy