I'm VP of our PTO and I'm responsible for monthly Family Fun nights. My first one was a great success so I thought I'd share it here.

I organized a FF Night at the mall food court. In the past, we've gone to stand-alone restaurants like McDonald's, etc. but there's so many of us the lines are long, no one wanted to stay and socialize and lots of families just turned away rather than waiting. We've got over 950 K-5 students.

This year we took over the food court and signed up 3 restaurants to donate a percentage of their profits during the event to our school (10%). I also negotiated 12 raffle prizes from mall merchants. On the chance tickets alone we netted a little over $1000! All told, we made $1250. I spent only $30 on supplies. It was a fairly easy event and best of all the parents and kids loved the elbow room. Teachers wore logo shirts from the restaurants and meeted/greeted parents/kids. We had an awesome time.

I highly suggest this to any schools near a mall or other place with a large food court area. Next month it's Donuts with Dads for the first time in our school's history - I read about it on this site. Thanks PTO Today for the great forum!