PTOProud, what are you planning on having on that day? That would help you to decide your budget. We just had our annual Carnival. We spent about $7000 on food, drinks, prizes, inflatables, a train and activities. We cleared about $7000 in profit.

We did make a visor and tattoos. Check on Oriental Trading or the like you can get things pretty cheap.

One thing that we do to pad our end of it is to write to companies and ask for donations. I am in Florida so we got big ticket items like Disney hopper tickets, Sea World and Busch Gardens. We also have each classroom make a themed "basket" to auction off and the teachers also come up with something to auction as well (teacher for day, bowling with teacher, etc.). All told we had over 100 items for silent and chinese auction. We made $5000 on this alone.

We have about the same size school. We always budget $2000 but usually never spend it. We get lots of donations. We always buy prizes, food, drinks, etc.

Work on donations for food so you are not out money for that and maybe charge a small fee -- such as 2-3.00 each to help off-set the cost since it's early in the school year

Our PTO is considering having a Fall Festival next year. This will be our first time so we were wondering how much we should budget for costs to startup? We have under 400 students in our school but plan on opening it to the public. Some are worried that we won't make enough to cover the cost to start.