The Vital Role of PTA Fundraising
Primary schools, secondary schools, SEN schools and independent schools, they can all benefit from PTA fundraising. It provides an added stream of funds to help the school give the best possible learning experience for their students. Whether you’re part of an experienced PTA or you’re new to the PTA world, here we’re looking at the importance of PTA fundraising. We’ve got a few ideas on how to raise funds, plus we’ll explain how using easyfundraising can supplement your PTA fundraising efforts.
Understanding the basics of PTA Fundraising
Let’s start with a few of the basics of PTA fundraising.
The Purpose of PTA Fundraising
PTA fundraising plays a vital role at every school. Funds raised by the PTA provide access to resources that may not otherwise be available. The PTA can help raise money for new books, new classroom equipment, playground equipment or classrooms. Whatever the school needs to help make the lives of the children better, the PTA can help.
Key People Involved in PTA Fundraising
There are a variety of people involved in the PTA. They include at least three named officers, volunteers, school staff and community members.
The 3 Named Officers
Every PTA Board should have at least three named officers. They are:
The PTA Chair
The PTA Chair will lead the PTA in line with its constitution and the wishes of its members. Their responsibilities include:
- Chairing meetings
- Setting dates and agendas for meetings
- Delegating tasks
- Implementing decisions
- Welcoming and motivating new volunteers
The PTA Treasurer
The treasurer will manage the day-to-day finances of the PTA, keep a record of all financial activity, report on finances and bank the takings from events and fundraisers.
The PTA Secretary
The secretary is responsible for ensuring all activities of the PTA run smoothly, arranging meetings and taking minutes. They must also communicate with the school, committee members, volunteers and the school community.
The PTA Committee
While the three officers must be on the PTA Board, a dedicated PTA Committee will also be made up of both parents and teachers who will attend committee meetings and help plan events. Roles and responsibilities for fundraising events will be assigned at committee meetings.
PTA Volunteers
This will most likely be parents who volunteer their time to help out at PTA events or who act as PTA liaisons between the committee and the different classes within the school.
Successful PTA Fundraising Ideas
A successful PTA event will be one that raises plenty of funds for the school. You’ll want children, parents, teachers and the local community to be engaged and feel part of the event. And your only limitation is your creativity.
Community Events
School fetes and summer fairs have been popular PTA fundraising events for decades and they’re a great way to get the kids excited and your attendees spending money. The school grounds are the ideal place to hold your event, and you’ll need parents to pitch in with baking and donating items. You might also want to engage with local groups and clubs that can run stalls at the fair. What about the local football team organising a penalty competition? It’s great exposure for them and the kids will love it too.
A talent show is a perfect idea for an evening event. You can hold it in the school hall and ask the kids to showcase their very best talents. Entry fees will be your best bet of raising funds, but you can also sell drinks and refreshments during the event too, to increase the coffers.
Other ideas for community fundraising events include car boot sales, quiz nights and community auctions.
Sponsored Activities
Whilst things like quiz nights and talent shows might cost a little bit of cash to put on, sponsored activities offer a cost-effective alternative to work alongside your bigger fundraising activities.
You could do a sponsored day of silence at school, a fun run, or ask the kids to raise a certain amount of cash in the school holidays by choosing a sponsored event of their own. For example, they could each raise £20 during Easter by scoring goals at football, swimming a certain distance, mowing lawns or doing jobs around the house.
Other fantastic cost-effective ideas for sponsored activities include a read-a-thon, charity haircut, sponsored litter-pick, and a sponsored walk or cycle to school week.
Online Fundraising
Traditionally PTA fundraising centred on in-person events, and while these will often still be crowd-pleasers, you can also supplement these with online fundraising. You have a range of different options for online fundraising, many of which are easy to set up, simple for your supporters to donate to and accessible to a wider audience than just your usual school supporters.
Leveraging Online Platforms for PTA Fundraising
Here we’ll look at your online options to assist with your PTA fundraising.
Using easyfundraising for PTA fundraising
At easyfundraising, we give you a free and simple way to raise money for your PTA.
All you need to do is register your PTA fundraising as a good cause on our website. You can then create a dedicated page for your cause, giving information about the school and what the funds will go towards. You can also detail your fundraising goals with a tracker that shows how you’re doing.
When someone uses easyfundraising to shop online, they simply select your cause before they shop and the retailer they spent with will send a donation your way. It doesn’t cost you anything and the person that made the purchase isn’t charged anything either. The donation is made by the retailer on their behalf.
Setting up your cause on easyfundraising couldn’t be easier. Then it’s just a case of getting your supporters to shop with us. There are more than 7,500 retailers they can spend their cash with, and each time they do you’ll get a donation. You can also reach a broader audience across our 3.4 million supporters that are already signed up to easyfundraising. Through our dedicated toolkit, we’ll help you promote your page whether on social media or email to help attract as many supporters as possible.
Social Media and Online Promotion
If you’re not already sending regular PTA emails to the parents of all students at the school, you should be. This is the ideal platform to provide details of upcoming events, showcase fundraising targets and celebrate successes.
You can also engage with school alumni with regular PTA update emails too. Just make sure you tailor the content of your emails to engage with each specific audience.
Social media is a platform you shouldn’t ignore. You can post regular updates on events and your fundraising activities, but social media also provides a platform to tell stories about the school, the reasons behind your fundraising efforts and how they will benefit the children. You can create videos of events, image-based posts to showcase your fundraising targets and post pictures of happy faces at school and during events.
Engaging Parents and the Community in PTA Fundraising
So, how do you get more parents and the wider community involved in your fundraising efforts?
Communicating the Importance of PTA Fundraising
Communication of your fundraising activities is key. To get people involved in your efforts, you need to clearly explain the purpose and benefits so they can buy into your cause.
Whether it’s regular emails, newsletters, social media or updates to local businesses, you want to clearly show how the funds will directly impact the school. Detail exactly what it will go towards, whether facilities, student programs or new equipment. Emphasise how important parent and community participation is and how it will benefit the students in the long run.
This will help get people on board in the first place, but you also don’t want their engagement to wane. You need to keep them engaged with regular updates throughout the campaign, so they’ll stay informed and involved.
Encouraging Active Participation
Yes, you want parents and the community to donate to your fundraising efforts, but you also want them involved with your events too.
You’ll need parents to donate their time as volunteers, whether that’s helping out on a cake stall or collecting entrance fees for an event after school. It’s crucial to make it easy for parents to participate, as parents are always super busy after all.
Volunteering can be made easy if you offer a variety of clearly defined opportunities, with specific responsibilities and a time commitment. If you need parents to volunteer at an event, break down all the tasks that must be performed into specific roles on a clear time roster. If they can immediately see the benefit to the school of helping out and know it won’t take up too much of their time, they’re more likely to get involved.
If you want to get community groups involved, like the local football team we mentioned earlier, you’ll need to clearly state the benefit to them too. Will it help them get new members? Will it help them engage with parents who may be willing to help out as coaches? Or could it lead to training sessions held after school?
Collaboration is always key for effective engagement.
Ensuring Successful and Ethical PTA Fundraising
When you’re planning a PTA event, it’s easy to spend all your time and energy on promoting your event and engaging with volunteers. This is of course important work, but you can’t lose sight of any laws and regulations too.
Complying with Fundraising Laws and Regulations
The main laws and regulations you need to follow are to ensure you’re adequately covered with insurance. You’ll need:
Public liability insurance
This will cover you if someone has an accident at the event which causes them injury or damage to property. You might think that the school’s public liability insurance will be sufficient, but this isn’t the case. The PTA is a separate organisation and must have its own policy.
Third-party insurance
If you’re having any third parties providing services at your event, such as bouncy castles or entertainment, they will need to have their own public liability insurance in place. It’s important to check with your local council what insurance is required to make sure you’re covered for all eventualities.
Consent from Parents for Images on Social Media
If you’re planning on using images of your event across your social media to highlight how well it went and showcase your fundraising goals, it’s important to always obtain consent from the parents for any children under the age of 16.
Maintaining Transparency and Accountability
It’s extremely important to be open and transparent about how much has been raised and where the funds are being allocated. This will be the job of the treasurer to keep accurate accounts detailing how much was spent for an event, how much was raised and what this will go towards. The secretary will then need to properly communicate this.
When a PTA works on behalf of a school and raises money specifically for the school, it is accountable to the school. This is where an effective and properly structured PTA board and committee is essential.
The Power of PTA Fundraising and the Role of easyfundraising
A good PTA that continually raises funds for the school can be lifechanging for the students. New facilities, school trips and new equipment can truly enhance their time at the school. And for the school itself, being able to showcase all the fantastic facilities that PTA fundraising has helped it afford, can act as a real draw when prospective parents look around. It also means happy and engaged children during school time.
While you have so many options available to help you fundraise, from in-person events at the school to sponsored events it’s also important not to ignore the power of easyfundraising. By showcasing your fundraising goals online and giving your supporters an easy way to donate money, you can dramatically increase your fundraising potential. Many PTAs continue to bolster their fundraising with easyfundraising already, and you can be next.