Great excitement was had a our PTA Meeting! The Circus is coming and we could make a lot of money for the school. This was in 2015 when we paid the deposit and it was all we talked about at the PTA meetings. We thought it was a great PTA Fundraising idea. We finally got the circus to put a show on at the school in 2018.
So what does one need to take on board for the circus to put a show on a PTA Event at your school.
Read, read and read the small print – all of it. There is a lot to take on board, but you need to make sure you understand everything that is going to happen.
Overnight accommodation at the school was mentioned, unfortunately this was one area the school could not offer as there were no showers at the school.
Look at the booking calendar to see if there are any other local schools in the area that have booked close to the date you would like and also check with the council to see what events they have got planned. The last thing you want and need is to find too many local PTA events have been booked at the same time.
One big clause that we could not work around was the fact that the circus supplied all the refreshments and could not guarantee them to be nut free, as the school worked on a nut free policy. Ideally the PTA School would have liked if the school could supply the refreshments then we could hope to make a little profit from the sales.
Despite all our efforts of advertising the PTA event in the hope of selling 600 tickets, we only managed to sell about 200 tickets in the end. Feedback was that the prices were too expensive for families with more than 2 children.
Finally the big day arrived, along with the rain and the cold weather. The circus arrived to set up early in the morning, they average about 4 hours for this. Before we knew it, it was show time. The circus lasted about 2 hours and yes we had lots of laughs and giggles with the clowns. The acts were good and the Ring Master was very loud and funny. Two hours after the show everything was packed up and tided away.
Looking back, was it all worth it? Did the school make a huge profit. In a nutshell sadly No. Where did we go wrong, we honestly don’t know, we gave it our best try.
Anonymous
(The author preferred to remain anonymous but is a member of The Stamptastic PTA Rewards Scheme) and received a £30 fundraising voucher for writing this blog post. If you would like to write a blog post for us please join our Stamptastic PTA and Schools Facebook Group to find out more!)
More PTA Fundraising Ideas UK
Top Ten Tips for running a PTA Quiz Night
