Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. We are kicking around the idea of a Fall Festival. We are considering a spaghetti dinner, fall festival games, costume contest and a haunted house.

Has anyone ever done this before.

Are there any helpful hints out there?

We usually raise about $15K-$20K on our Fall Festival. Last year our King-Queen/Prince-Princess contest reached it's 50th year. In the last 5 years it has always raised over $10k alone. We also do a supper which makes around $350 and the last couple of years we have did a haunted house. It nets over $600.00 and it VERY popular. We used to do the Talent Show that night too, but our principal feels that there is too much going on and there isn't enough focus on the students. We also have a prize/cake walk that does well and last year was our first basket auction. We sell concessions during the day for the kids.

check out the fundraiser board, there are TONS of absolutely awesome ideas for fall festival/carnivals....theres even ideas for haunted houses.

When I went to elementary school we had a pumpkin decorating contest. Every decorated at home and then brought them to school Friday night. Saturday night we could go and check them out. They were in the gym on tables according to grade. The PTO judged the decorating and gave ribbons in each grade, everyone else got an honerable mention. It was the highlight of my elementary school memory..... I LOVED IT

[ 08-18-2004, 04:59 PM: Message edited by: melloweer ]

We have in the past several fall festivals at our school, very succesful, pie eating contest, best dressed scarecrow, penny sale, try and see if you can get pumpkins donated and have the kids dress and decorate the pumpkins, in the past we have had spin art for the children, a moon bounce, alot of fun for the children, we also have donated items from local restaurants, stores for prized. We are a school of about 1500 students and maybe 1/2 of that show up for the festival, but we usually make around $3,000 as a profit. Good Luch - PTO President

Pie eating contest...very interesting. My kids would love that and so would my hubby. How many entries and how much does it cost to enter?

Our high school SGA had an "election" one year, for .25 per vote you could vote for the teacher you wanted to see get a pie in the face, of course the teacher had to agree.

We also started a craft booth. The crafts are ordered from Oriental and the kids make them during class with the help of a volunteer. They may choose to buy them or donate them to sell at the Fall Festival, we charge .50-$1.00 depending on the craft. We know everyone cannot buy one (we are a very low income county) so we go on and on about how they are helping out our school, but if a child really wants the craft he/she made, it's took care of.

We did the toliet paper toss last year. The only problem was at night when there were older kids getting to rough. They did not go to our school. I got the idea off of a link from here a couple of years ago. We usually have several games and the prizes come from Oriental.

www.pastor2youth has some great game ideas and I think there have been some other web pages mentioned on other posts.

Can you tell us more about that toilet paper toss? Sounds interesting. Thanks!