PTO Today

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.

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

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.

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 inflatables, games and sell food. We sell pre-sale wristbands for unlimited use of the inflatables ($8 presale; $10 day of) and sell 5 tickets for $1 presale and 4 tickets for $1 the day of. Our presales typically cover the majority of our costs. All of our food and drink was donated and dads volunteered to grill and sell the food. This is where we made the profit. Our school has 1400 children and 74 classrooms. We spent $5000 for inflatables, decorations, games and prizes. We made $8000 profit.

Hope this helps.

We are a school of 600-- we budgeted 5,000 or our Spring Fair and we bring in about 10,000 annually. We pre-sell tickets for our game area 5-1.00 before event and 4-1.00 day of event. We also sell food -- hot dogs, chips, drinks, ice cream and cotton candy -- And we have approx. 12-14 baskets made up that we raffle off- tickets are 1.00 a piece -- plus we have another raffle with larger prizes such as 500.00/400.00/ PSP/ Nintendo DS/ REs. gift cards... etc... a fun night out with some profit.

I've been involved with our "Monster Mash" for the past 4 years. We've been very successful.

we have 745 students, about 200 plus their families and siblings attend each year.

budget: $1500. this covers DJ, decorations, prizes, food, games.

we charge $5 per family whether you have 1 child or 10.

activities: DJ, costume contest, plinko for prizes, tattoos, spider ring toss, bowling for ghosts (painted gourds) and a haybail setup for pictures.

decorations: halloween stuff, crepe paper, ribbons, balloons, lights (keep it simple, it's gonna be dark!)

food: pizza $1/slice. free items: chips, pretzels, gold fish, water, punch (donated from local McDonalds)

prizes: best costume for each grade level, best teacher costume, best adult costume

volunteer tips: use local high school students. they have to fulfill community service hours.

we hold ours at a local high school since they have a larger space than our school does.

We usually profit abuot $900 each year. This is a "give back" to our community, not intended as a fundraiser.

if you are doing it for the first time, than I would keep it simple.

we hold a spring fling carnival in May/June where we have inflatables outside.

tips: ask local churches or other schools to borrow their games.

email me directly if you have other questions or would like to see our fliers and volunteer forms.

Diem

one more thing... candy....

one year, we put candies in large bowls on each table and it disappeared in seconds. this year, we made goody bags with local donations of free kids meals.

one year we did vendor booths and had them pass out candies. we made money off vendor booth fees, but candy disappeared again bc kids went round and round 5 times.

we have 3 charges: $5 per family plus 1 bag candy donation, $8 per family, no candy donations, $10 per family at the door.

good luck!

d

This amount wouldn't be enough for our event-- we count on our families spending between 40-100.00 during the evening-- between food, games and raffles.

We have two different companies providing the food. Dominos Pizza will have a booth and give us 25% of what they sell and the company that rents us the inflatables will set up a seperate tent to sell cotton candy, funnel cakes, nachos, and popcorn and give us 25% of what he sells. That way we don't have to pay for anything or find volunteers to staff those booths.