Our BIG library fundraising project

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budgets, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hello and welcome to episode 25 of the PTA Podcast. Today I'm going to tell you all about the biggest project that I was involved with whilst chair of my PTA. It's something I've wanted to talk to you about for a really long time, and I felt that now was a good moment. It's also my proudest achievement as a fundraiser, as a volunteer, and that's when we fundraised for a new library at my school. And it's very apt that I'm talking to you about that today because actually it's World Book Day this week, and I love World Book Day so much. I love the activities that the school lines up for the children and the challenge of my son's costume. I know that some people really hate World Book Day because of the costume aspect, but I have to say I do enjoy um mostly finding out what they want to be. They have been something uh different every time, and I only have one child at primary school now, so just have one costume to sort out now that they've all moved on. So it's very interesting to see how their reading tastes have changed as they've um got older. Um I love anything to do with books and reading, it's totally my happy place. I'm a person who likes physical books, so I don't have a Kindle and I don't read any e-books. I like to hold a book, to feel a book, to smell a book, to smell the pages. I just love it. It's it's it's a real, really special thing for me. Um, and I really wish the focus of World Book Day could be really extended and expanded to um adults and uh more children in secondary school and across the world. I just think it's it's a really special thing to celebrate. And immersing yourself in a story is the ultimate escapism when you take away all the electronic stuff we watch on the television. Sitting with a book is a really special thing, and um it can feel like such a luxury to actually sit down and have time to read a book right now, can't it? In our very busy lives, and I don't often have the luxury of that during the day. Most of my own reading is done um before bed, trying to wind down to go to sleep. But sometimes, if it's a warm sunny day, I might give myself an hour off, whatever I'm doing, and um take my book and sit and read in the garden whilst the children are at school and my husband's at work, and um just have some quiet time and just go to my story and be in my story uh for a few moments um and th just thoroughly enjoy myself. So my younger son has just finished reading the final Harry Potter books. He's just turned ten and he's just completely devoured the last two books. He did start the Harry Potter series when he was much younger because he you know loved the magical aspects to it. So he listened to the audiobooks to start with, um, because my children think I'm a bit of a mean mummy, because if there is a film that's come out based on a book, I will insist that they what that that the that they read the book first, read the book first, because the films miss out so many details. In fact, the Harry Potter films I feel have missed out so many details from the stories that actually they're quite hard to f it's quite hard to follow the story, I think, because there are so many bits that haven't been explained and missed out. So definitely with the Harry Potter series, I was very adamant that all of my children should watch should read the books before watching the films, and to their credit, they have done it. So that's really good because I think now when they watch the films they really understand what's happening. Um, but because Patrick was so l little when he was really interested in Harry Potter, um, he couldn't read the books to start with. So um we did get the first three books, I think it was, on an audio CD. So my local library has loads of audiobooks, so we just borrowed those and he listened to them. So he he could understand what was going on, um, but then he's finished off the series actually reading the books himself, which is really great. So we've just had a run on Harry Potter in our house, and as such, Patrick has decided to go to Wellbook Day as Draco Malfoy. So that's the costume where um we were aiming for. But he specifically said that he wants to be the Malfoy from the last book. Um, and in the film of the last book, I think the very last film I think, uh, Malfoy isn't wearing wizarding robes, you know, the robes they wear to go to school, like their school uniform. He's just wearing well, he's wearing all black, like a smart black outfit. I think at one point he does have a black suit on and then black things underneath, it's all very dark. Um so that was a little bit more challenging, shall we say? Um, when it is a dressing up thing at school or Halloween or anything, um I always try and make or cobble together the kids' costumes because firstly I like a challenge, as you know. I think it's a bit more fun to try and do something imaginative or think, well, how could we create the way that this character looks with what we already have? But also I think if we have to buy anything, then it means we buy real clothes, which then obviously has the potential that the children can reuse them. Um because some of the I mean it is it is really difficult, you know. Some of these costumes that all come out when it's World Book Day or all come out when it's Halloween are actu are quite good, you know, they do look very authentic, um, and they come with accessories and all sorts of things, and so sometimes it is really hard to see those costumes and think, oh, I want to make my own, but I know it's not gonna look as good as that because of all the details they can print on the material and everything. Um, but I do have to remind myself that obviously the costumes are made from materials that won't biodegrade, um, and so that's why why we try and use real clothes to get the most potential out of the clothes. Obviously, it's good to try and buy secondhand costumes, and if you do buy a new costume, you can then donate it to a charity shop or to a scheme that maybe um wheels them back out when it's Halloween or Well Book Day or any other type of dressing up. And I know that some PTAs do do costume exchanges, which I think is a brilliant idea, because most costumes are only worn for I mean, probably just a few hours, aren't they? And then your child grows out of them or they decide they don't like that character anymore. So if you've ever run a costume exchange as a PTA, I think that's brilliant. We um haven't done it at my school because my school's quite small. We did try once to do a Christmas jumper exchange, but it didn't go very well. We didn't have many donated uh and they didn't really sell, so we we've never tried a costume exchange ourselves. Um so in this case for Patrick's costume, it was actually once I started to think about it, it was actually very straightforward. So I just bought him a long-sleeve black shirt from Next and some black school trousers. Um I know that Patrick will wear the shirt again because his favourite colour happens to be black, he likes black clothes, so this is a winner for Patrick, and obviously why he picked it in the first place. So um, so black shirt, black trousers, black school shoes, and then we happen to have um a small green velvet jacket, which is um like a bottle green colour, which is pretty close to the slithering green in Harry Potter, and he's gonna wear that over the black shirt. Um, so I think we've done it. I think we've done as much as we can, and then he's already got a wand at home, and he has various Harry Potter accessories that he can use. So um, so that's yeah, I think we've got there. Uh I but I think the jacket has really helped to pull the costume together. So, as you know, I have three boys and I have now amassed a collection of small boy uh fitted jackets like suit jackets. Um so I started with two jackets when my um two older children were like four and two or something. I found some amazing velvet jackets in HM for £20 each. And it was about Christmas time, and they happened to have a lot of Christmas parties and things, so so I bought them one each and they wore them and looked really cute and really smart. And from then on, every year in the sales, I have bought a new jacket for my boys, so I've only had to buy one for my eldest son because obviously all the other jackets get passed down. Um, so each year I think I have done it every year in the sales when when they're cute jackets at half price, I just buy one. And uh, do you know we have used them every time because maybe there's been a family wedding or a party or a dressing-up costume that they needed a jacket for, so they have come in really handy. They're all different colours. I haven't managed to get them all the same. But if you have uh boys in your house, um I would recommend it. It's been um a worthwhile purchase because new, they're so expensive, they're like over £50, um, if not more. So um getting them in the sales and waiting till the end of the sales as well when they're reduced even more is is my top tip for that. But anyway, Patrick's costume is sorted, we're okay. So the other thing for World Book Day is that um the school is serving is is serving the children some bookie biscuits, they're having what they call a book nick where they're all taking books into the hall, sitting on nice cushions and blankets, and having a biscuit while they read um with each other. So they asked for some volunteers to make some book-shaped biscuits. So I have done that, um, although mine aren't book-shaped uh because I didn't have the right cutter. So I have gone for round biscuits with um I think I with my terrible icing skills wrote I love books on the top, and uh, I'll put a photo of those on my website so you can see see what I've done. But um I think they went down very well. I actually made a double batch so that we had some at home as well to celebrate we're booked at home. And uh and yes, that then the other thing the school asked the children to do is to decorate the inside of a shoebox with their favourite book or aspects of their favourite book. So Patrick has chosen the last Harry Potter book, and he is determined. If you know Harry Potter, you'll understand this. He is determined to include all seven Hall Cruxes in the box, which was great when we started, uh, but now it's be it's become a bit of a drag to get to get them all finished. But anyway, he has persevered and uh we've got them all in there and he's labelled them all and um spent a long time decorating his box, which is really lovely because Patrick doesn't often sit down to do crafts, but he worked really hard on this one, so I'm really pleased that he he did some extra arty stuff. Anyway, let's move on now to talking about the big library project that my PTA was involved with recently. So the idea came from a teacher at my school who is the English lead teacher, and she wanted to use an empty classroom at our school and convert it into a library for the children. So my school has uh five classrooms, but at the moment our numbers have dropped over the last 10-15 years, and we're now only using three of those classrooms. Um now it's actually quite handy to have spare classrooms because sometimes our children they're in mixed um year group classes, and sometimes the teachers like to take a year group out at a time and do some work with just with that group. So having extra spaces in the school where the children can go to do small group work is really helpful with these spare classrooms. But um obviously two spare classrooms is quite a lot to have, and uh so she saw the potential of using one of those classrooms as the school library. So at that time, our school library consisted of just a couple of bookcases of books, which were a mixture of fiction and nonfiction, with a lot of the non-fiction books being very dated. I mean, you didn't need to be an expert to look at those shelves of books and just think these books have been here for a very long time, they were all faded, they weren't inspiring. Um, I mean, if I was a child, I wouldn't have really wanted to go and you know, investigate that library, and it was stuck in a corner in a corridor. It was just it wasn't a library. I mean, you couldn't really call it a library, so um, so I thought her idea and aspiration was absolutely fantastic, and I was really excited to get started on it because obviously I love books, so I thought it was a perfect project. So the first thing we did was to apply for a grant to cover most of the funding. Um, I have a background in grant applications. I used to work, uh my job used to be helping people submit grant applications. I might talk about that in a later episode, possibly. Um, so I helped her put together an application. We submitted an application to something called the Foyle Foundation, which is a charity specifically funding school libraries. So we thought um we'd have quite a good chance really of getting some funding. And we put together a really strong application, we worked really hard on it, but unfortunately we just weren't successful, um, which was a massive blow because we had estimated the costs of funding in the library at £10,000 to £12,000, which is an awful lot of money. Um, and the thought of having to raise £10,000 to £12,000 was very, very daunting. So we were really keeping our fingers crossed for this grant application, and yeah, unfortunately, they didn't fund any of our project, um, so we we had nothing. Uh, I do think this is uh something that is particularly hard for small schools. One of the questions on the application form was about how many people this is going to impact or how many people will see the benefit of this project. And obviously, we had about 80 children on the books at that point, and so we could say there's 80 children at the school, there's this many families at our school. Um, but you know, if you are looking at grant applications and one application is from a school with maybe 200 children or 250 and and they're asking for a similar amount of money because it probably would be a similar amount amount of money, um, you might want to pick the one uh where more people are going to benefit from the same amount of money. Um, so yeah, we didn't get through the application process sadly, um, and we felt pretty deflated, I have to be on this, for a few weeks. But then, you know, there was just no alternative other than to raise the money ourselves as a school. And to raise £10,000 to £12,000 was at least double our normal annual fundraising income, possibly triple, really. So at that time we were raising about well, between three and four thousand pounds a year. So we've never had such a big project to fundraise for before, and certainly one that didn't span over one year because we thought it's going to be, you know, based on current estimates, current figures, it's going to be at least two years to get this money together. Uh, but having said that, as you know, I do like a challenge. And with the end goal being a school library, which is so exciting, I I couldn't wait to get started. Actually, I was just really buzzing with the challenge of trying to get that money together. So we thought it was going to be two years. Uh, it didn't actually take us that long, but uh that's what we were preparing for. And we thought obviously it's going to be very hard. I felt it was also going to be difficult to ask um the families of children in year five and year six to contribute because they would have left the school before um by or by the time we'd actually raised the money and got the library. And I felt really sad for them actually that basically all of our funding um events and activities were were geared towards this library that they were just never going to see or experience. But I have to say that it it didn't stop them taking part in all the activities, which I was really grateful for, and I felt it showed a really great community spirit at our school that they just took part and were okay with with the fact that they were helping, you know, the next generation of children to come through the school. So I thought that was a really special thing. And it was this big project which also changed the way in which we collaborated with our school and we created a much better working relationship with them all. We were really lucky in a sense that the teacher leading the project could see the value of engaging the PTA, not just spending the money that the PTA raised, but actually going further than that and engaging with us as a group. So she decided to regularly come to the PTA planning meetings. And about three meetings in, I realised that her presence at our planning meetings meant that she was in effect motivating the PTA team. And then we in turn were transferring that motivation out to the parents, so it worked really, really well. So she would come to our meeting, she would give us regular updates on what she was doing, what her plans were, and she brought designs because she's approached a library furniture company to try and make the best use of the classroom space. So they'd put some designs in, so she shared those with us so we could see that there was progress happening and we could get excited about what was going to happen, and then when we talked to parents about it or shared our fundraising activities, we could add in little snippets of what was happening, and so it kind of cascaded on uh like that. So um we didn't share all the details of everything with all the parents, um, but we we definitely did mention stuff in the school newsletter and and occasionally to kind of hook hook people into what we were doing. So I did mention communicating with parents in my last episode, episode 24, and how difficult that can be. Uh, and in this big project, communication was absolutely key. So I did spend a lot of time writing emails and newsletter articles to keep people's interest going and to let them know that there was momentum with the project and that it was moving forwards, as obviously the parents couldn't really see anything happening for a very long time. They didn't know all the toing and froing with this furniture company, they didn't know how the teachers were too spending lots and lots of time trying to choose books, that sort of thing, because it's not a lot you can kind of say while those those things are happening. In fact, there was there was one time where I actually asked the school if they could buy some books for the library so that we could show the parents that something was happening. So I said, please can you just buy some books? You you must have decided on something already, just go and get those, and then we can take some photos of those and say, look, we've started to purchase books, we've started to make decisions about it, and that just kind of you know helped to keep the momentum going, helped to keep the interest going. So, with it being a long project, I felt as though we needed to have a go at some proper marketing for our cause. Now I don't know very much about marketing and PR strategies, but I did know that having a logo that you can repeat. And put on everything that you send out was really important. And at that time we had a PTA member who was a very talented illustrator. So I asked her to come up with a logo for us using a phrase that we'd all agreed on, and our phrase was grow our library. And so she drew a beautiful logo with flowers and leaves all intertwined around the words grow our library. And we basically used that logo every single time I wrote anything about the library or the fundraising. I put it on every poster, I put it on every newsletter article. I don't know for sure if it actually made a difference, but I really hope that it did. And I hope that just seeing that logo made people connect. Oh yes, this is what this activity's for, this is what this cake sale's for, this is what I'm bringing my child to school in non-uniform, this is what it's for. I think that what also helped our project be so successful is that we were fundraising for a very wholesome thing. I mean, who wouldn't have supported a new school library? It's something that everybody could understand what it is, everybody could get behind it, and it was going to benefit every single child at the school for many years to come. And I think that was a huge reason why we had a lot of buy-in from our parent community and also from the wider community and some outside organisations too. And that also meant that there were many opportunities for people to get involved, perhaps groups of parents who had not been so involved in school life before. So, for example, when we were when we had bought all the stuff that we needed for the library, we needed to clear out and redecorate the classroom. And um uh the teacher decided that to keep it simple, because we didn't have a lot of money for lots of redecoration, we'd just give the walls a lick of paint, you know, just to refresh everything. And so a group of parents volunteered to come in over the weekend and they just completely redecorated the room. It was really amazing. And they were a group of parents who hadn't really been involved in fundraising activities before, they hadn't really been involved in doing much volunteering at the school before either, but they obviously saw this as a very specific project and thought, yeah, we can go and do that with our friends, let's let's go for it. And the other thing also that another group did was when the library furniture actually arrived. Um, I wasn't I wasn't fortunately away for this part, but I think it was all flat-packed furniture, so the teacher needed again a group of people to come in with tools to actually construct the furniture, and uh that was yeah, an opportunity for another group of parents who were keen on that to come and help. So, because the project was big, there were many different aspects to it, it was a great way of involving lots of different groups of parents who hadn't been involved before, and I think that made it um even more special. So, how did we raise the money? We were aiming for about £10,000. Uh, once my um teacher had costed up what she thought was needed in the room, um, the figure we got to was about £10,000. Uh, we already had £1,500 to donate from our PTA account, so that meant we had to raise about £8,500 plus more to replenish our PTA account. So it's quite a tall order, really. And I was very conscious to try and keep the fundraising all different so that people didn't get bored of donating money for the same events over and over again. So that meant as a PTA putting quite a lot of energy into bigger events, but also having a go at some new ideas, which is obviously requires more time and energy because you haven't done them before. And this project was where things changed for us as a PTA. We branched out and we tried lots of new things. We did a lot of research online. That's when I really started looking at some of these PTA Facebook forums to see what other people had done and get some fresh ideas. And so I'm going to talk about the things that we did do, and the events and activities that I'll mention probably won't seem very unusual or very different to you, as lots of PTAs have already been doing them, and uh you'll have heard about them over the last few years. But at that time, for us, all these things were very new and very different. And this project really gave us a fantastic opportunity to try these new things and see what would happen basically. Uh, I've already spoken about some of these things that we organised in other episodes of my podcast, so I'm not going to go into loads of detail here, but if I have talked about it in more detail, I'll let you know which episode that you can go back to listen to for all the details of how everything actually worked if you're particularly interested. So the other thing to note, which made it harder for us in some respects, was that there were still COVID restrictions at this time. So we kicked off our library project in 2021, uh in the in the spring of 2021, uh, with our first fundraiser in the summer of 2021. So our PTA account at the start of this project was already very depleted because we'd had no fundraising money at all from 2020. We we just hadn't been able to do anything at all. So we just had a bit of money left left in our account from the previous year. I think we had about one and a half K maybe. Um and then so we didn't have a lot to put in to start with, and then trying to think of fundraising ideas that were new and exciting, but also had to adhere to still a lot of COVID restrictions was really challenging. But perhaps it did lead us to trying things we wouldn't normally have tried or considered before. So it was a bit of a double-edged sword in a way, um, but with you know, with good points. So I'll now tell you what we did over the year to raise the money that we needed. So we had a solid mixture of some big events, small events, and then some external money from grants and other places, and all of these three aspects were equally important in reaching our ambitious target because it was very ambitious. And what I've done to prepare for this episode is I downloaded all of the uh WhatsApp messages from our PTA WhatsApp group to go back through because I couldn't remember all the things we've done. And uh just as an aside, my PTA started a WhatsApp group in 2017, and I was one of the initial members in that group. So uh so that 2017 to 2025, so say that's eight years of WhatsApp messages, and I downloaded all of them, stuck them into a Word document. Now, how many pages do you think our WhatsApp group messages covered? I didn't download any of the images or posters we shared or anything like that. Literally just text. That's it. How many pages? How many A4 pages do you think it was? Would it surprise you if I said it was 500 pages? Yes, 500 pages of discussion, debate, jokes, exasperation, determination, all of those things. Anyway, yeah, so there you go, 500 pages. It meant for an a riveting read, I can tell you. So the first thing we did was, as I've mentioned, was to decide our logo and have a tagline for the project called Grow Our Library, which I've already mentioned. And we decided that our first thing to do was to, because of the COVID restrictions, we had to do something, we couldn't come together as a group, the children had to do something as individuals, and so that's when we came up with the idea of challenge 21. And I talked about this um in episode 13. So we set up a just giving page that everybody would uh contribute to, and we set up our um gift aid thing, our gift aid reference number with HMRC, and that was our first fundraising activity. So just a brief summary is that the children had to pick their own individual challenges relating to the number 21. So it could be something that you did every day for 21 days, it could be uh something that you did 21 times, like for example, you run one kilometer 21 times, or you cycle 21 kilometers, or you learn how to count from one to ten in 21 languages. Yeah, we did have a child that did that, pretty impressive. Um, one of my sons played a board game every day for 21 days. Um, my other son did I think he used we used to have TT rock stars at our school, so he went on TT Rockstars every day to do his times table every day for 21 days. Um, there were so many imaginative challenges that the children picked for themselves. It was lovely, it was a really brilliant challenge, and then everybody contributed to one just giving page, so the money just ticked up really nicely. Um, and we did it, it was our best fundraiser ever, actually. That challenge, and we raised just under £3,000 from that one challenge. It was absolutely incredible, and none of us were expecting it to be as successful as it was. I think what made it so successful is we hadn't done any fundraising for a very long time, and as I said, this was a really wholesome, lovely project that everyone could get behind. So I think that really inspired people to take part, and the children did an incredible job. So that gave us like a starting uh amount of £3,000, which was amazing. Then I started to try and think outside the box of where could we get money from? Who else can we ask for money? Because obviously getting all of that money from the parent community is going to be a really tall order. I didn't want people to start getting sick and tired of us for asking for money. So I was constantly thinking who else, who else is involved, who else has an interest in our school, in our local area, who else can we ask? Um, so one of the places I did approach was the local parish council. Um, and they donated £500, which was really good. Then we launched a our first um text raffle as well because we'd already got some raffle prizes, I think, sorted out, you know, potentially for a summer fair that never happened because of COVID. So we didn't want to waste our raffle prizes, so we decided to have a go at an online raffle and we picked a text raffle, and I give you all the details of who we used and how it ran in episode four of my podcast, which is all about raffles, talk about raffle licenses, etc. So our first text raffle raised £351. Then we started to do quite a few different sorts of non-uniform days. So this is when we started to do things like Crazy Hair Day, we did Crazy Clothes Day, we did Pajama Day. So we agreed with the school that we were going to do uh, I don't know, five or six non-uniform days, and um I talk about those uh in episode 13, which is a low I did an episode about low effort fundraising ideas, and so I talked about uh non-uniform days in there because they are very low effort and the children love them, so they're they're a winner really. Um so we raised uh obviously very small amounts of money at those, maybe £50 per non-uniform day, but that doesn't matter. When you have a big project like this, every little amount of money helps you get towards your total. So that's why I said that it was important. We had a mixture of the big events and the small events. The small events were just as important as those big events, so yeah, we made sure we had all these little events kind of sprinkled in between the bigger events. We were also very lucky that we had a couple of parents on the PTA or friends with people on the PTA who could claim matched funding through their companies. So this is where you have somebody who works for a company that's in a matched funding scheme. And if they take part as an employee in some charity work that they do as a volunteer, their company will match the amount that they've raised and um pay that money to the charity. So, for example, my friend was involved in one of our fundraisers, our fundraiser raised um uh £351 and she could match fund that with her company, so we got another £351 for free from them. So we did quite well. In fact, I think um we earned about £1,200 from matched funding. So that's £1,200 of free money, free money that came to our PTA. So if you haven't already done this, do ask your parent community if their employer can contribute matched funding because you need to get your hands on that money. The parent just needs to do a little bit of volunteering at an event, and then you can claim match funding. So it's really worth finding out about that. Uh, we did manage to have a mini outside winter fair one year, which I talk about in episode three, and we made a whole school tea towel to sell at the fair as well. So the fair itself, we had about 10 stalls, I think, all in the playground, all shivering in the playground in the winter. But everybody came to that event, it was lovely. We were only there for about an hour. People had pre-ordered their tea towels to pick up, so we made money on the tea towels and we made money at the winter fair. And I mean, the winter fair, I think we made about £450 just in an hour, just at the Winter Fairs. That was really incredible. Another thing that we tried uh that was new was an online balloon race. So I'll give you all the details on this again. Episode 13, low effort fundraising. So basically, the online balloon race, I think I have seen a couple of different websites. There might be more now, obviously, but um the one we used was called Eco Racing. You essentially just sign your PTA up, you pick a race to do. People can sign in, get a balloon. This is all virtual, it's not a real balloon race. Um, they can buy a balloon, um, decorate their balloon, name their balloon, and then all the balloons are released at the same time. And they actually use weather algorithms and Google Maps and stuff, so you can track where your balloon has gone. And the balloons fly for a set period of time, maybe I can't actually remember, maybe 10 days or 12 days, and then the balloon that's got the furthest wins a prize or something like that. But it was just really good fun. And once the balloon race started, we were all looking in, checking, you know, whose balloon is in the lead, that sort of thing. So that was just a really fun fundraiser, something completely different that we'd never done before, and that raised uh just over 500 pounds, so that was really easy. We we hardly had to do anything for that. We did another raffle, which made another 500 pounds. Then we've very luckily um were donated some tickets to a cold play concert, which we raffled off as a separate raffle, and just those tickets on their own made us £350 in a raffle, so that was lucky. We did our normal Easter egg hunt, which um made us £100, again, not a lot of money, but wonderful for the children to take part in. And I talk about the way that we run our Easter egg hunts in episodes 15 and 16, which is all about Easter fundraising, and um in those episodes, actually I interviewed my sister-in-law in Sweden to because she was running an Easter fundraiser, so just to see how she ran hers in her village. We did used to do Rags to Rich's collect clothing collections, um which we don't do anymore, but um we did get about £100 from those, and then some of the money from our three times cancelled colour run, but we did eventually manage to do it. I talk all about that in episode six, which I labelled uh the event that all went wrong because it did all go wrong many times, but we did eventually do it, and we got some sponsorship for that. But yeah, listen to episode six, and I can tell you exactly how we organised our colour run. And then so we basically had our first event June 2021, which was Challenge 21, and then in June 2022, the library opened. So we managed to raise in one year um £8,600, which I could not believe we had done that. I was absolutely gobsmacked. I was of the impression that the £3,000, £4,000 we were raising previously, and it was probably, to be honest, closer to £3,000 than £4,000. I thought that was kind of the limit of my school. Um turns out it wasn't. So that's really good. I'm so, so impressed. So originally I thought it was going to take us two years to raise the money, but uh to get it all in one year was really quite astounding, and I think it really showed how everybody just really got behind the project, and it and it did feel during that year that everybody, the whole school community, really came together and worked really hard. I mean, we had also, you know, members of staff sharing our raffle information because it was a text raffle, you know, everybody could take part, so everybody was really, really helping. And I feel that with everybody putting time and effort in and money in, that actually made the library more special when we opened it. More special than if we just got the money from you know the failed grant application that we put in, because it really was then our library. We had put the hard work in, we had raised it, we had made it and opened it. And well, certainly that's how I felt about the library. It really felt like the proper community library. So the steps to actually creating the physical library were managed by the teacher. Uh, the school, as I said, cleared the classroom. A group of parents went in one weekend to give the walls a fresh coat of paint. Um, our teacher approached a specialist library furniture company to try and make the best use of the space with the shelving, the seating, try and zone the you know, the box that is the classroom and and make it sort of flow around, that kind of thing. So uh that was great. And she chose shelving, seating, a beautiful, colourful rug. It was all very shiny and colourful and you know, like really tempting, it really really draws you in. I'm I'm going to put some pictures on my website so you can have a look at the colours that she chose and the shape of the shelves. So uh some of the shelves are curved, um, and it and because they're curved and shaped differently, it creates different spaces in the library. It's it was very clever, really. Um we also put in some tables and some little lovely stools in matching colours to act as like a small group work area, as well as the um other seating for the library. Um and one of our one of the things that she used the money for was to uh hire an artist to come into school for the day. And we have three classes at school, so each class uh helped to make a different sculpture to go in the library, and these sculptures are made sort of shaped with like chicken wire, and then the children did paper mache over the top, and then when that dried, they all helped to paint the animals. So the teacher chose three animals, they weren't Book themed, they weren't book characters, they were just animals. So we have a penguin, a bear, and a tiger. And obviously, those three animals are in a lot of storybooks. So, um, so whilst they weren't specific characters, they are familiar animals to a lot of the children, and they were really large, and so you'll see in the photos, she's put them in the library up on shelves, and they just really help to kind of fill the space because our classroom has such high ceiling, makes the library look really small, but sort of putting these bigger sculptures on top just helps to fill the library up, if that makes sense, and and they just look incredible. You'll see, you'll see on the photos, they look really good. And I'm just so proud of all the hard fundraising which went into building this amazing resource for our village school, and everyone enjoys it so much. And the most special thing is that everybody helped build it, and I don't think there would be many other projects like this at my school that would even come close to the success that we had with this library project. So, if I was to run another project which required raising a much larger sum of money than we're used to raising just in one year, how would I do it? What are the key things to make it a success? And basically, what have I learned from doing this massive project? Just wanted to say that I don't think it matters how big your school is or how big your project is. Um, I think these things that I have discovered from running a large project like this could apply to any big project. So please don't be put off by the fact that my school is a different size to yours or my project is a different project to yours. I don't think that really matters. I think it's all about how you manage the project along the way. So I'm going to give you some, in fact, I think I've got 10 different things that I feel will help to make um a big project like this a success. So let's go down the list. So the first thing to do is to make your project a special project within your PTA. So this is not just another year of PTA funding, this is the PTA funding for this special project. So give your project a title, give it a strapline or a tagline, make a logo so that it looks different, so that it has a presence in your communications and um your social media. So and if you give it a catchy title, you can easily refer to it and people understand what it is you're talking about. And I think this is also a um way of giving a firm commitment to the project so that you've decided this is what we're doing. So our fundraising for the next however many months or years, our fundraising is going to be channelled to this project. Um, and if you can give an estimated timescale, do so that people know, oh, it's going to take this long. So we're in it for the long haul. And I think that's really important. The second thing, very important, is to find out from your school who the key people are who are going to make the project happen and get them on board, your PTA. So this could be a teacher, teaching assistant, or it could be somebody who's works in the administration of the school. But whoever it is, make sure you contact them and try and get a relationship with them. Um, invite them to come to your PTA meetings so that they can set out what the project is. They can also set out why it's important to the school that they have this at the school that and and what and you know the why you need to fundraise for this. Um because they're the person that's going to make the project happen, you need to work really closely with them and understand why it's important. Then once you have those clear ideas and you've got your logo and your special name for your project, whatever, uh obviously you need to communicate the project to the parents every way that you can. And if you've listened to my episode 24 about communicating with parents, you'll know, you'll understand that when you are communicating with parents, you need to tell them an awful lot of times in many different ways. So you do need a strategy for this part of the experience. So to really engage the parent community, you need to be very clear about explaining what achieving this project will mean for the children, for the school, and for the teachers there. And try and talk about how they will benefit as individuals from this project. So, for example, we were fundraising for a library, and it's very easy to understand what a library is, and it's a very wholesome thing. Everybody knows that a library contains books, and books are good for children, books are good for reading, having a variety of books to read helps the reading, etc. Um, and a library is also an extremely visible thing at your school. You could take someone to your school and show them the library, and you can show them children in the library reading books. It's very easy to convey why that's important to somebody. But other projects at your school might need more creative publicity. So, for example, uh recently we have provided money for the school to buy some new Chromebooks. Um, I think my school had some tablets and some laptops that when they bought those, they were already secondhand, reconditioned ones, and they just feel now that they're more almost more trouble than they're worth. So they wanted something new that was guaranteed for a few years and that was easy to manage. So we funded some Chromebooks. But the Chromebooks are very small items, aren't they? And they are not seen by parents. They are kept in a trolley where they get charged up and they're kind of almost not intentionally, but they are almost hidden away in the school. So if you have parents coming in for parents' evening or something, they're not going to see the Chromebooks, and they're never going to see a lesson, a computing lesson, or whichever lesson it is that's going to use the Chromebooks. So if you're funding for something that is not going to be highly visible, you need to find a way to really convey why that item is essential and really important. So, for example, with the Chromebooks, I would try and talk to the teachers about how the Chromebooks are going to revolutionize their teaching in the classroom. What difference is having the Chromebooks actually going to make to the children? What difference is it going to make to the teachers? How is it going to help them to teach better or to teach more creatively? Um, is it going to be the case that they're going to be able to use the Chromebooks in more lessons than just computing? Can they provide examples of the things the children have done on the Chromebooks? Can you take photos of the children using the Chromebooks or using the old laptops and not being very happy because they keep crashing or something? You've really got to think outside the box and sort of tease out the benefits of the new thing that you're fundraising for, especially if it's not going to be seen easily. You need to get those parents excited and get the children excited. And I have talked before about getting the children involved in the projects because they are so lovely, they get excited about all sorts of things really easily. So get the children on board as well as the adults. Then the next step is to plan your fundraising activities and to try and make I know this sounds really obvious, but to try and make your fundraising activities exciting. So if you've had your PTA for a really long time and maybe you've been repeating the same events, try some new ideas that might encourage more people to get involved or different people to get involved from your normal volunteer group. You could even try just using similar events to ones you've used before, but perhaps instead try and theme the events. So, for example, if you normally do a cake sale or something, maybe you could theme it to the project that you're fundraising for, or if there's a dress up, a dress-down day like a non-uniform day, can you theme it to be like the project just so that it keeps in people's minds what you're fundraising for? And that might um, you know, lead you to some new ideas. Or for example, if you're you know fundraising for say it was the Chromebook, say it's a computer-related item, could you brainstorm some sort of computer fundraiser? Like um, I don't know, I mean, my son's secondary school has recently run a Mario Kart tournament. Um, could you do something using the equipment that you want to fundraise for, for example? And again, you've got to put your thinking caps on, think outside the box. Where else can you get money from that's not just the parent community? If you have a really large project, you need a lot of money, you're really gonna have to start thinking about where you can get some extra money from. Obviously, grant applications are probably the first place to start. Um, sometimes they can be tricky because there are a lot of rules and regulations to follow. You can't spend the grant funding before you've received it, you can't, you know, claim costs before the grant has started, you might have to wait a few months for a decision on the grant application. So sometimes in a project, grant applications are great, and other times they could potentially hold you back. So I would never pause your fundraising if you're waiting on a grant application, just keep going with that. You can also look at your local community. So, for example, we looked at the parish council, and I will be doing an episode on this because I think it's sometimes um money that's overlooked, or perhaps people just aren't aware that there are these pots of money. Um, there's town councils as well that sometimes have grant application schemes. We happen to have a local um carnival that's near us that raises a lot of money, and then you can apply to them for funding for your local projects. So sometimes trying to find local places to support your project could end up being a better strategy than applying to national grants uh application schemes. So do try and do a bit of research and see what's available in your area. And a really good thing to do, obviously, is to motivate your PTA team. So when you have new big projects like this come along, hopefully everybody feels excited about that, and you've got to really harness that initial excitement and motivation. So, for example, could you use that time to allocate special responsibilities within your PTA team? For example, you could allocate to somebody to be the grant application um coordinator, you could allocate somebody to do some research into um local money that's available, you can allocate jobs now for this big project that you might not have got away with, you know, in the general running of your PTA. So now is a great time to try and do that. And if you can empower your PTA team and celebrate every victory that comes your way, no matter how small, then I think that will really keep everybody involved. And you know, you need to make sure that everybody feels that they are contributing, even if some people are contributing a lot more, other people are contributing something smaller. But if everybody feels like the whole project is moving forwards, then you're always going to be onto a winner. So if you are a PTA chair, that is your role. You have to take those people with you and run with this project, and the power of their enthusiasm will carry you through to the end of the project. And just the same as your PTA team, you need to try and involve your parents. So obviously, you're going to be running fundraising activities, fundraising events, but the other way to involve people is on a voluntary basis so they don't actually have to put their hand in their pocket all the time and give you money, they can give you their time. So, for example, for our library project, we had people painting the room, we had people making the furniture, a lot of people donated books as well to the library. Um, some people bought new books, some people sorted out books they had at home that they didn't need anymore. So there are a lot of ways people can contribute. Um, so think about your project and maybe discuss it with the school and just see how else we can get people involved and what they can bring. Maybe that you need people with special skills that could bring some special skills to the project. Um, but yeah, try and think outside the box as to how people can help. And then number eight is regular feedback. So if you're the leader of this project from the PTA's point of view, try and keep notes of any developments in the project, no matter how small they are, so that you can keep sharing progress on the project. So when it comes to the end-of-term newsletter or when it comes to sending an update email out, you have got a list of things all the time that you can talk about in your article or put on social media or something. Um so it you basically are always showing that the project is moving forward, you have got progress, it might be tiny, tiny little steps, but they are steps forward. So, and I would recommend that you actually write them down somewhere because you're bound to forget them. When it comes to someone saying, I need something for the newsletter, and you're like, Oh no, I can't remember what happened this term. Uh, yeah, just try and make notes and um and then you'll be fine, you'll always have something to say. But regular feedback is really important. Um, and uh yeah, the things might take a long time to happen, you've got to keep people hooked in and show them that things are happening behind the scenes, even if they can't see anything happening outside. And then number nine is to try and make sure everybody feels included. So when we talked about our library project, that is exactly how I phrased it, our library project. And by our I didn't mean just the PTA, I meant the whole school, the entire school, teachers, parents, children. And I used phrases like community, I used words like together, we are going to build our library, all of that kind of thing, um, so that it's clear that everybody is involved and we want everybody to communicate, and it's a project that's for everybody, so just changing the way that you describe what you're doing, and you know, I think I tried to avoid saying the PTA has done this. I tried to say more things like we as a community have achieved this, so I took the parents along with me, if you like. Um, and I think that's really important for when people read things like that, if they ever read any of the newsletters. But if they did spend time reading, I wanted them to get the right message, so um, I try to be very consistent with that approach. And finally, the most important point, number 10, is to plan a big celebration once your goal has been achieved, and say things like, Yes, we did it together, we achieved it together, look how amazing we all are, we've all contributed to this fantastic project. And the big celebration doesn't have to cost any money at all. So, for example, you know, if it's Chromebook, if like you've you know raised all your money for your Chromebooks and they've arrived at the school and been set up and they're ready for the children to use, maybe the school could have a special afternoon where the children get to try out their Chromebooks and do some special things, like that off timetable for that, you know, one afternoon, and and they can take some photos and then show the rest of the community how the Chromebooks have been used, and it's very exciting, and everyone's very happy. And look, look what we can do now. So, yeah, your big celebration does not have to be anything that costs money. So, for our library, uh, the teacher who was in charge of the library project, she organized a library opening. So she invited, um, she basically did an assembly, she invited key people who had been involved, and I was invited as a representative of the PTA. Um, and uh I think we had also some people from the local council who came to give the school an award, a reading award or something like that, that that they'd also be working toward been working towards. So that was really lovely. And we had a little assembly, and then um it was so cute. The teachers had put a ribbon across the door to the library, and they'd what they'd done actually, which was really clever, was they kept the library door closed and they'd put paper over the um over the window in the door so the children couldn't peek inside for the last week or so so they couldn't see, and she'd closed all the blinds to all the windows, so it's like a top secret room, and so they cut the ribbon. I think they had um a couple of children to cut the ribbon, and then the children all went inside the library, and I was standing to the side, and I had a really great view of some of the children's faces as they walked through the door, and they had such wonderful expressions of amazement and surprise, and you know, wide-eyed wow, look at this amazing space. It was that just really made it for me to see the reaction of the children was wonderful. And um, the teacher had also organised this is the only expense on this celebration day. She had organised a special celebration cake which she had um ordered in, and we used a little bit of PTA money to cover the cost of the cake, uh, which was beautifully decorated in the shape of books and everything. And um we all had a piece of cake as a celebration, and it was just fantastic. And the children just spent time in the library taking books off the shelves, reading to each other, the older ones reading to the younger ones, which is a big thing at our school, and it was delightful and um a really beautiful way to open and celebrate the library, really. So it was nice to have the celebration planned in um towards the end. So I do encourage you to do some sort of celebration because then that is you know the end of the project. You can say to everyone, right, our project's finished, this is what we've achieved, and this is how we've celebrated it, and um, then you can all have a rest and not do any fundraising for a little while because you're probably really exhausted. But um, you can uh of course bask in your glory, which is absolutely what you should do after the project's finished. So, with this massive project uh of the library, I learnt so much about how my school community works and how they respond. Um, and I really felt the whole school was involved and behind the project. I mean, it was it was basically a project of dreams because it really benefited every single child at the school and it will continue to benefit every child that goes to my school for many, many years to come. Um, it's it's really amazing. I mean, we basically created a massive asset at our school which will last for years, and you know, any visitors to the school will be able to see it. And when you walk into the library, it's just a lovely atmosphere in that room, it's very calm. Oh, the school also ran a competition for the children to design a sign for the library. Door, and there were loads of entries, and the winning design was made into a permanent sign, which is now outside the library. So the children have really taken ownership of it, and the school staff have really engaged with it. Um, in fact, we had a new teacher join our school recently who commented on the library and said that it was great to have facilities like that at a small school. So that was really nice to hear, and um something I kind of didn't expect to hear as well, and perhaps an interesting knock-on effect of PTA money that you can really add value to the school, which also encourages um people to come and work at your school, which is something I'd never thought of before, really. So um yeah, so that was really interesting. And because we worked so hard on the library, I wanted to make sure that it was kept in a good up-to-date condition. So since it opened, we have donated a few hundred pounds per year. I think was it three or four hundred pounds per year in our budget um just to keep um keep it up basically. I didn't want us to all work so hard on an asset only for it to kind of fall into disrepair and disuse and um and the the books get torn and ripped and then we couldn't replace them. So um it was really important to me that once we'd invested so much time and energy and effort and money into this asset that it wasn't just left and um we just kept it up because you know new books come out all the time. Um the teachers do topics on different things every term, don't they? So they might need books relating to that. So I made when I was PTHR, I made sure that they had a specific budget just to keep that asset going. So that was the story of how we created a wonderful library at my primary school, and I'm hoping to get some photos on my website so you can see what it looked like when it was just all finished and all pristine and new, and we'd just finished putting everything together. I am so proud of it, and I'm so happy that I was the chair of the PTA when this project came along. It could not have been a better, more exciting project for me. I was absolutely thrilled to be part of it, and I do see it as my legacy from my time on the PTA, and a library legacy for me could not have been more perfect, so I'm I'm just so happy about it. And how about you? Have you ever worked on a challenging long-term project like this on a similar topic or a different topic? Or perhaps you might be considering the first tentative steps towards a big fundraising project or a long-term project. I would love to hear your story, so do email me using hello at ptapodcast.com and tell me how it's going, tell me what you're aiming for, tell me what you've organized so far, what you're planning to do. I would really love to hear from you. And as always, it's been great having you to hear all about my favourite project, and I should probably end this podcast in true storytelling fashion by saying, and they all lived happily ever after. So until next time, bye for now.