Summer/Winter Fair Survival Guide!

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

Hello, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Follow, and I've been the PTI volunteer. PTA is up to becoming even school podcasts. And I find it fascinating. So please join me in this podcast. Generate ideas. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the PTA Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be presenting you with a summer fate survival guide. Now I must stress that this is not a guide on how to actually plan and execute a summer fair. It's a guide on how to survive the planning and delivery of a summer fair. So if you're looking for a more detailed guide on how to actually plan a summer fair or a summer fate, then you might like to listen to my episode 11 where I talk you through how I planned my winter fair because basically it's the same kind of event. Or there is a great step-by-step guide on the PTA Plus website, both of which will give you a more detailed overview of planning a bigger event. Today, in this episode, it's all about how to get through all the planning and come out the other side unbroken and as a triumphant fundraiser. As you know, I have been part of my school's PTA for over eight years and I've organised a few fates in that time, both summer and winter. I have mentioned before that I think fates with all their different stalls, etc., are really fantastic events to attend. From an organizational point of view, however, they are realistically weeks, if not months, of hard work for the PTA, but they tend to be one of the biggest fundraising events in the school calendar. And as an additional benefit, they are a brilliant way of bringing the whole school community together in one event. So you do two amazing things in one event. But as a volunteer, they may feel really daunting. And in fact, after this episode, you might feel like it's too overwhelming to even start thinking about how you go about it, especially if you haven't organized one before, if it's your first time on the PTA or your first summer season as part of your PTA. But they do give you an opportunity to unleash your creativity and imagination, and they also allow you to develop many useful skills like problem solving, working in a team, motivating others, and of course developing your organizational skills. So there are loads of good points to remember, and it's important to remember these good points when you're doing your summer fate planning and execution of your summer fate, because as I've said, it is very hard work indeed. And I think if you can go into it understanding it's going to be time-consuming and occasionally very challenging, then you are in a better position to cope when things get a bit tough. So what we're going to talk about today are some strategies that I have used in the past to actually cope with those challenging times when organising a summer fate, and how I personally have managed to get through those weeks and months of organising the event. So if you find any of my tips useful, um do let me know. It's hello at ptapodcast.com. Now I know that every school and every fate is going to be completely different. So the things I'm going to talk about are general and you just need to bend them to adapt them to your own situation. So first of all, we're going to consider some things you could try during the planning and preparation phase of your event. And remember, our goal here is to run the event whilst trying to make it as stress-free as possible for the volunteers organizing it, i.e., you and your team. So one thing that I've always tried to do, um, which feeds into my desire for control over everything at all times, um, is to try and minimize the potential for any surprises. And there are two places that have the potential for surprises. Surprises can come from the school and from your PTA team. So the key to minimising surprises is obviously communication. So to start with, you need to set the date and timings for the event, which is one of the first things you're going to be doing, and ensure that both the school and your PTA team are on board with that. So agree the date and timings and format of the event as far in advance as you can. Keep communicating regularly with your school to avoid any horrible surprises cropping up at the last minute. So, for example, um, school may have some safeguarding or safety requirements that you need to get a handle on and make sure you're working alongside those. There might be parking difficulties at your school. Um, my school doesn't have a car park, so we all park on the road, which is just a normal public road, and my school, um, the school grounds are actually on a bend in the road. Um, so sometimes if our cars, if the parents' cars are there, you know, left there for a long period of time, um, tractors and bigger lorries can find it difficult to get past. So there are parking requirements, so be aware of that. Hopefully, your school will might flag that up for you if you if you don't know about that already. Um, school may also have some staffing issues that they need to chat to you about. There could be things that need to feed into the planning, and the sooner you can get them in, the less likely they will cause you any issues further down the line, the less likely you'll have to undo any other plans that you've already made or um add extra work in. You know, you don't want to be adding extra work in the last two weeks, so try and get to the bottom of those issues early on so you can plan for them as you're going along. And almost at the same time as you're talking to your school, you need to check the availability of your PTA team. And when you do this, I always think it's a good idea to ask your team to give an honest answer of what they can realistically do. Can they help at the event or are they just able to help in the planning stage, for example? I've um been burnt by this before. I've agreed to date um with school, which is when I started on the PTA, and I wasn't very experienced. Um, I agreed to date with school, and I just assumed that the rest of my PTA team could make it because it was, I don't know, like eight or ten weeks in advance. So I just assumed people could come. And I can't remember why, I just assumed that. I think um perhaps I just assumed that they were as on board with the fundraising as I was, and um would you know adapt plans around adapt their own personal plans around PTA plans, but obviously that's not the case for everybody. Um, and so I agreed this date, and then I found out that hardly anybody on my PTA team, which of course are my crucial volunteers, and I'm counting on all of my PTA team to be available to help as a minimum. Um, it turns out some of them couldn't come, or hardly any of them could come, so I had to then either change the date or find new volunteers, and um I think I probably changed the date if I remember correctly. School did me, did um give me a selection of dates, and I picked from that list, so there were other dates available, but uh that was a lesson that I learned the hard way, so I'm now giving you that lesson for free, so you don't have to also learn it the hard way. Um uh so yeah, you're you need to cross-check the school's availability and your PTA's availability kind of at the same time. So, yes, do everything you can to avoid any nasty surprises further down the line, and the only way to do that is to have clear and regular communication with your school and your organizing team. There are, of course, many other things which might give you a surprise on the day or other surprises in the run-up to your event, and another big one is of course the highly unpredictable British weather. And in my last podcast episode, I was saying how gloriously sunny it had been, and today, when I'm recording this episode, it is absolutely tipping down with rain on in early June, so um, yeah, we just cannot take anything for granted with the weather, as I think I have mentioned on this podcast before. Um, I feel that being on the PTA means you are totally at the mercy of the weather gods, and in my experience, there is only one type of weather which works at a PTA event, and that is cloudy weather. So that is my favourite type of weather when holding a PTA event outside, and that's the weather I will always pray that um is delivered to us on the day. I would say, in my experience anyway, all other types of weather, all other types of weather, uh lead to difficulties, uh, make things harder and sometimes make things impossible. So, for example, obviously at a summer fate, you might want it to be sunny on your summer fate. And yes, of course that would be lovely if it was sunny with no wind and maybe only about 20 degrees, maybe a few clouds in the sky. Um, but of course, you can get sunny weather where it's just way too hot, and then you're going to have to deal with things like making sure the stalls and the volunteers have some shade, making sure people um have sun cream, um making sure your sweet prizes that you bought, which are little tiny packets of Haribo, do not melt in the sun. Um, this is something that actually happened to me. I had a fate a few years ago, the weather looked absolutely fantastic, and then on the day it was over 30 degrees, which is really hot. It's really hot when you're standing on a concrete uh or tarmac to playground. We have no shade um outside, sort of in the middle of our outside area. So I then had to try and run around really quickly and find gazebos and then find people who had time to put gazebos up, work out if we could put gazebos on the tarmac, which was a bit tricky. Um, I also planned on taking sun cream because I didn't want my volunteers to get sunburnt. I had to make sure everybody had a jug of water on the table. I mean, the the sun and the sunny hot weather was glorious, but it led to a lot of other things that we had to organise and put into place, and one of those things was the Haribo sweet prizes that we had bought um were left in the sun and they melted, they melted in the packets. So uh, I mean the children obviously didn't mind, they thought it was really funny. Um, but I did not expect that to happen at all. That was not my risk assessment or anything. So, yeah, sunny weather can sometimes bring its own problems. Rain, obviously, you may have a lack of visitors, your things on your tables might get soggy, people are gonna get soggy, people are not going to want to eat ice creams. Um, again, you might want to try and get some gazebos to protect your stalls from the rain. You might not have enough inside space to move everything inside, and then windy weather. Um, gazebos cannot help you here. If it's windy weather, they only add to your stress. Um, things get blown off the tables. Sometimes it's not very pleasant to be outside with those wind trying to do things. So basically, everything else I think, apart from cloudy, not very breezy weather, is really tricky. And of course, it's impossible to predict your weather when you have set your date 10 weeks or more in advance. Sometimes it's impossible to predict the weather the day before. So it's probably a good idea to make a little plan for different weather scenarios just in case. A wet weather plan for inside, who has a gazebo, who could put them up, etc. In the early stages of planning, maybe you could try making a list of what is needed if the weather turns against you or it's not what you planned for. Um make a list of what's needed, and nearer the time, as the weather forecast gets a bit more accurate, you could start actioning a plan if you know it's going to be raining or you suspect it's going to be very hot, for example. And yes, this does mean spending time on planning for a scenario that you might never need. But believe me, on the day or the day before, you will be very grateful to yourself that you did it because all of that planning and thought has already happened. You don't have to shoehorn it in at the last minute, so it is a good idea. So, so far we have avoid nasty surprises with regular communication with your PTA team and the school, and have a weather plan in place. So that's two things you can do to try and survive the planning of your summer fate. Okay, next up is to try and appoint a volunteer coordinator. Now I talked about this in detail in episode 26, where I talked more about streamlining your event planning. I've never done this, but it was an idea that came to me recently, and I wish I'd had the chance to try it, as I think it would have really helped me feel less overwhelmed with all the organisation if I'd had a dedicated person to find and look after volunteers. Arranging volunteers, coordinating volunteers, and solving any problems with the volunteers is a huge job when organizing an event as large as the Summer Fate. So I would encourage you to give this one a try. And this leads on to the more general topic of delegation. Of course, the more you can delegate, the better. I think a successful way to delegate is perhaps to allocate job titles if people are happy to do that. Um, and that way it's more clear who is responsible for what, and people might feel more comfortable with having a defined role, and so their role is not really open-ended, and more and more things are going to get shoved onto their plate. Um, I don't think it's ever too late in your planning to do this, so even if you're halfway through your planning, um, I think you could you could definitely start doing some job roles if people are happy to do that. Um, and you can choose anything you like for your job roles, um, whatever's going to really work with your particular event. So, for example, you could have put somebody in charge of all the publicity, so social media, email, advertising, posters, etc., or a different person in charge of each of those things to spread the work out, somebody in charge of all the communications about the event to the parents, one person to do all of the shopping for the event. Um, at one of my fates, I did make a massive list of all the things that we needed to buy from the shops, which was mostly food and sweets, and I asked someone just to volunteer to do the whole lot, and they did, and that was really great, and that saved a lot of time for somebody to just go to a shop with a list. Um, somebody to organise the raffle or other prizes that you might need, somebody to come up with stall ideas or game ideas, um, somebody just to make signs for your event, so signs to point to where the toilets are, signs to have on each stall, um, how much things are, signs to point to other stalls or other directions, parking signs, um, and well, whatever sign you need, somebody could just be in charge of all of the signs because they generally you need quite a lot. I mean, there were loads of little jobs like that um that could just be mopped up by one person um in advance. So do your best to try and spread the workload. I mean, not the workload, I mean the love. Spread the love around your PTA team because everybody loves helping. And I say that with the tongue in my cheek. Um, delegation can be really tricky, so try and be clear about exactly what needs to be done as well, and never assume that somebody else knows what to do or how to do it. Now, I don't mean telling people exactly what to do or how to do it. You know, some people obviously understand how to do things, but I would never assume that somebody does completely know what you're thinking. So I had an incident where it was actually a member of my PTA team a few years ago. Um, she was in charge of sorting out one of our tombolas. We we'd made a sweetie tombola, we'd sent home um, I think it was empty jars to parents and asked them to fill them with sweets and send them back, um, which they did, and we got loads of jars of sweets back, and we're going to make them into a tomboler. Um, she was in charge of the store, so I just passed her the raffle tickets to label them up, and she labelled them all up. And on the day of the fate, um, I was sort of going round seeing how everything was doing, and she'd completely sold out the tombola within 10-15 minutes. And I said, Wow, that was really popular. And she said, Yeah, it was it was yeah, they just all went, and then um and I I I don't know how I noticed, but I said that it was you did three tickets, you know, not every ticket was a winner, right? And she said, No, no, no, every every ticket was a winner on the jars, um, which was not how I thought we were doing it. I thought we were doing, you know, pay a pound. You get three tickets and hope that one's a winner, and then you make three times as much money. And unfortunately, she uh hadn't understood that Tom Bowler was like that, and I didn't know that she didn't know, so I didn't know to tell her because I just assumed that she knew. Um, so we missed out on some extra money um from that stall, and so from then on I've always just made sure if I'm delegating something to somebody, I've just sort of said, Look, I'm I'm sure you um know how to do this, but what I was thinking was it was going to be what it would be like this, just to kind of see if we're on this on the same playing field. So, yeah, never assume that somebody does know how to do something. And if you're trying to delegate, make sure you give that person support so they feel comfortable with taking on that job, and they're not just left alone floundering, and then they'll never volunteer to help again because they don't know what to do. So it's good to strike a balance between giving clear instructions but obviously avoiding dictating too much, um, and perhaps also give people a little bit of flexibility over the job, um, which will help to give them ownership of the work that they're doing as well, which is really good. Personally, I find delegating really hard. Um, I like things done in a particular way, or I have in my head the way that I would like something to be done or like something to look, and so um I find it hard to give it to somebody else because obviously it might not look the way that I want it to look, and um I also like things to be done now so that I can cross them off the giant list that I have as the sort of fake coordinator, and obviously if you delegate it to somebody, you don't know exactly when they're going to complete the task. So you're relying on them before you can cross it off your list. But that's just my control freakness, and I wish I had been I wish I had felt comfortable to. Delegate more. I did try a lot of delegating. Um, and of course, sometimes you just can't. People just don't volunteer to help. Even on your PTA team, I would put out messages to my team and say, right, I need help doing these five things, and nobody would volunteer to take any of them off my hands. Um, and that's really difficult. Uh I don't know what the solution is to that. My solution was I just did it myself because there were jobs that needed to get done, but that just added more and more onto my own plate of stress. Um, so I wish I had tried harder to delegate. Um so don't fall into my trap, is what I'm trying to tell you. So let's recap. Um try and avoid any nasty surprises by regular communication with school and your PTA. Make some sort of weather plan. Have a go at appointing a volunteer coordinator, maybe allocate some jobs within your PTA team and try to delegate. My next tip, which I um find incredibly useful, is to get things out of your head and down onto paper or at least into an electronic format. So find a way to document your plan for the fate so that it can also be shared to other members of your team, and then more people know what is going on. I've uploaded the planning document that I use for summer fates, winter fates to my website, which you're welcome to use or modify to fit your event, and I um basically just filled that out constantly and modified it, edited it constantly, going through the sort of weeks of planning of my events, so it was always up to date, and I would share it on WhatsApp with my team or email it to them. I have no idea if anyone read it at all, but it was my way of keeping everybody up to date. I guess it's up to them if they read it. Um, but I always found it really helpful to keep the information out of my head onto paper so it was stored somewhere, so it was just not buzzing around and round in my head, and that really helped me uh focus when I was organising the event. It's also quite sensible just in case you fall ill and suddenly cannot continue with organising it, or you know, something happens and you can't continue organising it and you need someone to take over, it's much easier to already have all of that in place, and then somebody else can just pick it up and um proceed with it. Another tactic which I think is really useful is to use a countdown towards your event. So I use the count I used to count down each week and try to allocate tasks each week. So I would obviously have week zero as the week of the fate, and then I would work backwards from that. So I would sort of say, right, one week to go, what do I need to be doing? Two weeks to go, what do we need to be doing, three weeks to go, and I would work backwards from that and try and allocate tasks to each week. Um, and I found it really helpful because it would focus exactly my attention on that particular week and the tasks for that particular week, rather than looking at the event as a whole and feeling you know, completely overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that we had to get through. Um, it also helps to then see how much you've got left to organise, and therefore what you can actually fit in realistically as it creeps closer towards the date of your event, and maybe what you can't fit in, and what you decide then actually, we haven't got enough volunteer time to organise that particular store. Let's see if we can just cut it and give ourselves a break from all the stress. And this brings me to another really important point, which is not overcommitting yourself or overcommitting your team. Now, you know that I have historically got very excited when organising fates, and I have overcommitted nearly every time. I seem to never learn my lesson about these things. But recently I tried to take a different approach with the last ones that I organised, and that was to start with my minimum amount of volunteers and decide what my minimum stalls were for the event. So, for example, what do I need as a minimum to run this event and call it a summer fate? So, for a fate for my small school, it would probably be something along the lines of some hot food, cakes, a raffle, three or five games, and that would all turn a profit in just an hour. So that is what I would say is my minimum to label it as a summer fate and actually get the data out there and commit to running the summer fate. Um, and I knew that if I had that covered, then the event could go ahead, and anything else I added on top of that would be a bonus. So I always took that as my starting point. I knew I had enough volunteers to cover those minimum stalls, so as I got more volunteers, I would just add extra things in. So I was trying to always keep up with the number of volunteers I got, so I was never um in a position then to kind of cut things out, I was more adding things in, if you if you see what I mean. Um, and the last couple of events I organized, I took that approach, and that worked um quite well for me. And finally, for this um planning section, um, do a risk assessment. Why do a risk assessment? Well, it's usually a requirement from your school to do a risk assessment for any PTA event, actually. It's good practice to do a risk assessment, but it can also be really reassuring for you. And I talk all about risk assessments in episode three and go over roughly what they are and how you fill a risk assessment in. Some people find them to be another annoying piece of paperwork, which they kind of are, but I decided to uh change my mindset over risk assessments and instead look at them as a useful tool as they can highlight any areas of your event which may be unsafe or might need attention and need more thinking through or amending or adapting or something. So I do find them really handy in my planning, and um if you can get them out of the way as soon as possible and agreed by school, then that's just another tick of something off your to-do list. So let's just recap. How can you use your planning time to make the event uh go uh more smoothly for yourself? Minimize the chance of any unwelcome surprises by keeping clear and correct regular communication with your school and with your PTA team who are your crucial volunteers. Make a weather plan. Uh appoint or have a go at appointing a volunteer coordinator and see if that helps you. Try and make some other job roles within your PTA team just specifically for this event. Try and delegate if you can, even if it's just some tiny things. Just try and delegate to someone else. Have all your thoughts and your planning and everything written down somewhere and share it with your PTA team. Even if they don't read it, still share it because that's really important to kind of keep your team together and um try and inform everybody. Have a go using a countdown backwards from your event to where you are now. Um I think it I just think it will really, really help me. So if you haven't tried that before, um maybe maybe have a go at that. Possibly calculate what is your bare minimum to hold the event. Um, and if at any point your planning gets on top of you, you can always revert back to your bare minimum. If it's all getting too much, you can cut loads of things out and just have a smaller event. So understanding what your bare minimum is is important. And finally, do a risk assessment again, which can highlight any areas that are unsafe. We don't want to be holding events that are unsafe for our children. So um, yeah, do take that seriously and look at it, and then once you've completed that, um, I always found it very reassuring that I knew my event was going to be safe and I'd all like considered risks and minimized the risks. So, so that would be a list of let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine things that you could try doing whilst your event is in the planning stages that might make getting through the planning stages a little bit easier. Okay, now there are some things which you can do on the day of the event itself. These are things which I have experienced over the events I've organised, and these are how I survived organising all of those events. So please take advantage of the things I have learned and I hope that they help you too. I hope these don't sound too obvious. You probably know all these already, but just in case this is your first event, first summer fate, I thought I'd just um start with all the simple things. So on the day, I make sure my phone is fully charged and our sum-up machine is fully charged, and also I take a charger to school. So anything electronic like that, charge it up before the event and take the charger with you and a plug if you need to plug for a wire. Just be prepared for that. You don't want any failure of any equipment. The second thing is I make sure I pack a bottle of water that I try and sip from throughout the day. I have noticed that if I get too busy, I end up getting dehydrated because I'm uh stressed out, probably sweating a bit more, running around like a mad woman, and uh yeah, I can get dehydrated and then have a massive headache at the end. So now I make sure I take water and I take it around with me wherever I'm going, what I'm doing. So it's always with me, and I just try and take a small sip every so often. Um, and actually, this also applies to any event you're organising. Always take yourself a bottle of water with you, and I've all I also make sure before I'm on site to set up the event, I've had something to eat so I can function effectively for quite a while. I generally don't have time to eat anything during the event, even if we're serving burgers and things. So I try and eat um before I go, make sure I've had something. I also pack up a box of tricks to take with me. So my box has essentials in it for setting up events, and I generally take this to every event that I organise, even if I think I'm not going to use it, because you just never know. So my box includes um cellar tape, my own pair of scissors, which I label, uh, string, blue tack, Pritstick, drawing pins, a stapler, felt tip pens, a ruler, pencils, um, it's basically loads of stationery and practical items to put up signs or attach things or string things together, that kind of stuff. And these are all things that I can use to solve problems on the day. It's my problem-solving kit, I suppose. I would highly recommend taking your own box of supplies to school because I have been at school before, needed cellar tape, and nobody has any cellar tape. I don't know what happens at school, but they have short supplies of Prit Sticks and cellar tape and blue tack and scissors and all of that sort of thing. So just to keep things easier for yourself on the day, so you're not wandering around school trying to find cellar tape, take your own cellar tape and more crucially, label them so that they know who to return it to. If somebody walks off with your cellar tape, label it. Uh, you know, school's telling us to label our children's clothes all the time, label your box of tricks by individual item. Um, and if you uh have lots of events, you could consider as a PTA investing in your own box of tricks that maybe is kept at school and in a PTA cupboard and keeping a supply of things like that. I think it's a very worthwhile investment as a PTA. I just brought all my stuff from home because I've got all those things anyway. Um, but yeah, the box of tricks is crucial. I found that really crucial in a lot of my events. Something else which I've improved over the years uh is the amount of time that I've allocated for setting up. I talked about this in my episode about improving your event planning, and I basically now estimate my setup time and then and then add an additional hour onto that time, and it has worked really well so far, and having extra time on the day of the of the event is very important and can definitely reduce your stress levels just to have more time is really important. And finally, on the day, I will always plan a little treat for myself for after the event. I might make sure I've put a bottle of wine in the fridge so I can sit down and enjoy a glass later, or maybe arrange a film night with my kids so I can just sit down and not move for an hour and a half. Um, basically, something which is relaxing, easy, and I can look forward to it because I will have worked very hard for it. Um, at the end of an event, I am always completely exhausted mentally and physically, so that definitely calls for quiet evening at home. I you can probably tell if you look if you're a regular listener to my podcast, I do put my all into every PTA event that I organise. I can't help it, that's just how I'm built. And so I just feel totally drained afterwards, uh, which is fine. And um, if you know that that's your approach to things, then just planning for that afterwards is uh really helpful so you can have that to look forward to. So don't plan going out to I don't know, a really crazy place that's going to require a lot of energy afterwards. Just plan to look after yourself and have a rest and try and recover from your event. So, just as a recap, on the day of the event itself, I would help myself by fully charging all my electronic items and taking the charges, sipping water and eating food, which sounds really obvious, but when you're busy, you can forget to do this. I pack up and take in my labelled box of tricks to help me. I allow as much time as possible for setup, estimating the time and adding an extra hour on. I plan a treat for myself, um, and the treat is generally to do nothing. That is my treat for after the event. And uh, oh, actually another one which I forgot to mention, um, but I did talk about it in episode 26, is possibly to organise a closed-down team and make a plan of uh for what happens after the event. So uh I talk about this in more detail in episode 26, but basically, um if you have a surplus of volunteers and people cannot help with the setup and during the event, then see if they can come in as fresh people to help tidy everything away when the rest of the team is feeling pretty exhausted. I would highly recommend that. And some people can only volunteer after the event anyway, so it works out quite well. Um, and during your event planning, sorry, I should have put this in the other section, shouldn't I? Um during your event planning, have write a little plan for what happens with things afterwards. Um, but as I said, I talked all about that in episode 26 if you want to take a listen. Now it's important to say that you can do and prepare loads of things in advance, but there could be a time when you suddenly feel really overwhelmed with organising such a big event. And I want to tell you that this is completely normal, and I think everybody experiences this at some point, whether it's your first fate or your fifth fate, and it can be a combination of factors such as a to-do list which feels too long and out of control, not having enough volunteers, feeling like the whole thing is out of control, other people you've delegated to aren't completing their jobs quickly enough, you might get some unexpected surprises or challenges to deal with, which just push you over your limit. People can drop out of volunteering unexpectedly, and you need to cover their roles or adapt your plan to sort that problem out. The weather can change unexpectedly, which may add extra work for you. And of course, you might have something happening in your personal life or your work life, which is also stressful, and that on top of everything else can just make you feel completely overwhelmed. And each person in the world uh will likely have a different threshold for the amount of stress that they can cope with, and that is normal too. So you might see somebody else helping with your event and taking on loads and loads of jobs and looking like they can actually cope with it, and it's absolutely fine, and they're not getting stressed at all. And here you are feeling really overwhelmed and stressed out and wondering why is that person able to cope and I can't? Well, that's because everybody's different, okay? And you just need to accept um and and um notice when you have reached the point where you're feeling overwhelmed, or even better, when you're just before the point of feeling overwhelmed, so that you can notice it and you can take some action. Don't compare yourself to other people. Comparison is the thief of joy, as we all know. So don't compare how you feel to other people, just focus on yourself. For me, I actually get physical signs when it all feels too much for me. I actually feel sick, I feel like there's not enough time in my day or even my week if I'm planning a really massive event. I basically start to panic a little bit, and that's when I know I need to take some action. So for me, I've been trying to think where the stress actually comes from. Um, and I think I figured out that for me, the stress comes from wanting to put on a really good event which everyone will enjoy. That is my first priority, that the event is good quality and people have a good time. And in addition to that, obviously, but definitely in second place to that is the fundraising. And as you know, I've I've organised quite a lot of fates in the past, and in the planning stage, I never focus on the overall fundraising. I make sure that costs are covered for our higher value items, which is usually the bugs and the hot dogs. So when we're setting the prices, I make sure that obviously the costs are covered and we're making a small profit. But apart from that, a lot of our stores are made up of donations, so they mostly bring in profit. So I never look at the event as a whole and decide right at the start, I want to make this much profit on this event. That has never been the way that I have approached an event. I'm not sure if that's different to other people. Um, but that's been my experience. Um, and what I have wanted to do as my main priority is to put on an enjoyable event for people to attend. And I guess probably I think that if they come along and they have a good time, they're more likely to linger, more likely to spend more money. Um, but it's the enjoyment and experience that I go for first and foremost. So the stress for me comes from wanting my PTA to run an event that the school community enjoys and values, and that means that when we do our next event or activity, they can hopefully trust that it's going to be well run and therefore something they want to support. Because after all, we are asking people to part with their money, so I do want to offer something that's worth it to them. So, what can you do if the organization of this big event is getting on top of you? Now, this will be different for each person. So, I'm just going to share with you some of the things that I found have helped me in the past. Number one is to try and spot the signs in yourself that you are feeling like it's all too much before you reach that actually really overwhelmed stage. That's quite crucial. It's better to try and act sooner than to reach that crisis point where you almost get paralysed because you don't know what to do. Um, I think this has taken me a Um a few years to learn, certainly taking a bit of practice to notice. But I would say just try and be in tune with yourself and try to spot any signs that you might be tipping over the edge. And then number two, tell someone ideally, tell your whole PTA team. Um, or if you or you may feel more comfortable confiding in one person on your PTA team who could then perhaps speak to the other volunteers. But if you're feeling overwhelmed and you don't speak up um to anyone, nobody will have the opportunity to help you. So you need to have the courage um to put your hand up and say that you're not coping. And there's no shame in that. But it is your responsibility to let someone else know if you are feeling that way because your team needs to help you. And this is where having your plans written down somewhere is so useful as you can share them or even just hand them over to somebody else, and it makes it easier for somebody to help you when they can clearly see where you've got to, so they can jump right in. Oh, I'm just going to jump in here with uh number two and a half on this list, as this is a really important point I've just remembered, um, and I wanted to make sure I included it, so uh forgive me for just squeezing an extra one in here. Um, and this very important point is to make sure that you find some time or make some time to do exercise. Exercise is so important, and I always try to give it high priority, especially when organising something really stressful. For me, the exercise I do is that I go running. I am not a natural runner, I am actually very slow and not very good at it at all. Um, but I have chosen this activity because it's something I can do straight from my house, and therefore it's very time efficient rather than driving somewhere and then driving home. By the time I've done that, I've actually completed my run or my run walk as it often is. Um and as you know already, doing exercise is a fantastic stress reliever, and importantly, it can give your mind a break from all the thinking and worrying that you might be doing about a big event. Sometimes on a run, I can actually solve problems that I was stuck on, not really even by thinking about it constantly on my run. It just sort of I feel like it gives my brain just a chance to relax a little bit, and maybe the thing that I was stuck on kind of ebbs away, and suddenly I can find a solution. It's really quite amazing. Um, and going out to do some exercise gives me more energy and it makes me feel less tired, which I know sounds really counterintuitive, but it does, and it just makes me generally feel better in myself. I feel like it gives me more capacity to get more done when I get back from doing exercise. I just feel like I have more energy, and if I can't run, I will always instead go for a walk, and that can also have the same therapeutic effect. So it doesn't matter what your exercise is that you choose to do, but what matters is that you actually choose to do it. So I do encourage you to add exercise into your planning time, not as an optional extra if you have time left over, but instead as an essential part of your toolkit, and it's something really positive to take part in, so don't skip it. Um, make it a priority, and and as I say, plan it in so that you are making the time to do the exercise. Um if I haven't done enough exercise in a week, I do feel differently, I feel more tired, I feel more grumpy, um, I have less energy to and and sometimes just less motivation to get things done. Whereas when I've done my exercise, I just feel so much better. So I really wanted to um add this in as something that you can do. It's a really positive thing you can do for yourself. Um, it's about self-care, and um it runs you, you know, I feel like I can run off any stress that I'm thinking about that day, and it just really, really helps me. And I have never ever in my whole life regretted going for a run, even though sometimes it's really hard to get out the door, even if it's raining or something. I've never regretted going for a run, going for a walk, doing a little workout at home, maybe like a Joe Wix workout on YouTube or something. Never regretted it, and I've always felt much better afterwards. So, um, so point 2.5 is um do include exercise in your planning of a stressful event. Number three, sometimes it can just be a couple of specific jobs on your to-do list that might be responsible for pushing you over the edge. It could be that those particular jobs are really out of your comfort zone, or you might not actually know how to tackle them. So try and identify if there's anything on your list that you keep putting off or procrastinating, as those items could be the types of jobs that you find really hard for whatever reason that might be. We've all got different skills and abilities. But for someone else, they might be okay and really easy. So try to delegate the jobs that you are feeling you can't do, try and delegate them to somebody else. Perhaps you know there's somebody on your PTA team who already has those skills. Try and push those jobs to that person, and you might find that you feel a lot better just when those particular jobs have disappeared off your list because the jobs that are left on your list, you're gonna be great at those jobs. That's that's all within your skills capabilities. So um things that I used to offload from from my to-do list were things like um now. This is gonna sound really strange, but sometimes we got um donations from a supermarket um for bread rolls or burgers and sausages, something like that. I can't actually remember what it was now. But I just for some reason used to find it really hard to go into the supermarket, find the community um champion person um and pick up those uh donations. I don't know why I found that so hard. I think possibly I do actually hate going to the supermarket, so maybe it was just I didn't want to go have to go to the supermarket again. Um, I sometimes went in and she wasn't there, so it would be a wasted trip, and I could never find out when she was there. It was just quite time consuming, I guess. And so um that was always a job that I just used to hate. So one year I managed to uh delegate it to somebody else, and it was fantastic. They did it really quickly as well and had no problems. It was really easy, and then asked me later on, Oh, is there anything else I can pick up for you, Yvonne? I was like, Oh, well, actually, yes, there is on my list. Um, so yeah, just delegating that job made me feel a lot better. Um, and to know that it was in hand as someone was sorting it out was really great. Point number four, another strategy I deployed was during a particular summer when we had more things going on. We had sports day, um, a colour run that I talked about in episode 14. We had a local village fate, and we also had our big summer fate. Oh, there was just so much in the space of just a few weeks, it was very, very overwhelming um for me. And I um I basically decided um that I that all those things that I've just mentioned were all on my plate right now, and that I decided that was the maximum I was going to have. I decided that I was going to say no to absolutely everything else that anybody asked me, I was just gonna say no to everything in all aspects of my life. So even if somebody invited me out for some drinks or a coffee or something, I was gonna say no to it because I just physically couldn't take on anything else at all. And somehow just making that decision really helped me because it made me realise that I had reached the peak of things on my list that I had to do, nothing else was gonna arrive on my list, so from that moment forward things were only going to fall off my list as I crossed them off, and so that did just really help me um do that. Uh number five, sometimes when I feel overwhelmed, I can't see the wood for the trees, I can get really bogged down in all the details and feel like there are too many things. So when I feel like this, I take the approach of trying to write down absolutely everything I have to do. And often this helps to show me that I don't actually have quite as much as I thought I did. And when I have my massive list, um, I see what things I could do immediately or at least that same day, and that would always help me feel a little bit better, as the list would never look as bad as it did in my head. And if I could get one or two things crossed off straight away, then that is immediately helpful. So perhaps there's an email that you need to send. Do it, do it now, cross it off. Yes, I've achieved that. There's one less thing I have to do. And another bonus of this method again is that writing down your massive to-do list is now really easy to share with other people. So you might be able to share it with your team and ask each person to pick two or three things from it that they could cover. Once you have your big list, you could also group your items on the list into sections with headings and perhaps ask your team to pick one heading and complete all the jobs in that section. So I guess if you have your massive list, it's also really easy, it could make delegating easier because you have very clear um tasks that need to be completed, so that might help other people say yes to some of those jobs. Number six, don't be afraid to say no, and that could mean cancelling your event if you just can't get enough people to volunteer or if it's all becoming just too much and you're not getting any help. I have never actually been in this position myself, um, but I know that other PTAs do take this approach of cancelling the event, and it seems that when they do cancel, suddenly volunteers come out of the woodwork. Where were they before? Very frustrating. Um, but if it is feeling too much and you can't get a supportive team around you, you could consider adapting your original plan into something more manageable or cancelling. The important thing is to look after yourself. You are the most important asset in your PTA, and without PTA volunteers, nothing will happen. Don't get me wrong, I think it is really good to challenge yourself. I think it's good to step outside your comfort zone to have new experiences and gain new skills because you know that's how you grow and how you develop as a person and how you make the most of your volunteering. Actually, the trick is to recognize when the stress tips over beyond that, and that's when you need to take some action to really look after yourself. Okay, number seven, a really important point to remember at all times is that none of the people you want to attend the fate know what your original plans for the fate actually are, because nobody has looked at your planning sheet from the wider school community. So they don't know on the day whether what you have provided is any different from what you had originally planned. It would be good to use that uh thought to take a bit of pressure off your shoulders. If you find that your team can't deliver on some of the original ideas, then that is fine as nobody else knows what was supposed to happen. And a strategy that goes along with this, which I use now, is to adapt my publicity uh as we go along. So for the first few weeks of advertising the date of the fate to parents, etc., I keep it suitably vague and I just put on the post or in the emails we have hot food, we have some games, we have some crafts, etc. But I don't specify exactly what those things are. And as we secure more volunteers and more stalls, we basically add more details in, and we can even then use those as teasers in the next email out to parents. And I think that actually works really well as you put more detail in. You can then say things like, Oh, fantastic! We've been able to get someone to run the key uh beat the goalie stand, and we know that's really popular with the kids, so do come along and have a go, that kind of thing. Um, the and in the opposite direction, if you are still struggling to get people to volunteer, you can send out specific requests for stalls. For example, we currently have no volunteers to run the secondhand book stall or the reindeer food, and if people want those stalls, then they need to volunteer. And telling people what they might otherwise be missing out on can help people to volunteer. So that could be a trick that you might want to try. Number eight, work out what your minimum stalls are to run the event. So, this is something I have mentioned briefly before. This is something I now do with every fate type event that I do now. I work out what the minimum stalls are and therefore volunteer numbers to cover those stalls plus the setup, and I prioritise filling those slots first. Then once they are covered, I know my event can go ahead, even if it's on a smaller scale. My school's quite small, um, so as I mentioned before, my minimum stores are normally hot food, cakes and drinks, which is like a cafe thing, maybe three games and two easy stores, which are normally secondhand books and secondhand uniform or something like that. And once I've had those covered, and normally those can be covered by my PTA team without extra volunteers, which is also really handy. Um, then as more volunteers volunteer, I can add in extra stores, more fun stores, for example, more games or crafts or something. And knowing this really takes the pressure off as I know I can run the event, it can still go ahead, and anything else on top is a bonus. And um, this all relates back to point six where nobody else uh knows your original plan. So if your plan changes, it doesn't matter. Don't beat yourself up if your plan changes. Number nine, always remember that whatever you organise, the children will love it. The children are the best customers, they are brilliant for accepting things for the way they are, and they will enjoy everything that you have done. They don't generally have fixed ideas about what something is supposed to be like, and so try and see your event through the eyes of the children and what they're going to experience. And when I think about that, it really helps to put things into perspective and kind of raise the worries I have about trying to get everything perfect or everything fitting to a theme, which is something I do try and do. At the end of the day, the fate is for the children and their families to have fun and to bring that sense of community spirit and friendship to your school. Always remember that, and always remember that you are doing an amazing, wonderful thing. This is point 10. You are donating your time and energy into organising an opportunity for your school community to all come together, socialise, have some fun, and raise some money, and that money will benefit everybody's children at the school. It is a lovely thing to be part of. So when your fate is running, I want you to pause, maybe set a reminder on your phone to do this, and just take time to stop what you are doing and look around you. Take in what's happening, see the children playing games you have organized, see the parents socializing with each other, see the smiles, hear the laughter, see the school community, all because you made it happen. You made this event and gave people an opportunity to come together. If you hadn't done this event, that opportunity wouldn't be there. And feel proud of yourself and your team for making it all happen. And things might not have all run smoothly on the day or in the planning, but don't think of those things as failures. They are successes because they were unexpected challenges that you had to overcome, and it is really difficult to keep going sometimes with organizing something that keeps throwing obstacles in your way, which it will, let's be honest. But you kept going and now you have this wonderful event, and I think there's some sort of military motto that I've come across before, and the motto is adapt and overcome. And I think it's so applicable to being on the PTA and what we do and the events that we organise. So you can use that if you like. When there is a bump in the road and you're planning and organizing, or even just on the day itself, just remember to adapt and overcome. And with that motto and that mindset, I think you can pretty much do everything, and then you can enjoy whatever treat you have planned for yourself after the event and bask in the glory of your success. I sincerely hope that whatever your summer event is, it's going well and you have managed to get a supportive team around you. We all know it's hard work, but just think of all of those skills that you're learning and the faces of the children when they were having fun at your fate, and you did all that. And whilst I hope you never reach the overwhelmed part of organising, I hope that there might have been one or two things there in my episode that might help help you navigate those weeks and come out smiling at the end. If you have any more tips that you always roll out when you're organising a summer fate that helps you, I would love to share them with other listeners. Perhaps we could start a list of how to get through it and I could put it on my website or something. Uh, so why not send me an email hello at ptapodcast.com and tell me any other tips that you have or if you've tried any of mine, I would love to hear from you. Don't forget to visit my website and sign up to my mailing list so I can notify you when a new episode has been released. It's PTApodcast.com. So good luck with whatever your PTA is working on at the moment, and bye for now.