Winter Fundraising and Risk Assessments

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. Hi, welcome to episode 3 of the PTA Podcast. Today I'm going to chat about the winter fundraising that my PTA did just before Christmas, which involved school tea towels and a winter fair. I'm also going to delve a bit deeper into some common PTA paperwork and we're going to talk about risk assessments, what they are, and why they are actually a very useful tool for PTA event planning. So let's get started. Term two was actually a pretty busy fundraising term for us. We organised some school tea towels and we also organised a winter fair. So I desperately wanted to do a school tea towel as I've personally got two children at the school at the moment, and recently quite a few new families have joined our school, so it felt like a really good time to organise something like that. Also, I felt it would encourage people to purchase tea towels for Christmas presents. Really great for kids to give little Christmas presents to their grandparents, and a school tea towel, which also raises money for the school, I think is just the perfect present. So, as you know, we're a small school of about 80 children, and it meant that all we could fit all of our children and teachers on one tea towel, which is a real bonus for us. I know that's not the same in all schools, but I do know if your school is bigger, you could possibly get a whole year group on a tea towel, possibly. So that's another way of doing it. And we decided that we're going to get the children to draw a self-portrait of their head and shoulders, and then write their first name underneath. Um, because I I just love capturing um the children's handwriting and also their lovely artwork, um, and it makes for a wonderful tea towel at the end, and everybody can look through the pictures and try and spot themselves, and I just think it's really lovely. We also got the children to draw their teachers instead of the teachers drawing themselves too, so it felt like a real community tea towel that we put together. Um, we used a company called Countryside Art, which I'd had experience of using before. I would highly recommend them, they were extremely helpful, and I found all of their um kit, tea towel kit that they sent out. I found that to be really well organized, and the instructions were incredibly clear. It probably does pay to shop around. Different tea towel companies do charge different amounts and have different options available. Um, but yeah, as I said, Countryside Art were incredibly helpful, especially with the email support afterwards as well. So, what I did was I filled up a form on the Countryside Art website. They sent me the tea towel kit in a lovely box which um included everything we needed to create the tea towels. It had a giant piece of paper which was representing the finished tea towel, and then they had lots of um separate sheets of paper which we used to cut up and hand out a small rectangle to each child, which they could draw their self-portrait on. What was particularly helpful in the countryside art box was that they had already calculated how big those individual rectangles needed to be so that we could fit the right number of children onto the tea towel. So they'd already done those calculations, we just had to cut out the rectangles to the right size. And we decided with the school support to get the children to draw their portraits in school time rather than sending all these tiny little rectangles of paper home because I just thought we would never see them again if we did that. Um, and it also meant that the self-portraits were done in a timely manner, the children all concentrated, and we got all the pictures back pretty quickly as well. So the school were incredibly helpful on that front. Um I did um contact the company to talk about timescales because, as I said, I was really keen to have this um available for people to buy as Christmas presents. So um we had to work back from when I wanted the tea towels to arrive at school, which was uh I think two weeks before the end of term. Um we had to work backwards to decide when we had to send our finished artwork into the company so they could then check it and then print the tea towels. So we actually had to get our design back to them just at the end of October so that they could then scan the giant sheet of paper into their big scanning machine, send me a proof on email, which I could then use to send out to parents and say, This is what the T TAL is going to look like, and now you can now we can accept your orders. We got the parents to order through Parent Pay, which is a finance system the school uses, so the parents are already very familiar with that system, and I didn't want to introduce any paper forms or anything like that, so we got the the parents to order and pay through parent pay, um, so we could get a very clear idea of how many um tea towels people needed. We had an incredibly good response to this fundraiser. A lot of parents were ordering at least two tea towels each. Some parents were ordering seven to eight tea towels each, which is amazing. Uh, they're really, really popular, and even some members of staff bought tea towels as well, which I wasn't expecting, but I was really touched that they also wanted to have a souvenir tea towel of the school. So, overall, it was an incredibly successful fundraiser. We sold each tea towel for £4. I think it costs about £1.89 to get each tea towel printed, so we made a clear profit of £2 per tea towel. I do think with hindsight, we probably could have sold them for £5 each, and I think if I was to do this fundraiser again, I would definitely sell them for £5. But in any case, we did make a profit of about £300, which was fantastic. It wasn't very much input um from the PTA side. Um, in fact, the most time-consuming part of the process was when I had received all the um children's self-portraits back, and I had to go over them with a black felt tip pen, those which were um drawn in pencil. Uh, the countryside art team said that that was really important so that the scanning machine could pick up all the details on the pictures. So for me to go over 80 pictures uh that the children had drawn took me quite a long time as I wanted to be really careful to capture all the um all their characters and and handwriting accurately. Um, and then I had to just arrange them on the giant piece of paper, that wasn't too bad, they all fitted on because we followed the instructions. So you just need to allow um enough time for that part, and then another important thing to remember is just to get your timings right for when you want the tea towels to be delivered to school as well, and make sure you allow enough time. So I think roughly um that was we had to start sending our artwork back about six weeks before we actually wanted the tea towels to have arrived at school. So if you're thinking of doing this as a fundraiser, just a word of caution to be careful with your timings. Um, I did order a few extra tea towels on top of the orders that we'd confirmed with parents, um, and most of these have also been sold. Uh, so it is good to just get a few extras. I was worried in case I'd you know potentially made a mistake adding up the orders, but there were also some people who had wished they had bought a couple of extra, so having a few extra was um a really good move. We felt that our second fundraiser for term two should balance the first by having more of a social aspect to it. One of our teachers offered to volunteer her time and run a wreath making evening in the school hall. We loved this idea and were planning on a ticketed event which included mould wine and mince pies and just a lovely social evening with lots of parents. Um, but by now it was December 2021, and Covid was still continuing to have an impact on our fundraising plans. Our local councillor advised the school that no indoor gatherings could be held, and so despite trying to brainstorm some different ideas, we concluded that our wreath making evening would have to be cancelled, which was a real shame. Uh, and this situation really highlights one of the many personal skills you need to have as a PTA volunteer, and in this case, that skill is adaptability. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that. So we had a playground meeting to discuss some new ideas to make the most of December, um, because this happened right at the end of November and we were running out of time to organise anything. I suggested we keep it simple and have a hot chocolate stall and a cake stall after school. Then somebody volunteered to run a couple of Christmas games, and someone else suggested an adult and child tombol, and so the idea of an outside winter fair was created at that very moment in the playground between us all. And I noticed a word sprang into my head as this discussion was going on, and this word is going to form the start of my PTA dictionary that I thought it would be really interesting to create. And the word I was thinking of is snowballing. I'm sure lots of you can relate to that phrase. Um, the sense that an event you have suggested feels like it has gained a momentum of its own and it's getting bigger and a bit more complicated than the original idea. And inside you might start to panic and think it's all getting out of control. Well, in this case, it was all fine, um, mainly because of the way we managed the workload of running the winter fair. What was really interesting about this event for me as chair is that it happened organically within a group of people who all wanted to help and do something, and we all discussed it, and it kind of grew out of those discussions and that motivation for having an event and having a social event, something for the children and the parents to enjoy together. Um, the way it kind of just happened was each person said that they would like to do a stall on this or that. So an individual person was in charge of an individual stall, and that for me, from my point of view as chair, made it feel really manageable. I didn't have to oversee all of the stalls, um, like I've like I have had to do in the past, which was very stressful. In this case, people were willing to take on the that responsibility, which was which was fantastic. Um the parents also responded incredibly well with loads of donations for our adult and child tombola. Obviously, without donations for things, we can't make stores like that happen. And we had so many donations to the tombola that we actually separated a few out to create um three or four little raffle prizes. We put some bottles of wine together, we put we made like a pamper basket with some different things that were donated. So we also managed to create a raffle with no um extra effort, which was which was a great stall to have as well because that always raises a lot of money. And in the end, we ended up with 10 different stalls that we had in the playground outside. We ran it on a Friday just after school, 3 till 4 pm, just for one hour. It was extremely popular. I think I think everybody from the school did come to it and spent their money, and in one hour we had raised £485, which was an excellent result, and I couldn't quite get over the fact that we had managed to do that, and it really hadn't felt like a very big um event to organise. Um, it was fantastic. We had lots of volunteers through the stalls, the children were really excited about playing the games, and the adults, even though it was COVID times and yes, we had to wear face masks and things, um, the adults did still manage to socialise, which was an important part of the fundraiser. So um, so yeah, I I felt a really lovely glow inside as I looked out across the winter fair and saw the school community coming together and enjoying themselves and raising money for our school. Absolutely fantastic, and what the PTA is all about, in my opinion. I realised I had to fill out a risk assessment. Um, I felt very daunted about this initially because this is the first risk assessment that I have ever had to write by myself. I used to have someone on my PTA that did the risk assessments before before COVID hit, and we actually had events because she was used to filling them out as part of her job, so I just let her get on with that. But this time uh she's now left, so I had to um do it myself on behalf of my PTA. I wasn't really sure where to start. I did a bit of research online. Um, I found a previous risk assessment um from a previous summer fate that we had, and I used that as a template. And once I had established that's what I was going to do, the rest of it was pretty straightforward. Our event was very small, it was one hour, we only had about 10 stalls, it was in the school playground, and filling out the risk assessment template made me realise that it was indeed a very low-risk event, and that was incredibly reassuring. Filling out the risk assessment was very straightforward, and in the end, it wasn't too onerous to complete. And I realised afterwards that it was really helpful for me, I suppose, as the event organiser or as the overall responsible person for that event, it was helpful to me to spend some time carefully thinking about the event, all the things that were going to happen, and realising that it was low risk and the risks that were there, we could definitely mitigate them, and and in all likelihood, nothing bad was going to happen, which is always so reassuring. So I thought it would be um really helpful just to talk through risk assessments and just to pass on to you what I discovered and learnt about them, having really not known very much about them, and to reassure anybody that needs to do one or thinks they might need to do to do one that they're not as bad as you think, and they can be incredibly helpful to you as an event organiser. To start with my risk assessment, I did some research online and I found three websites that were particularly helpful to me. They were their Health and Safety Executive website in the UK, Parentkind website. Um, ParentKind is an organization that provides insurance for PTAs in the UK and they have a lot of extra information on their website. Um, and then I also looked at the PTA.co.uk website and they have uh also got templates on there that you can download and fill out. So that was a great starting point for my risk assessment journey. Let's just clarify what a risk assessment is so that everybody understands. It is a document that identifies potential risks and how they could cause harm and what you are going to do to prevent or reduce those risks at your event. And the reason you fill out a risk assessment is to first of all try and mitigate those risks so that nobody comes to harm, but also to show your insurance company that you have tried to identify and minimize any risks at your event. Health and safety laws don't require voluntary organizations to do a risk assessment, but of course, it is good practice and important if the event is on school property for insurance purposes. And of course, we all want to keep people safe at our fundraising events. Any competent person can fill out a risk assessment. It is helpful if you can find someone who has prior experience of them. Um you'll probably find that somebody at your school, member of staff, will be used to filling out risk assessments. So if you're really unsure, try and find some help from somebody who's done it before. And once you have completed filling out your risk assessment document, do get do share it with your school and get them to approve it, obviously, especially if the event is on school property. So the best way to start with your risk assessment, I found, is by first of all finding a template to fill out. It's usually laid out in a table format on a Word document, and then you know the sort of information that you need to fill in, and it's set out in a very logical way. So you get your template, and then you need to visualize or even go to the part of the school where your event is going to take place and try and use your imagination to pretend the event is happening and have a look around and try and identify as many risks as you can that could be happening at that event. And as you think of a risk, you complete a line in the table which identifies what the risk is, and then you have a think about what you can do to minimize that risk, or possibly, if you can, even completely remove that risk. I found that it was really helpful to think about the different groups of people attending the event to identify particular risks to them. So when I was thinking about our winter fair, I thought about the risks to the volunteers who are standing behind the stalls, the parents who were attending with their children, the members of staff who would be attending um after the school day, um, and also potentially volunteering, and then of course the children who um have slightly more risks associated with them. Uh, and because all the different groups of people have different risks, um, I just found it really helpful to consider them separately one by one. It also meant that I felt I was being very thorough and I wasn't going to miss anything. So the the idea of the template is that you um identify the hazards and then you identify the risk, which is the chance that somebody could be harmed by one of those hazards, and whether that is a low risk or a high risk. Um, and then if it's a high risk, you have to then think about right, well, how can I lower this the risk of this particular thing? So, for example, I identified in our risk assessment that the stall with the highest risk was our hot chocolate store because it was selling hot drinks, and of course, there was a risk of spillage, but there was also a risk of um burning if you spill it on your hand or something. So, one of the ways we mitigated um or minimized those risks was to have some paper towels nearby to mop up spills straight away so that nobody slipped over or we didn't go near anything electrical, and also to make sure that when we warmed up the milk for our hot chocolate, it wasn't too hot and it wasn't going to cause burns. If you need to find a template for your risk assessment, then a good starting point is to ask school if they've got one already. That would be um a great place to start because um in COVID times now we have to add all these COVID um regulations onto a risk assessment, like you know, sanitizing hands, wearing masks, social distancing. And a school risk assessment will probably have a lot of those COVID things on already for you. So that would you know make your life a bit easier. I did actually find a really excellent template on the website pta.co.uk, and I found that their website also contains a lot of helpful notes so that I could easily understand what it was I was trying to achieve by filling out the template and actually completing the risk assessment. The ParentKind website also has a template and they have actually included some example templates that have already been filled out for a couple of different types of events. I also found just reading through those really helpful to help me identify what the risks were and also the types of things that they had included to minimize the risks that they'd identified. That was also very helpful. Don't forget to share the risk assessment with the rest of your committee and the school. It's all very well to write down what all the risks are and how you're going to minimise them, but you need to share it with everybody else who's involved in the organisation. So as a group, you can um all help to keep people safe and all spot hazards and just make other volunteers aware really of how they can protect themselves and all the people that come to the event. It's incredibly important. So if you are doing your risk assessment, um you know, try not to leave it till the day of the event, but do it a couple of days before so that you do have time to email it round to people or print it out and hand it out to people. Very important. I know that a lot of people get a bit worried about risk assessments and worry that um you know there could be, I suppose, in theory, countless risks that you can't identify and and accidents you know might happen. But just to reassure you, from the health and safety website, I read a statement that said the health and safety laws in the UK do require you to protect people as far as is reasonably practicable. So they are not expecting you to have an accident-free event. They're just expecting you to think carefully and do everything that you can to make sure that um the people attending your event and the volunteers there are protected from spillages or tripping over a wire or something like that that is um uh preventable. And the final thing I wanted to say about risk assessments is that once you've started to write some, make sure you save them because next time you run the same event or a similar event, you can get out the one that you've already prepared, go through it again, identify if there's any new risks or additional risks that you need to add on, so you're not starting from scratch every time. I'm intending to build up a bank of risk assessments, um, starting with that very first one for the outside uh winter fair, so that we are not reinventing the wheel each time, and it means that if anyone else is going to be in charge of an event, I can just pass it to that person. So I would highly recommend getting some sort of organisational system in place to store all your risk assessments like you would um your other important documents too. And that's all from episode three. I hope you found it useful to delve a bit deeper into the world of risk assessment, and you might feel able to tackle one now without too much trepidation. Right now in my PTA world, we are working on a big spring raffle and have been busy beavering away asking for raffle prizes. I will give you an update on that next time. If you'd like to join in the discussion or want to contact me, please drop me a line using hello at ptapodcast.com or have a look at my website and Facebook page. I would love to hear from you. Good luck with whatever your PTA is working on at the moment, and I look forward to chatting with you next time. Thanks for listening.