Quiz Nights

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. 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 budget, 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. Now it's term five, the last two terms of the year, so I hope you have had a rest after possibly some Easter fundraising, and now you're looking ahead to summer with eager anticipation of what lies ahead. I know that planning will be fully underway right now because there's an awful lot to do. So I do hope it's all going well for you at your school. Now, firstly, did you hear my episode 40 that I released just before the Easter holidays where I launched the start of the PTA virtual book club? Finally, finally, we're actually doing it. If you want to take part, it's not too late. Um, I'm hoping that everyone will aim to finish reading about the 31st of May, which is right at the end of the uh half-term holiday, and then um I can start gathering all your views. So if you do want to take part, um more details are in episodes 36 and episode 40. So do have listened to those short episodes to get all the details about how the PTA podcast virtual book club uh runs. But essentially, now is the time to start reading our first book, which is The Hive by Jill Hornby, and then as I said, I will be um asking for your feedback. So I'm going to um make a um like a Google Forms or a Microsoft Forms um questionnaire, I suppose, that um you may like to fill out, or alternatively, you can just email me your views and reviews on the book, and um I'm going to be incorporating all of the feedback into an episode just focused on what we all thought of the book. So um do keep so if you want to be alerted when my uh feedback form is ready, then make sure you sign up to my mailing list, which you can do through my website, or um keep an eye on my Facebook page, and I will put the link, hopefully put the link on there for you to click on and send me uh your thoughts on the book. And I hope if you have already started, I do hope you're enjoying it. I'm about halfway through now because obviously I'm rereading it to remind myself what's happened, and uh very much enjoying it so far and how it relates almost directly to my actual real life, which you know you don't often see in a book, so it's it's really fun. So, yes, don't forget um to read the book, and yes, if you haven't started yet, there is definitely still time. It is a very easy-to-read book, it's not particularly long, so um, hopefully, you would be able to fit it in around all of the other things in your life. So, this is episode 41, and in this episode, we're going to be talking all about quizzes, especially quizzes as fundraisers. Now, I had an unusual week just before Easter, in that I enjoyed two nights out, which was unusual in itself, and both were to attend two different PTA quiz nights, and these are actually the first um PTA quiz nights I have ever attended. Not because I have avoided them by any means, but it just the stars just aligned. I managed to get a group of friends together for each one to go to these PTA quizzes. So they're the first ones that I have attended, uh, and they have fallen in the same week. So, how funny is that? So, in this episode, I'm going to share my experience of going to both of the quiz nights, and then I'm going to share some tips about organizing your own quiz night as a PTA fundraiser. So, both of the quizzes were just geared towards adults, so that's something to bear in mind if you are thinking about a quiz. I think it would be very tricky to make a quiz suitable for families as a whole. So I think most of the quizzes I have seen advertised certainly are just for adults. But if you know how to incorporate kids as well, do share your ideas. Uh let me know by email, as I would be really interested to hear if you have managed to create a family quiz where the children can get involved. Because obviously, for some families, it for the for the adults to come out without the children can be very difficult. Whereas if you can incorporate a family event, it's much easier for people to attend and bring their children with them. So if you have or you know of a quiz that has managed to incorporate uh children, then yes, do let me know how that worked out and how they managed to do it. I would be very interested to hear about it. It was so interesting going to two different PTA quizzes and seeing how they were organized. I think it's fascinating to see how two different PTAs approached the same event. So I'm going to describe both of the evenings to you and highlight the similarities and differences. Um, both quizzes have some really good points, so I'll definitely point those out to you. And there were also some interesting differences that I will mention. And then afterwards, I'm going to try and collate some top tips from each quiz evening that you could consider if you are running a quiz night as a fundraiser for your PTA. So let's get stuck in. So, firstly, I'll just tell you about the run-up to the quizzes and the booking stroke ticket experience. So, one quiz used the website Zefi for people to book tickets. Um, I know that Zefi is becoming increasingly popular with PTAs as I believe it has no fees or very, very low fees, or the option to not charge any fees, something like that. Personally, I haven't ever set anything up on Zeffi, so I'm not entirely sure. Um, anyway, this uh PTA shared the link to Zefi via a QR code for individuals or teams to book a ticket. It was very easy to use and quick to make the payment and get a confirmation email. I think it's the most straightforward booking I think I've ever had to make. I didn't even have to put in all my address or anything like that, it was just my email address. So it was super easy to use. And the PTA that used Zefi had also included an option to pre-order snacks for your um quiz table. So you could choose a £10 snack box for your table or a four-pound brownie uh selection. So I ordered the £10 snack box for our table mainly out of curiosity to see what was included in the snack box because I haven't come across this before, but also because I do like crunchy, salty snacks with a drink, I just think it's really nice. Um, now of course, using a website to take payments and bookings in this way means that people from outside of your school community can also independently sort out their own tickets, which can be a real bonus that not everybody has to go through the school to try and do the booking. So the other school who held the quiz, school two, they also went with a no-fee payment option and they collected their quiz payments by BACs instead. Now I was invited to School 2's quiz by a friend who obviously goes to the school, and she said that the school emailed out a link and a QR code to the parents. The link took them to a Microsoft form um where they actually filled out the form to make the booking and then they completed the payment by BAX. So I guess you're doing two separate things there. Now, as someone coming from outside the school community, this payment method using BACs was obviously a bit hard for me to do because I wasn't uh getting all the communications from the school and everything. So my friend organised our team and we paid her our entry fee because she was from the school. I think paying by BACs can work really well as it's no fees at all and straight into your PTA bank account, and there is uh a lot to be said for getting money going straight into your PTA bank account. I imagine that the treasurer of this PTA may have had a bit of work to do though to match up the payments that went into their bank account with the Microsoft forms that people filled out, um, but it shouldn't have been too difficult. I guess it would just take a bit of time just to kind of cross-reference those. And if your parent community is used to paying buybacks, then it's a really good system to use. I do think it's important to make it easy for people to give you money, and I have mentioned this a few times over many episodes in my podcast. Um, so I think it is a really important consideration and um good to set aside some time just to think about how you're going to take those uh advanced payments for your quiz and which payment method would work well at your own school. If your parents have already set backs up on their own accounts and you regularly take payments that way, then it's easy for them to keep doing that, isn't it? So as long as you as the PTA can obviously do the crossover checking if things are going directly into your account. A website might make it easier with no crossover checking, but obviously there can be fees involved in those websites. So I think really the the learning point from this part of the quiz organisation is just to take some time to just consider what method is going to work the best for your school community and how you can make the process as easy as possible for your parents to book on as individuals or as a team. Um, you don't want anybody thinking that your booking system or your payment system is too difficult and they give up and don't attend the quiz. So do make it easy for your parents to book and um obviously consider what what would work best for your own situation. So one quiz was £5 per person for a ticket, and the other was six pounds a person, and for both quizzes, the teams were up to six people in total. I personally felt that either price was fine, and I think five or six pounds is what I would expect to pay for a quiz night just from um you know seeing other quiz nights advertised. I quite like the fact that they both charged per person rather than a set price for the team, as I think for the people going, it's easier for individuals to pay rather than one person, cover the whole cost for a team and then try and get payment for you know each team member. So I think um paying per person is a much better route to go down, and also you know, the people can buy their tickets separately, individually. Um, as with the the Zefi website, people from outside the school could pay easily for that. So school one's quiz was on a Tuesday night, and they had chosen St Patrick's Day for the theme of their quiz. Um, and it happened that St Patrick's Day was on a Tuesday night this year. I'm not sure why they picked a Tuesday. I don't their quiz was held in the school hall, so I don't know if um I know that that school has bookings in the evenings from other groups that come in and use the school hall, so I'm not sure if uh the Tuesday night was the only night available to them. Um, and they went for Patrick's Day so that they could they could create a theme around the quiz. They did only get uh four teams taking part, which was a real shame as the quiz was very good and I had a great time there, and I felt like a lot of parents did choose to miss out on that, and I I don't really understand why, but I don't know if holding the quiz on a Tuesday rather than a Friday may have made a difference with attendance. It could have done, possibly. Um this was the first quiz that this school had had run, and so I did feel really sad that they'd gone to all the effort of the quiz and there were only um four teams. Um anyway, school two's quiz had been running as a regular annual event, so it was well established in the school calendar from the PTA, and they had nine teams taking part taking part, and it was on a Friday night. Um, so for me it did feel like an end-of-the-week treat to have with friends. So I would suggest that if you're thinking of doing a quiz, perhaps a Friday or Saturday night might work better, and people might see it as a like an end of week treat, and maybe they might make more of an effort to attend um and to be social in that way rather than if it's a Tuesday night. But you know, sometimes you can't control these things, sometimes you just have to go with what you can do. So let's move on to what happened on the actual nights of these quizzes. I want to start by saying that I had a brilliant time at both of these quiz nights. They were a whole evening out for just five or six pounds plus a few drinks per person, which really is a bargain these days, and I think you'd find it hard to do that anywhere else. Um, a chance to hang out with your friends, do an activity, have some fun, and raise money for a charity that directly benefits your child. What a brilliant setup! And I wish for both of these schools that more of their parent communities could have attended and also enjoyed the evening. The the school that got nine teams, I mean, that's pretty good to get nine teams, I think. But again, I I know that there are more parents that that didn't go. Um, so just to put into context, uh the school that had four teams, they have about eight children at their school, and the school that had nine teams, I think they have I think they have about 120 children at their school. Um, so there's definitely scope for more parents to go from both schools. Um, of course, I know that running any sort of PTA event is always a lot of work, a lot more work actually, than it seems on the surface, let alone also writing your own quiz. So as a as a fellow PTA volunteer, I just wish for those PTAs that they had been better supported by the parent community. But despite that, there was a really great atmosphere on the night at both quizzes from the people who were actually there. And I think certainly for the quiz where there were just four teams, um the people being there and being enthusiastic and having a good time, you know, made up for the fact that there weren't actually a lot of people there, so I felt that was that was good. Both quizzes took place in the school hall of each individual school. School one had decorated the hall with St Patrick's Day colours and balloons and props. They had put tablecloths on the quiz tables because the quiz tables were just the dinner tables that the children normally eat their dinner from. So they decorated those with tablecloths and themed napkins and some other bits on the table, and it felt like a proper event when we walked into the school hall. Now I'm not usually a big fan of spending money on decorations, especially single-use decorations, but I did appreciate the use of these decorations to disguise the fact we were sitting in the school hall, and it did feel like it was an evening out. Each table also had the answer sheets printed, ready to be filled out with pens. Um, yeah, the sheets were pre-printed with all the different rounds, um, with a line for each answer to each question on and staple together. So it was it looked very organized and uh like it was you know ready for the quiz to start. It was it was a very good um first impression from when you walked in. So yeah, whilst like like I say, I don't generally like spending lots of money on decorations because I feel that that really takes away from the um money that you're going to raise, but I I did appreciate those decorations on that on that night. School two didn't have any decorations um in their school hall, um, and we were also using the dinner tables and benches that the children would use for dinner, so they hadn't covered them with tablecloths or anything like that. Um they had just put some plain A4 sheets of paper on the tables, plus a pen, uh, plus a little bowl of crisps, like a cereal bowl-sized bowl of crisps, which was apparently our free starting nibble, which I didn't really realise, but they had given out some crisps for each table, just a small amount. Um so they had chosen just to put out plain A4 sheets of paper for us to write our answers on. I probably wouldn't have noticed that they did that had I not already been to the other quiz where they had pre-printed answer sheets. And I have to say that I did prefer using the pre-printed answer sheets because firstly it made just made it a lot easier to write your answers down because there was a line to write your answers on, just kept it really neat. Um, and you could easily see which round was which because they had labelled the rounds, you could see how many questions there were going to be in each round, and the answer sheets were stapled together, so there was no risk of you losing any of your answers and then falling on the floor, whatever. Um, which wasn't the same experience with just some plain A4 paper. So if you are having a quiz, I would definitely go with the pre-printed answer sheets, which really doesn't take much effort at all to produce those, um, but it was a lot better as a as a quiz customer. Both quizzes had a bar, of course, and the prices did vary between the bar. One school charged £11 for a bottle of wine, whereas the other charged £16 for a bottle of wine, which I actually thought was quite expensive for um a school fundraiser. Not really sure if what your thoughts are on that. For me, I felt 11 was okay, 16 was a bit too much. Um but neither bar had very good soft drink options, which I thought was a bit of a shame. There were quite a lot, there were quite a lot of um low or no alcohol drinks available now, and much better soft drink options other than lemonade or coke. My friends who were driving just bought one lemonade for the whole evening, um, as they basically didn't want to buy two really sugary soft drinks, they just didn't want to, you know, you've had a soft drink and it's just your teeth start to feel all furry. Um, and I can understand why they why they didn't want another one. Um so I think with a better selection of non-alcoholic drinks, um, the people who didn't want to try to drink alcohol could still have enjoyed at least a couple of drinks. Um, so I do think it's worth paying attention to that area of your bar as well as the other alcoholic drinks. Um, I I know it's hard because lots of people, you know, prefer particular things. Like if, you know, there's almost four choices for wine now, isn't there? There's prosecco, white wine, rose, and red, and then all the plethora of different beers that you can have. Um, and so I I do understand that it's it's hard to kind of narrow it down, but I think you're gonna have to narrow it so that you can um try and well, make some money really. Um, if you can do your drinks on a sale or return basis, that's ideal. But I'm not sure if any supermarkets or possibly wine shops like Majestic. Wine, I'm not sure if they do that anymore. I know they used to, but it might be worth asking around. Um, but certainly for the soft drinks, there are many more choices. Um, even just a sparkling water with lemon and ice would be nice, I think, for someone who's maybe driving and doesn't want a sugary drink. Um, so yeah, I did feel that um perhaps for both quizzes, maybe there could have been some more options there. By the way, I am fully aware of the ironic thing I just said that when you're planning your bar for whatever PTA event it is, to try not to have too many options for people, and now I'm saying you need to have more options for soft drinks. I am fully aware that that sounds uh very ironic. Um, but I think yes, it's certainly now when more people maybe are driving, you know, it's all about the planning, isn't it? It's all about knowing your parent community, knowing your school. For example, my school is in the middle of nowhere, it's in a very small village, hardly any of the villagers actually go to the school. So most of our parents to get to any school events will be driving. So most of the bar sales will be probably for non-alcoholic drinks. So it's kind of just really just stopping to think a little bit, having a discussion with your team, and trying to think of the best approach for your parent community. Of course, you know your parent community really well, so um, it shouldn't be a problem, but it just just pausing to think about what the reality of your parent community is, uh, and not trying to think of what you would actually like it to be, but focusing more on what you've actually got. Of course, another way to deal with excess uh drinks left over from an event like this where you've had a bar is to see if you can use it in future events. So perhaps you could still make some money back on the leftover wire if you put it into a raffle or a tombola or um and hold another event. So, you know, um there are other options for making the money back if you can't do sale or return, but perhaps when you're planning your quiz, if you're thinking about drinks, it's good to have that um plan, extra plan of of trying to sell whatever you don't sell at the quiz, trying to get rid of it later on in your PTA year. Um, it's good to have that planning in place already, and of course, somewhere to store the drinks. Um, my school, my primary school, we we definitely couldn't ever store anything at school, so somebody would have to take that responsibility of storing it at home, which is just you know something else that a volunteer would have to do, and you need to factor that in really one school manned their bar throughout the evening, so you could always go and buy drinks, even when the quiz was on and the questions were being read out, it didn't really close. But the other school only had the bar open twice in the whole evening, which to be honest was not enough. Um, so they had the bar open before the quiz started, so when people were arriving, the bar was open so you could get some drinks, and then they had um an interval ha- interval halfway through the quiz, um, and the bar was open then as well for maybe about 20 minutes or so, so you could get some more drinks, and then that was it. So I personally would have liked more opportunities to buy drinks myself. I could certainly have had another glass of wine. Um and during the evening I was thinking, I really would like another glass of wine, but there's nobody at the bar, so and I didn't want to get up um and interrupt the quiz. So it was a little bit awkward there. Um, and that school as well, who didn't have the bar open the whole time, they also didn't sell any bar snacks at the bar. So um, so this was the school that um you could pre-order a box of snacks for your table or some brownies, but they didn't have any snacks to buy on the night, which I thought was a bit of a missed opportunity, really. Uh, because you know, when you're buying your ticket, you might not think about snacks and you might change your mind and want some on the night, or if you see that other people have some snacks, you might want some snacks. So I did feel that was missing a trick. Um, and I felt kind of lucky that I had taken um the plunge and ordered the snack box for our table, otherwise we wouldn't have had any crisps or anything, and it's really nice to or maybe it's just me, but I think it's it's really nice to nibble crisps and have drinks and chats and quizzes with your friends, so uh it was good. Um the other school did have snacks, and as a team of six, we did buy quite a few packets of crisps, so I think adding snacks to your bar is quite important. I have to say that the snack box that we pre-ordered and purchased for £10 for our table was actually really good. So we got a sour cream and chive fresh dip um with some breadsticks and some pretzels to dip into it. We had some fruit pastels, haribo's, jelly babies, and a big bar of minty chocolate to show, which is like an arrow. Um, I thought it was a really good mixture myself, um, but my the consensus on our table was there were maybe just a few too many sweets in it. We did enjoy the sweets, but I think we would have preferred a more savory and less sweets, um, which also obviously made it hard with drinking all the lemonade. Um, and but also, you know, even though we had pre-ordered the snack box, if there had been crisps for sale at the bar, we would have gone to buy some crisps because we all felt like we needed more of that. So um, so the snack box was definitely a good idea. Maybe the balance of what was in it could be improved, but also I think uh being able to buy more because we really liked the pretzels that were in the snack box, and I think if they had been for sale, we would definitely have bought more of those. So let's move on to the quizzes themselves now and stop talking about the snacks and the drinks. Um, I have to say that both quizzes were pitched just right, and I think that this is one of the most crucial things to get right when you are hosting a quiz. You want everyone to be able to take part in the quiz and to feel able to answer some of the questions, so there needs to be a careful balance between general knowledge and more specialist knowledge, but also some ways for people to maybe guess an answer if they don't know the correct answer to try and get it right. And I think both quizzes had a great mix of topics for each round, and they each had about 10 rounds of about 10 to 12 questions per round, so they were pretty evenly matched on that count. Um, and both quizzes also gave teams a joker card that they could play once only during the evening. So basically, your joker card gives you double points for one round, so you have to decide as a team which round, basically which round is going to be your strongest round and play your joker at the start of that round. Now, for the pre-printed quiz sheet school, we could see uh what the topics were for each round, so we could look and think in advance. Oh, probably we might play our Joker there or may play it there. But for the um uh school which just provided the plain A4 paper, we had no idea what the rounds were going to be. Um, so we had to think when the round was announced, and they said, Does anyone want to play their Joker? We had to make quite a quick decision on that. So I think it would have been better if um we had known what all the rounds were just to make it just to help us decide when to use the Joker card, basically. Um and both quizzes also had tabled a sheet of paper that was a picture round. So the sheet of paper for the picture round was already on the table when we arrived, and we could start um filling that in when we arrived. So one quiz used pictures of logos that you had to identify, and the other one had emojis which spelt out names of companies or products, and I have to say, both were really good fun to complete. The logos one was very good because uh it had some very easy logos and it had some medium hard logos, and then there were a couple of logos that we just could not for the life of us get, although they seemed so familiar and we couldn't think what they were. I'll tell you what one of them was. One of them was the logo for the um high-end clothing company Burberry, which was a knight, I think it was a knight holding a flag or something, and it was so achingly familiar, but we just could not put our finger on what it was. Um, and then the emojis uh pitch around was just really good fun. I think they had about 20 of those, so they'd used emojis to either describe the product or represent the company name or the product name. So um yeah, they were both really good fun, and it was nice that they were different, um, and uh again uh a good mix of it sort of being easy and uh a little bit difficult. And uh now we are going to talk about the scoring and the marking of the quizzes. So when when they were reading out the questions, both quiz nights were very good, the quiz master was very clear, um, they both used microphones so that it was very clear, they repeated the questions. That kind of was just very smooth and easy, really. Um I couldn't really give you a comparison on that because they both did it exactly the same, basically. So we're going to move on to talk about the scoring and the marking. Um, I know that winning a quiz is not necessarily the main goal of attending a quiz for most people when they take part, but for some people, winning is a very important part of going to a quiz night. And at the end of the day, a quiz is a competition and there will be a winner. So it's very important to get the scoring and the marking correct and accurate. So, school one had a great approach. Every three or four rounds that we answered, we swapped answer sheets with the table next door and we marked each other's answers. The quizmaster obviously read out the answers and we marked them. Um, and then the scores for each team for each round were added to a big giant scoreboard, which was actually an Excel spreadsheet broadcast on the smart TV in the hall, so we could see all the scores and which teams were winning. Um and it and it didn't feel like anybody was, you know, looking looking at the schools and thinking, oh, that team's not doing very well. I don't think it it wasn't that kind of atmosphere, so it was it was more about you looking at your own schools and thinking, oh, we did quite well on that one, or we didn't do so well on that one, and um yeah, so I I felt that displaying everybody's schools was a really positive thing actually, and add added to the atmosphere in a way. Um and it meant that at the end of the quiz the school board, the big school board got updated and we could all see all of the scores for all of the teams and clearly who the winner was, and also interestingly, you know, which rounds the winners had done particularly well in. It was it was quite interesting. I found it interesting anyway. I don't know if other people like that sort of detail, but I did definitely. And then the winning team um from that school quiz, uh, they each received a bottle of wine, and the team with the lower score got the wooden spoon, which is like a booby prize, I suppose. Um, and a big round of applause, and thank yous were said, and that was the end of the evening. Really, we all kind of drifted off. Um, people didn't stay for a drink at the bar because um the PTA organisers had already started to tidy up um the tables and things, so it didn't feel like we could hang around, we kind of just left. So that was school one, and then school two took a different approach to scoring and marking. So, firstly, the answer sheets were handed in to the quizmaster every three or four rounds for her to do the marking. Now I really liked this approach of handing the sheets to the quizmaster to mark because it meant that her word on the answers was final and she could make hopefully um consistent decisions across all the answers. The challenge with swapping answer sheets, which we did at the other quiz, was that if um somebody had answered a question and spelt it wrong or put a slightly different word or missed a word off a song title or something, then um you know you had to ask the quizmaster, can I give a half mark for this or can I accept this answer? Um, so which obviously is slightly tricky, and once you start giving half marks for things, then you have to consistently give half marks to other answers. So when um when we had to actually hand our answers into the quizmaster, I thought, oh great, that kind of cancels out that tricky half-mark decision, and she can make those decisions, and that was that was gonna be good. So I um I did think that there is possibly merit to handing your quiz sheets in and getting the organizing team to uh mark them for everybody rather than exchanging with people. So um that could be a method which you could consider. And as we were writing our answers on plain sheets of A4 paper, we had to be reminded to make sure our team name was always at the top of each answer sheet, which I felt personally was a little bit risky in just relying on the teams to remember to put their team name on the answer sheet. I didn't really like the risk factor involved in that. Um that's why I preferred the other answer sheets in the other school because we had to write our team name on the front and then they were all stapled together, so there was no way anything was going to get lost. Anyway, we did hand our sheets in for marking, but then we never got them back again. So we didn't actually see the marks on paper. Um the quizmaster did go through the answers when she had marked them, but she didn't ever read out any scores as we went through the quiz. So whilst we were listening to the answers, we were kind of mentally thinking, Oh yes, I think we got that right, I think we put that down. Um, but of course we couldn't quite remember, then we we didn't really keep track of how many we'd got right or anything like that, because we couldn't be sure which ones we got right, and um I kind of thought that we'd find out later, so it didn't really matter. So we didn't ever see our answer sheets, in fact, ever again in that quiz. Anyway, um then at the end of the quiz, the quizmaster announced the top three teams with their scores and announced the winner. And that was the end of the quiz. So she just announced the top three teams, she said who the winners were. We did a little round of applause and and then and then that was it, really. Um it did feel like a little bit of an anticlimax because there were there was no prizes for the winners, and the other six teams who were at the quiz did not find out their final scores. So it felt rather strange at the end, like it was suddenly over and there just wasn't any closure really. Um and as as a team, so my team, we didn't score in the top three uh teams on the night, and we were really surprised because we had been nodding along to all the right answers, thinking, oh yes, we put that, we put this. So we feel we kind of the evening finished, and and our team, um, we just felt like we hadn't been given all of the correct points that we'd scored, but we couldn't check because we didn't ever see the answer sheets again. Um, and in fact, once the winners were announced and the round of applause had happened and everything, and the thank yous had been said, we saw all the answer sheets. The quizmas just this was the this was the funniest thing the whole evening. She just went to the bin in the hall and just put all of the quiz sheets into the bin, all the answer sheets just straight into the bin. Um and we did have a giggle about that because I know that we weren't the only team who were really tempted to go over to that bin and um retrieve our answer sheets and actually have a look at what we had got wrong because we were so convinced that maybe some of it our school was so different that we we had thought maybe one of our answer sheets had gone missing or been mislabelled or she just hadn't added it into the total. It was it was so bizarre, it was so bizarre. Um, so yes, that quiz had a rather confusing ending for us, and we did talk about it a lot afterwards, but despite that, it was still a great evening out, and in a way, because that happened, it made it into more of a talking point. So whilst we still feel slightly like maybe we should have got more points than we actually did, um, it was certainly an experience and an interesting evening. So, those are my experiences of two different PTA quizzes, and I thought it would be handy now in the second half of this episode to just chat about a few things to bear in mind if you were thinking of holding a quiz as a fundraiser at your school. So, some um some of the points I'm going to make are going to be summarised from the experiences that I've just shared, and some are extra things which I think are worth considering or building into your planning, maybe. Um, some of you may be old hands organising a quiz night, and I wonder if you already do all of these things or if there are any new ones here for you. So uh so let's get stuck in. Number one, when you're thinking of holding a quiz night, it's important to understand that a quiz is not everyone's cup of tea. Just generally. Sometimes when you run a PTA event, you can guarantee that everybody will come like a cake sale. Everybody goes to the cake sales, everybody likes cake, or their children certainly do, but not everybody likes a quiz. Um, there will always be people who love a quiz and people who'd rather do something else. So I feel it's important if you decide you want to run a quiz night to go into it knowing that there will always be people in your parent community who would just never come to the quiz. And so when you're thinking about how many people might attend, you have to kind of bear that in mind that it's not going to be everyone, like not every not every parent is a potential quiz customer. So um I think it's important to remember that and anticipate it, um, so that kind of sets your expectations for the evening. So that's the first thing. Uh, second thing is when and where to hold your quiz. We obviously have discussed this, but I always think a quiz lends itself more naturally to um the first four terms of the school year. So normally I think you'd have your quiz as an evening out and it's going to be indoors, so it kind of makes sense to hold the quiz on those darker evenings of the autumn, winter, and maybe early spring terms when you wouldn't be going for anything outside. And in terms of where you well, in terms of where, sorry, um, you need obviously a big open plan space with tables and chairs, plus an area to serve drinks and snacks. So, you know, popular choices for this would be your own school hall, but if you don't have access to that or it's booked out by somebody else, how dare they, then you could branch out and opt for a village hall or a or another type of venue that you could rent. Obviously, there'd be rental costs if it's not at your school hall, um, or there might be rental costs if it is your school hall. I know some schools do charge their PTAs. Um, or maybe you could um talk to, you know, a local pub or a restaurant if they have a um uh you know a a side room, a venue, no, not a venue, what's it called? Um oh I can't think of the word, you know, a room where you can have a party in. Um, maybe you could do a deal with them over drinks and food or something like that. So, and you know, moving away from the school hall might encourage more people from outside the school community to attend as well. For example, if you held your quiz in the local pub, you can put posters up in the pub. Regular pub goers might want to take part, so there could actually be advantages to holding your quiz outside of the school uh property. And this actually leads nicely on to point number three that I wanted to make, which is to make sure, if you want to, that parents know that the quiz is also open to people in the local community to attend. Um, in my experience on the PTA, despite my hopes and fervent wishes, the random local people that you hope will just come along to your events do just they do not come along to your events randomly. I have noticed that the best way to get people from outside your school community to come in to something is to get people from within your school community to bring them in or invite them in. The school which had four teams turn up for the quiz. One team was the new PTA group, the ones obviously not writing the questions, I hastened to add. One team was the retiring PTA group, and the other two teams were local people, but those local people were connected to the new PTA group in one way or another, like family members or neighbours. Um, despite this quiz being advertised far and wide, random people do not just come to a PTA event. I mean, if you think about it yourself, you wouldn't probably just go to a random groups event that you didn't know. And you know, it works the same way. So the best way to get people from outside your community to come in is for people inside your community to go and get them and bring them in. So if you can encourage your parents to bring friends from outside school or bring relatives or you know, whoever, then that's how you reach those people. But in my experience, you can't assume that local random people are going to come and you're going to be inundated with uh quiz teams when in actual fact I don't think that is the case. But please do tell me if you have had a different experience because that would be really great to hear if uh other people have attended your PTA quizzes. So the next point number four, as with any and all PTA events, marketing and advertising are really, really important. So start early enough by sharing the date and time of the quiz, and then follow it up with more details and information on how to book. And as a minimum, I would be putting something out to parents once a week and try and vary your advertising methods. I did talk about all the different methods that I have used in episode 24, which is communicating with parents, and it was only when I uh recorded that episode, wrote that episode, when I that I realized how many different ways I did advertise and communicate with parents. Um I think I have about seven different ways of doing of giving them the same message, um, but just in different formats, so that I can be sure that nobody has missed it. Um so, yes, do plan your advertising and your marketing carefully because you've got to get people to book those tickets for the quiz. And talking of booking tickets, number five, do carefully consider how to make the booking as easy as possible for people. So we've obviously heard um about the success of using Zeffi that uh OnePTA had. So Zefi or having it on a website outside of your school basically allows separate team members to book separately rather than one person booking for the whole team. Um, or maybe you might prefer team bookings because um you get more possibly more money that way if you sort of charge if you have a team of six, it's five pounds a team, then you could charge £30 for a team. Um, and then people have to fill the spaces as best they can. I personally think it's fairer for each individual to buy a ticket and make up a team, but you know, everybody has a different way of doing it. I think um it's good to consider if you are lucky to get people outside your school community attending your quiz, you do need to think how would they pay you and book their place if they're not on the school internal system. So if you're advertising, you know, on social media where other people can see your advert, then do think how will somebody outside my school community be able to attend this quiz? Uh number six, which is also kind of linked to the booking system. Um, another thing to consider is whether you would like to take pre-orders for drinks or snacks at the time of booking. Um, I think it's a really good idea. You could order some wine for your table, bottle of wine for your table, you could order a snack box for your table. Um, and I and then you know, those those teams probably will buy more on the evening, but as from an organizational point of view, it might just be really handy for some people to pre-order some drinks so that you know you've already sold those ones, you know how many to get. Um perhaps it's a good idea, um something to think about. Obviously, it does depend on the way you are booking uh the tickets and whether you have options to include extra items like that. And number seven, once you have your bookings open and underway, don't forget to keep advertising. Um and this section of time when the quiz is open for bookings is a perfect time to ask for raffle donations for the quiz. So one of the quizzes I went to had a raffle at the interval, which I thought was an excellent extra moneymaker and a great idea. Um, it doesn't have to have loads of prizes because you know a quiz night could be a small event, and you could even invest in some prizes for your raffle rather than accept donations because obviously asking parents to donate um uh raffle prizes, uh, you know, as you know, you never know what you're gonna get. Um, so you might want to consider using a little bit of your ticket money to put some really nice raffle prizes in there. Um, I think there were about 10 raffle prizes, was there 10, maybe a bit less than 10 at the quiz that I went to, and about half of them were boxes of chocolates or something, which which was perfect, I thought, um, for that sort of evening. So don't have to be massive raffle prizes, just something where when somebody's going around with the raffle tickets at the start of the evening, everybody's gonna buy some because that's what everybody does. So I don't I will have to try and find out actually how much that little mini raffle made, but I wasn't expecting a mini raffle at a quiz night, and I thought it was a really lovely touch and a great way to just earn some extra money really, really easily, actually. So um, if you wanted to give that a go, then whilst you're advertising the quiz, that is a or reminding people to book their tickets, that is the perfect time to also, in addition, ask for you know donations to a little raffle. And number eight, this is an important one if you are selling alcohol at your quiz night, don't forget to get your TENS license from your local council. So a TENS license is required if you want to carry out a small-scale licensable activity at an unlicensed premises. So in the UK, as you probably all know, alcohol can only be sold from places with an alcohol license. So if you want to sell alcohol at a PTA event, it's unlikely that your school hall has a license to sell alcohol. So you need to get a temporary event notice, which is what the 10s license stands for, temporary license as a one-off for that one-off event so that you can sell alcohol. Um, they cost uh well, our local one, I don't know if this is a set price throughout the UK, but our local council um charges £21 and you need to apply at least 10 working days before your event. But I would recommend allowing more time than that just in case. Um, for my local council, you just go on the council website and just search for 10's license or something, it's a simple online form. And um, yes, if you just go and have a look on your local council website, read the guidance there, or phone your council to um ask any questions and clarify whether you do need one or not, um, then yes, do do that. Um, it's a cost, uh it's a small cost, you just need to factor into your planning if you want to be able to sell alcohol, which um I know does make quite a lot of profit, so it probably is worth it. And talking about costs of the quiz, I think holding a quiz actually is quite a low cost um PTA event. The main costs I would say are obviously the TENS licence, purchasing drinks and snacks, and any winning prizes for the winning team of the quiz. I would say those are kind of the minimum that you would need to spend. Of course, you may also need to add in optional costs of potentially decorating your quiz room to set the atmosphere, especially if it's in the school hall. Um, I do recommend putting something up so it disguises the fact it's a school hall. Maybe you've got bunting from your summer fair or you know, anything, anything at all. It doesn't have to be bespoke um single-use decorations, it can be any decorations tool just to make it look like more of an evening event and something like tablecloth, that sort of thing to disguise the tables. Again, really worthwhile. Um, you may want to consider buying prizes for a raffle if the donations you've received are not quite what you were hoping for. You may need to buy or to rent glasses or plastic cups for drinks, um, and also you may want to actually buy a quiz. Um, I haven't looked into this at all, but I do know that places like Etsy have ready-made quizzes for sale that people have created, uh, which might even be handy if you can't make your own or you don't have a volunteer to write the questions, or you just are running out of time. Um, I have no idea how much they cost, I'm afraid. You'll have to have a look into that, but uh it is an option and you just have to factor the cost into your evening, really. I think the most important thing to have at the forefront of your mind when running the actual quiz night is to give your participants a really enjoyable night out. I know that a lot of PTAs repeat their quizzes as an on an annual basis, so it's important to generate repeat customers who will also spread the word in the parent community about how good the quiz was. And you know, if if you can get reception parents coming to the quiz and they come to the quiz every year after that, then that's six or seven years of consistent customers coming to your quiz, which is really great. So I would strongly encourage you to set aside time to focus on the quality of the evening and the customer experience, which um sounds a bit ridiculous, and maybe it sounds like overkill, but trust me, it isn't. It it does make a difference. So now I just want to share some top tips for the quiz evening itself. We've just talked about some tips kind of um to happen before the quiz night actually happens, like organizational tips, but now we're just gonna talk about the night itself. So uh the first thing to pay attention to for your customer experience are the quiz questions. Now I have already touched on this earlier in the episode, but firstly, ensure that you have timed the evening carefully. So, again, the two quizzes which I attended had 10 to 12 rounds with 10 to 12 questions each, and this fitted nicely into an evening which ran between 7.30 and 10 pm. I think probably for both quizzes, uh, I arrived at 7.30, and I think the quiz probably got started by 8 o'clock. So there was time to get drinks, chat to your friends before the quiz started, work on the um, you know, the pitch round that was already on the table, that kind of thing. So the quiz didn't actually start till 8, so maybe, yeah, maybe a couple of hours for those um 10 to 12 rounds, which yeah, fitted really perfectly actually. Also, you do need to pay careful attention to the questions themselves. I think pitching a quiz at the right level is really crucial and also quite hard to get right. You need to ensure that out of the people attending, most will be answering a majority of the questions or at least be able to take a guess, and then you can throw in some harder ones so that you do end up with a difference in scores at the end. I know that you already know this, but nobody finds it fun to go to a quiz where the questions are just too specialised or too hard, and everybody needs to feel like they were able to contribute in their team, so do make sure you have a nice mix of questions in there. And another crucial thing to get right, and I can't actually believe I'm saying this, but based on my experience of those two quizzes, it's really important that I mention this. You have to make sure that the questions and answers are accurate and correct. And this may sound really obvious, but one of the questions that the quizzes I attended had the wrong answer as the correct answer. And I have a suspicion that this could have happened if they were taking answers from the internet, or maybe they were using an AI to generate questions and answers. Um, you have to be doubly sure of the wording of your questions as well as putting the correct answer after that question, as this does impact the integrity of the quiz. And reputation is everything if you want your quiz to be a regular event. And I talked just before about some people go to a quiz to be the winners of the quiz, and so things like this do matter. Um this question was also a very straightforward question. It was something like, because I this came from the school that took all our answer sheets away, so I can't be sure now, I can't be sure what the question was, but the question was something like which country in Europe has the highest population? And um so we put down an answer, and then when they went through the answers, they said a different country to the an to the country we had put down, which we couldn't believe that was the answer, and then later on one of my teammates did check the answer, and we had got the correct answer, and the answer the quizmaster had given, which was the answer for the entire quiz evening, was the wrong answer. So whether they had worded the question differently or just got the answer wrong, we will never know. Um, but obviously, if that happens, some people will be very upset by that, and um, in the age of checking things on the internet now, I would just be really careful um to make sure that you have the right answer. Okay, so number two is on the evening to make the most of your bar. You are really going to top up your fundraising at the bar by selling drinks and snacks, so you need to make time for people to visit the bar. There are a number of ways to do this, and the method you choose may depend on the number of volunteers you have at the event, PTA volunteers. So I would say there's three main options for this. So the first option is to have the bar open all the time for customers to visit. So you'd need to have one person at least standing behind the bar the whole evening so they can't take part in the quiz, but they can serve anybody that comes up to the bar. Um, so the bar's open all the time, which is really good, except when the when the um quiz is actually taking place, when the questions are being read out or the answers are being read out, having people go up to the bar all the time could be a bit disruptive and a bit noisy. So um that's something to bear in mind if you wanted your bar open all the time. So that's one option. Another option is to only open the bar at set interval breaks. So, like um school number one, they had the bar open at the start, then they had the bar open at the interval, and that was it. So it's just open twice, which in my opinion was not enough. But you can um change that to maybe you know, open the bar after every round, um, and make sure it's open at the end in case people want to drink before they go home as well. Um, so yes, if you're only going to open the bar at set intervals, make sure you have enough intervals to really benefit from your bar. And then the third option is to have the bar open all the time, but to provide a table service while the quiz is running. So uh one of my friends said that she went to a quiz that was like this, and on the table, people had a little flag or a little paddle to hold up when they wanted some more drinks, and then somebody from the bar would go to their table, take the orders, and then deliver the drinks to that table. So that stopped lots of different people getting up and down from the tables. Um, it wasn't so disruptive to the quiz, and it meant you could get drinks all the time or snacks all the time. Um, and I actually thought that was a really nice solution between those two previous options. Um, so yeah, something to have a think about anyway, as how to make the most of your bar on the evening. Number three, um, I've already mentioned this, but just to clarify, I think it's better to have those pre-printed answer sheets stapled together with the team name on the front. Um, so that uh if you're swapping answer sheets with another table or handing them into the quizmaster, it's always clear which ones are your answer sheets and nothing is ever going to get lost or fall off. I personally feel that swapping answer sheets and marking them all together as a like a group in the hall works really well. Um, it's open and transparent and it's a shared activity for everyone at the quiz because otherwise you're just sitting in your little groups of six or whatever answering the um questions, whereas swapping answer sheets answer sheets suddenly makes the quiz like one big, one big happy family, and you can sort of see each other and interact with the tables next to you. So I personally think that's a really nice way of um marking the answers. I do know it has little pitfalls in that you can sometimes drop into um bear traps of oh, can I get a half mark for this or can I accept this answer, that kind of thing. Whereas handing our quiz sheets into the quizmaster kind of negated all of those questions. Um, so you just have to work out how you're going to deal with that and be firm and consistent if you're doing half marks, if you decide to do half marks. Um, yes, uh, but I I think personally it's more open, it's more transparent, it's a bit of fresh air when you've all been sort of huddled together. So I I quite like that method of marking the answer sheets. Number four um is also to have a running total for all the teams. So school one, which did the running totals on the um smart TV just on an Excel spreadsheet. I thought that was a really good move, and it helped to bring a sense of lighthearted competitiveness to the quiz to see everyone's scores. Um, so yeah, I thought it was a really nice touch to do that. If you can't do a smart TV, you could just get a whiteboard or flip chart or something with and write the scores on, it doesn't have to be high-tech, but I thought it was nice to see all the scores like that. Uh number five, at the end of the quiz, announce your winners and hand out the prizes. And I do think it's a lovely touch to have some prizes, even if they are small ones or edible ones or whatever. I think it just helps to create a sense of occasion at the end of the quiz. Um, so and to acknowledge the winners, you know. Um, of course, don't forget your thank yous to everyone who helped with the volunteering and the organizing. Um, you know, you need you do need somebody to do that little speech at the end to thank everybody. Thank all the people that came and supported your quiz and all the people that organise things behind the scenes as well. And then very finally, number six, don't forget to rave about the success of your quiz to your parent community and give the name of the winning team and the amount of fundraising you've achieved. Um, I'm sure that you do all do that with um your PTA events, but um, yes, don't forget, don't forget to do it. You've spent four weeks advertising your quiz, trying to get people to come to your quiz, and then you need to round that off afterwards with saying what a success it was, and we've raised this much money, and congratulations to the winning team. My first two experiences of attending PTA quizzes and some top tips for you if you are organising a quiz. I know many of you already do quizzes, you've probably done loads of quizzes. Do you have any more tips to share with PTA volunteers that you have found really work for you? Have you changed anything about your quiz which has made it better in terms of the experience for attendees or better in terms of your fundraising? Do drop me an email and tell me about it. It's hello at PTApodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you are enjoying reading The Hive in our PTA Virtual Book Club. If you have started, it's not too late to start reading it yet, so do join in. Um, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you think about it and what you think about their fundraising attempts and whether you've tried anything similar. Um, anyway, that's all for me today. So I will chat to you next time. Bye for now, you know.