Case study - Blakedown Primary School PTA

Case study – Blakedown Primary PTA

Why did you want to raise money for books?

When Blakedown Primary School PTA found out there was only one David Walliams book and not even a full set of Harry Potter books in the library, they knew we had to take action!

We have a great PTA at Blakedown Primary and we organise lots of events, but we found it was always the same pockets donating at the same events. When we heard about Support your school we knew it would be perfect for Blakedown and it gave people that did not like to come to PTA events a chance to donate.

Our school is a smaller than average-sized primary school. Due to increasingly diminishing budgets, we do not have the finance needed to update our library provision. Although we had donated money for banded reading books, our other funds had been pledged towards Forest School - there was simply no money left for new fiction books.

We wanted to make the library a more exciting and engaging place to read books both in terms of books and environment and add high quality, modern up to date fiction by popular current authors.

Why choose Support your school?

To achieve our vision, we needed parental support. We could have asked parents to each buy a book for school but this would be a big project in itself and potentially could result in duplicate texts being purchased. So, we decided to use Support your school through Peters as it was FREE and SO EASY. They could also help us write out campaign as they have a dedicated Project Manager who is there to help.

How did you reach your target?

We created a donation page on Support your school where parents were able to donate as much as they can afford. They could do this anonymously.

We sent them a link via Parentmail and also promoted the page on our PTA Facebook page. We found we needed to post once a month to reach our target.  We had also been advised by Support your school to post regular updates on the campaign page thanking parents.

What did you raise?

It took us just 3 months to reach our target of £1000, but we kept the campaign going and parents are still donating!

How did this benefit the PTA?

The school were so happy that we had raised so much money for books. We added the value of the book fundraising to our overall PTA fundraising total which boosted it no end!

Did the PTA choose the books?

No, we left that to the Literacy Co-ordinator and Headteacher, but one of the PTA members went with them to Peters’ fabulous showroom in Birmingham – there was over 40,000 children’s books there, it was amazing!

What next?

Our campaign is still live and we are continuing to get money in. We also decided to reserve some money to be able to buy a fresh stock of new titles over the next year. The school are thinking of taking children into the showroom next to choose the titles they want. We are also considering a new campaign for local businesses.

Would you recommend Support your school?

It has been the easiest ever way to raise over £1000 for the PTA! There has been no parent pestering for volunteers, no bag stuffing or wrapping……just simply register, upload a campaign, communicate to parents, then watch excitedly as the money comes in!! We would definitely recommend Support your school to any PTA.

Blakedown Primary PTA