Case Study: Banana State School
Banana State School’s successful fundraising drives
At Banana State School, in central Queensland, the fundraising efforts are spearheaded by their hardworking P & C committee. We recently heard from their long-time member Leanne Stevens, secretary of the P&C, and parent at the school for 30 years. Along with the school tuckshop convenor and dedicated parents, the P & C have been able to run a successful lasagne and cookie drive to raise money for their school. With these two successful fundraising drives during the year last year, it was great to catch up with Leanne to hear of their success.
Q: How do you go about putting together your lasagne drive?
Rachel Haley (our Treasurer) and Sheree Urquhart (one of our parents) and I made our lasagnes from scratch. The students loved them. They are full of fresh veggies and the sauce is boiled down tomatoes.
We were very lucky Sheree had a thermomix as it made the white sauce so easy. So there were 3 of us to cook for 2 days and we made nearly 200. We are going to do another lasagne drive this year.
Q: How did your volunteers put the cookie drive together?
The biscuit and cookie dough drive was another good one we did. We made and cooked all the biscuits in the tuckshop and there were four of us – 3 on mixers and 1 cooking. We were able to do them during school time which was great for us. Karen Donohoe (our P&C President) also helped us with the cookie drive.
Our biscuit drive was Rachel’s idea. She got the children to design a biscuit, and she liked a couple of the biscuit ideas so we made it into one biscuit. A jam drop with sprinkles and pink icing and it tasted yum! We also made white choc macadamia nut cookies (and dough), M&M biscuits (and dough), triple choc biscuit (and dough), jam drop biscuits and jam drop sprinkles and pink icing biscuits.
Q: What were the challenges of putting on these fundraising initiatives in your community?
We will never do another cookie drive in the second last week of school as it is such a busy time.
Q: How much did you raise from these fundraisers?
Our lasagnes made us $661.46 profit and I think we may have done $400 profit with the biscuits.
We have purchased iPads for the school, and helped with paying for the bus to the pool so our children learn to swim. We also contribute to the shortfall of getting internet upgrade. This year we will help with ICT for the students, books for the library, and readers for the classrooms.
Q: How does the school community help the fundraising efforts for the P&C?
We are finding it hard to get a convenor, as I have one more year after this year. I’ve had children at Banana School since 1987. So, I’ve seen the changes in volunteering. It is sad to think how hard it is to get people together. But I suppose in most families both parents work. But we have got a great lot of parents as they do help in different ways.
Some will donate prizes for our Annual Cent Sale or raffles. Some help with clearance sales, sell meat trays at the local pub. Book fairs, chocolate drives, now our cooking drives. Even our cleaner donates to our raffles and sells raffle tickets for us.
We have an amazing Principal, great teachers and teacher aids, and our administration officer is great. So it is a great school. Must be – I’ve been there for 30 years this year and I am now working with mums that I use to serve at the tuckshop!
You might also be interested in:
- 25 All-Time Best Fundraising Ideas
- Cake Stall Ideas
- Sweet Stall Convenor Resources
- Thanking Volunteers
- Birthday cupcakes at tuckshops – is this a good idea?
