Puppet Fridays!

Puppet Fridays! is a fundraising program for school assembly assembly programs. It is a cooperative partnership between the school and Magical Moonshine Theatre and includes a double assembly program for the school during the day and a public performance in the evening that raises funds for the school and to help cover MMT's costs. Note that Puppet Fridays! is a program that is intended for schools located within a 60 mile radius of our home base of Napa, California. If your school is outside of that area, please call for information. Puppet Fridays! requires a dedicated staff of parents or school employees who believe in the arts, arts education, and fostering school community. With the right team this program can enrich your students and school community immeasurably, as well as provide greater connection to the community at large.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROGRAM:

With 25 years of direct observation of performance trends in California schools it is clear to us that assembly performances in California elementary schools have dropped dramatically in the last two years. Many studies have shown that arts exposure in schools increases test scores and develops important neural pathways in the developing child. More important is the quality of life and enrichment that students gain from arts exposure. There is no question that the California economy and school budgetary difficulties are making it harder for schools to supply this essential aspect of their students education. To this end we are starting a new program to help bring arts to your school while helping you build community and raise funds for future programs

Puppet Fridays! is a new program that combines Magical Moonshine assemblies in the school with an evening fundraising performance to raise money for your school's arts programs. This can be a very successful strategy for building support within your parent/teacher community as well as immediately getting arts into the school. (One very successful example: Magical Moonshine programs have helped Main St. Elementary in Soquel raise funds for assemblies as well as funds for a music teacher for the whole year.)

While various arrangements are possible, the recommended model would be one of having a double MMTheatre assembly program during school time and then a different program for families that evening as a fundraiser for the school . Magical Moonshine Theatre would waive our usual fee of $1200.00 for the evening program, instead splitting the funds raised with the school in an all-win strategy that pays us something for our evening show and helps the school make money to pay for in-school programs. In addition , refreshment sales, grants, raffles, and program ads can be incorporated to create more community support for school arts programs. This program will, of course, work best with a group of dedicated volunteers from the school to work with MMT to arrange the fundraising portion of the program, but once in place, this is a model that can be repeated to become a regular part of the school community, raising funds and bringing in artists throughout the year.

SOME DETAILS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM OTHER SCHOOLS FOR SUCCESS:

Of course, every community is different, and having a finger on the pulse of your community is quite helpful for success. The suggestions below are things that other schools have found helpful and successful (but should only be treated as a model to be adapted to your particular situation.)

SUGGESTIONS FOR ORGANIZING VOLUNTEERS FOR FUNDRAISER

The school assembly portion of Puppet Fridays! will pretty much run itself, with the school staff mananging the timing, etc. Where your volunteers will be most helpful is in organizing and fundraising for the evening event. Here are some suggestions for volunteer coordinators:

ARTIST LIAISON: This will be the person who communicates with the performers and coordinates the needs of the performers (staging, electricity, parking), the requisite permissions (arranging for the use of the multipurpose room or stage, custodians, any regulations required by the school or district- the principal or other staff should assist in this), and communicates these needs and concerns to the right person, and, if appropriate, with the other volunteers. This person, in conjunction with the Marketing person, should think about the timing of the event. Certain times of the school year will be more successful, depending on what else is going on. For example, holiday weekends may mean families go away on vacation. Also, plan to have time in school before the event to market (don't plan it for right after a vacation, as you would not have access to the students and families.) Also, some schools have observed that minimum days seems to dilute awareness of the event. The month of May seems to be a busy time and some schools report it is more challenging to get audiences.

MARKETING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS: (See Artist Liaison, as well.) This person is in charge of marketing the public performance. This means advertising it to the school families, students and the community at large. This person will coordinate flyers, posters, community calendar listings in the newspapers, any ads in papers, local radio spots, local TV listings or promos and try to encourage word or mouth or create a "buzz." Don't forget advertising to other elementary schools in your area, as these are potential audience members as well. This is an important position, as your fundraising success will depend a lot on how many people come to the event. Magical Moonshine has press materials to help. This person (or persons) also can oversee the printed program, including ad sales for the program (another great source of income for the fundraiser). Some of the publicizing may have associated expenses, but trading ad space, for example, for printing services, or trading tickets to the event, can help to keep expenses down, making sure that funds go to the school rather than to expenses. NOTE: Selling ads in the program is a great way to generate lots of income; one school prices their ads as follows: business card size: $100.00 for a business, or $50.00 for a family (parents or grandparents of student who want to support the school), $250.00 for a 1/2 page ad, $350.00 for a full page. They also have a 'peanut gallery,' a listing of supporters from the school who pay $15.00 each. You can add as many pages as you sell or trade ads for. You might also consider a discount for businesses of school families...one school offers 1/2 off any ad fee to school family businesses. Also, try for feature articles in your local paper, a good source of free advertising. Good points to promote are: live performing arts, community, and fundraising (helping the school). Also, don't overlook the influence your parents may have. Many of them may be in businesses that can help promote the event. Local businesses or community service organizations may be willing to buy blocks of tickets for special interest groups, all of their employee's families, or children who might not be able to afford to come otherwise, etc.

BOX OFFICE: Even if you don't have an actual box office, someone needs to get tickets printed and work up a system by which they can be distributed. Someone will also have to keep track of and account for the money coming in as well as any expenses. Local stores often will be happy to serve as ticket sales locations. Checking with them frequently will ensure they don't run out of tickets to sell. Work with Marketing person to arrange posters or displays for the store to help call attention to the fact that you can buy tickets there. You can also decide whether you will offer a discount for tickets purchased ahead of time. Examples of ticket prices: One school charges $6.00 a ticket ahead of time, and $8.00 at the door (for a child who sits in a lap, they don't charge). When they raised the fee to $10.00 they said it did not effect attendance (people did not stay home because the price was higher), and admission fees for our shows at other locations have gone as high as $20.00-$25.00 a ticket, depending on the venue and community. Think of what you would consider reasonable for your community...you want people to attend, but at the same time it is a fundraiser.

CONCESSIONS: This person oversees the arrangement for and sales of any concessions. This can include food/snacks, books (from school bookfair programs) or even silent auctions of donated items. Another good fundraising strategy is a raffle, again with donated items as the prizes. Raffle tickets can be sold at the event or in the weeks and months leading up to the event (this serves as advertising for the event as well.) People don't have to attend the event to win, so anyone in the community could buy tickets. Food items for sale can be donated or prepared by parents.

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU RAISE?

Of course, the answer to this question can vary greatly, depending on various factors. However, we have tried to set up the program so that schools have the greatest opportunity for success. Also, keep in mind that incorporating a program like this as a regular part of your school year schedule, as a once a year or more frequent event, will help build an audience, so that people will look forward to the event, and bring more and more friends, increasing your success. However, a one time program can also work quite well.

Below is a VERY HYPOTHETICAL example. Your situation could vary dramatically, and the dedication of your volunteers, outlined above, and the effectiveness of their work will make a huge difference.

EXAMPLE:

Lets say you have a capacity of 250 people in your school's multipurpose room. And let's say that your ticket sales end up with 75 tickets sold ahead of time at $6.00 each, and you sell an additional 120 at the door for $8.00 each. Thus your total ticket sales income would equal $1410.00. Let's say that food concessions net you an average of $1.20 per person for an additional $222.00. That is a total of $1632.00. Now, let's say that your program ad sales were very modest, with only a 4 page program with 1 full page ad, 2 half page adds and 6 business card size ads, including 3 to school parent businesses at 1/2 price. Using the price suggestions in the Marketing/Publicity section above, your income is $1300.00 (of course more ads would raise that.) That raises your income to $2932.00. Add a raffle or silent auction and hundreds or even thousands more can be raised. Let's be modest again, and say that the raffle raises only $200.00. In addition to your concessions, Magical Moonshine Theatre also offers storytelling cassettes and a music CD and other items for sale, and we are going to add all of the proceeds from that to the fundraising effort; perhaps the figure might be $100.00, bringing the total funds raised to $3232.00. (This is a modest figure; Main St. Elementary figures they average $5000.00 income for each concert/event they put on.)

SO HOW DOES THIS WORK OUT FOR THE SCHOOL: What Magical Moonshine Theatre is offering to qualifying schools is that we will waive our normal fee for the evening performance ($1200.00- However, just because we are waiving it does not mean that you can not write a grant, or go to a local business or organization and request that they underwrite the performance for our fee of $1200.00, as you will see later.) and instead split the proceeds from the evening fundraiser with you on a 50/50% basis. In our example case that would mean that Magical Moonshine Theatre would take half of $3232.00 or $1616.00. However, we are willing to put a ceiling on our percentage at $1200.00. In otherwords, we will take up to our normal fee and leave the rest for the school (including donating our expenses on any of the items we offer as concessions; after all, it is a fundraiser for the school.) That means that the school's income on the event would be $2032.00, (unless you find a donor for the $1200.00 -Target and Mervyns are examples of companys with corporate giving policies that fund a number of our shows each year) in which case you would keep all the funds raised (after our $1200.00 is paid to us.) As you can see, Magical Moonshine Theatre is taking the bulk of the risk in this program, since if only 400.00 of funds were raised, we would only get $200.00 for the performance. That is why we look to work with dedicated and committed schools and volunteers on this project. In addtion, to protect Magical Moonshine Theatre, any expenses or debts that the school or committee incurs are your responsibility and are to be paid for out of your half of the funds raised. This should provide extra incentive to incur few debts and trade program ads or get donations for as many things as possible.

In addition to the evening performance we would also be paid for our double* school assembly program during the school day at our regular rate of $865.00. This fee could come out of the evening's proceeds, but would be a contracted fee, not dependent upon the success of the fundraiser. This fee could also be paid with district money, PTO funds, or whatever works in your situation. Even if paid for out of the fundraising funds the school in our hypothetical example would still have $1167.00 after paying for our morning shows ($2032.00-865.00). And that is in addition to a fun and wonderful school/community event supporting education, the performing arts and family.

WORST CASE SCENARIO: I can't imagine this scenario happening with any school who wanted to take this project on, but here is the worst I can think of.

Let's say that none of the volunteers did their jobs, and there were no ticket sales, no programs, no audience, no concessions, etc. Probably in this extreme a case we would know ahead of time that no one was going to come to the show and we would then cancel the event, but let's say we didn't cancel ahead of time (for whatever reason). The income from the event would be $0.00. Therefore we would split the $0.00 in half, and all go home. However, whether we cancel or not, if the school volunteers or staff incurred expenses for the event (engaging a custodian, for example, for the evening) these expenses would come out of your half of the funds, possibly pushing your net gain into the negative numbers. And it goes without saying that in an extreme case like this, we probably would not want to try this program with your school again. Also, this failure would not effect our contract with you for the double school assembly programs that we did earlier in the day; that fee of $865.00 would be paid to us as per contract. As I mentioned, this scenario seems quite farfetched to me, but I want to be honest and open with you, as there is a risk, however minor, on your part, in spite of the fact that we are trying to take most of the risk on Magical Moonshine (by forgoing our fee in exchange for the capped split of income). However, if everyone does their part in good faith, this kind of scenario should not be possible.

*Note to smaller schools who only need a single assembly program: Due to the nature of the financial risk Magical Moonshine is taking, the program is set up for a contracted fee during the school day of $865.00 for a double or single program. However, should the fundraiser be successful enough to cover our usual fee for the evening event, we will be happy to adjust the school assembly fee to reflect our normal fee for a single program.

To go to Magical Moonshine's Funding Page (other kinds of funding info) click here.

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