We did not charge for the movie or anything else. As some of the other folks have said, ours was a completely free event. We did send home a form asking people to return a paper telling us how many people were coming. We then issued tickets to that student and if they brought their ticket to the movie it was put into a bag. At intermission we drew one name out and that person won the movie we were showing that night. They had to be present to win. It was really a ton of fun and we are going to do it again this year.
We use Movie Night as a family social night, ( something that is NOT a fundraiser, as so many people think everything we do is fundraising!)
We rented a popcorn machine and sold popcorn for about .50 a bag, and made lemonade and sold it for .25 a cup. Families can bring their own snacks and blankets and they sit on our gym floor. ( did it outside and it was too buggy!)
The popcorn smell really added to the atmosphere!
We know we could have charged a lot more, and MADE money, but our goal was to attract families who might not otherwise be able to afford to rent their own movies, or go out to the movies with their family. It really worked, and made everyone feel comfortable in a safe setting.
So often, those of us (who dump more money on school stuff that we care to tell our husbands) forget there are a lot of families in our schools who may be intimidated by events and fundraisers that are costly.
Regarding the license. I believe the " costs" that the license refers to means that you can charge for admission to cover all costs, (license you had to buy), janitor, food costs and so on. I think they just don't want businesses renting movies for profit. I think non-profits doing this sort of thing is fine, if you make some money!!
We do not charge admission to the movie. We do sell popcorn and water. Our first of 3 movie nights will be held in about 3 weeks and we're doing it in our outdoor amphitheater so we're adding pickles and candy bars. We're not sure if we're going to sell the pickles and candy bars at the winter movie night since it will be held in our multipurpose room. We are selling consessions just to break even for the cost of the license and such.
Good luck!
Holly This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Here's the exact wording off the license:
"The license does not cover showings where an admission is charged except to cover costs." We don't charge admission, because the school owns all the equipment to show the movie, so we don't have any significant costs. We do sell food. (We didn't sell food at the first one, we just gave it away, but we still didn't charge. I'm not sure that the food you give away counts as one of the "costs" to show the movie--that wording is pretty vague. You could always ask the movie licensing people exactly what "costs" they are thinking about that would let you charge admission.)
We use reservation forms, but since the event is free, we do have a very high no-show rate--about 25%-30%. It's somewhat offset by the people who try to just walk in without a reservation, though. I think on the two we have held, the net no-shows ended up around 7%.
We've always charged a nominal fee per ticket to control crowd size. We also charge for concessions, but don't try to make a big profit. This year, we're going to make the tickets free but still limit the number avaliable(good fundraising last year and we want to thank our parents). Our chairperson thinks people will be no-shows if they haven't actually paid for their ticket. Anyone out there with that experience?
